Page 123 - Successful Onboarding

112 • Successful Onboarding

market as a whole, which is pretty cool. It makes me feel like I’m part of
something bigger than my department.” But be careful not to deploy a
one-way communication system that comes off as corporate indoctrina-
tion and programming—employees today are too smart and too skepti-
cal. Before you can blink an eye, they’ll write you off as inauthentic and
the message as irrelevant.

Best Principle #7: Reinforce the message and make
context relevant.
Firms should use a variety of media, venues, and circumstances to rein-
force the education. For instance, the firm could provide on-demand
messages on the intranet, broadcasts played at the beginning of a train-
ing session, messages posted centrally within company buildings, and a
one-on-one mentoring program that reinforces all of this correspondence.
Repetition helps people assimilate the cultural knowledge better than a
more intense, single blast of communication can. And this leads to a
related point: Cultural discussions, like other components of an onboard-
ing program, require a gradual approach.
At the front end, firms might focus new hires’ attention via a more inten-
sive, multi-day orientation. This should be followed during the year by
other elements, such as the new hire summit and ongoing cultural men-
toring. Hiring managers must also address their teams’ own local subcul-
tures and communicate them over time. Whenever a manager starts a new
project, whenever he or she starts a “first,” the manager needs to take some
time to provide guidance around the culture and performance values.
Hiring managers should also take care to step in when people are doing
things wrong in relation to the culture. It is often helpful for a hiring man-
ager to sit down early on with the new hire and investigate what his or her
old culture was like. This conversation should be guided by a standard
template and guidebook. Six months later, hiring managers can talk about
the culture again, doing a “pulse check” now that the new hire has more
context for understanding the culture. During the annual review, hiring
managers can once more evaluate how well the employee has done in
integrating into the culture. In essence, managers must really see this as
part of their jobs, part of “managing” to get the greatest effectiveness out
of their employees, rather than as a burden passed down from the onboard-
ing team.