Page 143 - Successful Onboarding

130 • Successful Onboarding

working at a company’s R&D lab, this might mean going to a professional
association meeting to cultivate leads that can serve as future knowledge
sources. Firms should strive to get new hires out to professional commu-
nities bearing on the firm’s business—and do it early. Forging these kinds
of professional relationships will instill a sense of pride of organization,
and it can also have the added benefit of helping individuals simultane-
ously build their own personal relationships, since professional colleagues
frequently become treasured friends.

Activating Relationships

Working with any of these four network types, companies will build new
value by helping new hires forge more and better relationships. Because
organizations cannot know exactly when networking will prove helpful in
bringing about a specific business result, they need to increase social expo-
sures to increase the likelihood of positive outcomes. Best Buy has recog-
nized this, going so far as to design their corporate headquarters to
stimulate random social interaction among their employees. The design
is built around a central hub that connects a series of terminal extensions
leading to individual office corridors on numerous floors. This design
forces people to pass through the central hub dozens of times throughout
the week—creating unexpected meetings between colleagues that are
believed by most to stimulate conversations between individuals who
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would otherwise have minimal cause for interaction. Similarly, compa-
nies should design social components to their onboarding programs that
maximize the chances that new hires will build relationships helpful to
them and their employers. What follows is a list of best principles that
some of the best-in-class firms we have worked with and studied have
incorporated.

Best Principle #1: Encourage participation in affinity groups.
Affinity groups (e.g., running clubs, social action or charitable groups, out-
ings clubs) bring together people from within and outside a firm who pos-
sess common interests. Many companies provide low-level funding to
clubs to help sustain their activities. If your firm currently does not have
affinity groups, this is an important area to explore; such groups provide
even greater utility for new hires than for existing employees. Even small