Page 145 - Successful Onboarding

132 • Successful Onboarding

bars, restaurants, or night life were the least important, so I decided to stay
away from downtown or other relatively crowded neighborhoods. More
important things were—grad school and work opportunities for my wife,
cost of living (I didn’t want to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every
day trying to own a house), commute time to work and back (no more
than 25 minutes each way), “intellect” level of the city (are there good
schools around, what kind of industries exist in the city), and cultural diver-
sity.” As this quote suggests, Procter & Gamble has become keenly aware
of the broader needs of its new hires outside of work. The firm has drawn
on the resources of Cincinnati, yet it has refrained from advertising the
city, opting instead for the open and honest messaging advocated in the
last chapter.
Another resource firms can look to when designing social components
of their onboarding program is other firms. General Mills takes a lead in
organizing and funding social events for new hires in collaboration with
other companies in the same geographic location as their headquarters.
The firm also funds corporate teams (e.g., softball, cycling groups, soccer)
and encourages them to participate in community activities alongside
groups from other firms. As our research has found, managers at General
Mills believe this program has contributed to reducing turnover among
new hires that have had difficulty relocating.
Best Principle #3: Build stakeholder maps.
To help new hires understand who should comprise their internal profes-
sional network, onboarding designers should catalogue key players, the
value they provide to the enterprise, and the assistance they could render
to new hires. At Johnson & Johnson Canada, an external onboarding
coach collects business and organizational data, creating stakeholder rela-
5
tionship maps for new executive hires. As Malcolm Gladwell, author of
The Tipping Point, has discussed, mavens and connectors play a large role
in popularizing social ideas. New hires likewise should know the identi-
ties of “mavens” within a firm who can answer questions based on insti-
tutional and historic knowledge. At our firm, we do not have a formal
knowledge management program, but everyone knows who the old-timers
in the company are, and they can turn to these individuals to learn if we
have ever worked on certain kinds of projects or with certain kinds
of clients. “Connectors” might not have the institutional knowledge of