Page 133 - Successful Onboarding

120 • Successful Onboarding

“As much as I liked my job, this town is cold, and I mean that in more than
one way. Our winters are frigid, and it’s tough to get to know people here.
And collecting friends in college was easy; everyone was in the same posi-
tion when they first arrived, and we all needed people to hang out with.
When I came here, I was mixed in with a far more diverse group, both cul-
turally and also where everyone was in their life (married with kids, divorc-
ing, second career, nearing retirement, etc.), and at the end of the day
everyone went their separate ways. It was exciting being here at first, but
I spent a lot of winter nights alone in front of the TV, wishing I was back on
the East Coast.”
“Why 11 months though?” our client wondered.
“Simple,” the team member replied. “I took my apartment lease
two weeks before my start date, at 12 months my lease is up, and I need a
few weeks to pack up and move.”
“Aha,” our client thought. After using a series of objective interviews
and surveys to test the story’s validity relative to many other hypotheses,
our client realized he was on to something. The company was recruiting
from West Coast and East Coast schools, given the specific talent it was
seeking to attract, and it was importing people into a foreign, culturally
different, and (some might argue) challenging environment. The “isolated
feeling” responses collected in our client’s research were astonishingly
high. Taking other HR executives through the evidence and explaining
the cost of attrition, our client proposed a series of socialization opportu-
nities for new hires—experiences that would help new hires cement rela-
tionships early in their tenure. He hoped to replicate the intense and
personal networking environment found at universities. Starting at Day
One, new hires would engage in a series of activities with peer cohorts and
more senior leadership interaction would make them feel more supported
and connected. Our client also determined that it was not sufficient to
help make connections within the company. The new hires needed a
larger local network, so he proposed organizing new employee network-
ing events in conjunction with other local-area companies. His ideas, he
thought, were a slam-dunk.
To his surprise, eyebrows rose around the conference table and a bar-
rage of questions from his colleagues ensued: “Shouldn’t our recruits be
personable enough to form relationships on their own? If not, are we hir-
ing the right people? If we treat our campus hires like college students,