Page 144 - Successful Onboarding

“Connections That Count”—Empowering Employees by Nurturing • 131

to mid-sized firms can nurture affinity groups at an informal level, encour-
aging existing and new employees to form or sustain them on their own.
Diverse stakeholders have a potential role to play in making connections
between a new hire’s interests and those of other people in the firm. At
various times during a new hire’s first year, the HR recruiter, hiring man-
ager, mentor, and new hire buddy could sit down with the new hire,
exploring his or her social interests, creating awareness of existing affinity
groups and providing resources and encouragement to start new ones.
Affinity can also serve as an organizing principle in the design of men-
toring or orientation programs, particularly as relates to diversity initiatives.
Citigroup’s Sponsor Family initiative integrates a diversity component into
the firm’s mentoring program, creating core “families” of employees based
on their social or cultural background. These families meet with a differ-
ent member of senior management each month, a practice that creates
mentor linkages and provides senior management with insight into the
extraordinary challenges faced by many minorities. New connections are
forged between the senior leader and “family” members—connections
that could bring future benefits. Mentoring relationships serve as impor-
tant conduits for the transmission of social, cultural, and strategic knowl-
edge and for the bonding that comes with sharing personal stories. The
use of affinity groups to support networking can also help build external
personal and professional relationships.

Best Principle #2: Leverage resources in the larger community.
To help new hires build social relations outside the workplace, companies
can draw on resources that exist in the local communities of which they
are a part. Recognizing that many of its hires were young and coming from
distant areas—and mindful, too, of being a grow-from-within organiza-
tion—Procter & Gamble leveraged the cultural resources of Cincinnati
in creating a web site for new hires that describes the many cultural and
social opportunities the city has to offer. The web site offers discussions of
the city’s nightlife, its geographic location relative to other cities, and its
diverse neighborhoods in hopes of easing the transition for new hires mov-
ing in for the first time. The site also includes advice from recent new hires
about how to get the most out of what the city has to offer.
As one employee quoted on the site suggests, “Have an open mind. No
city is perfect. Set your priorities and find your happy balance. For me,