Page 147 - Successful Onboarding

134 • Successful Onboarding

Best Principle #5: Start very early, but do not end there.
Relationship building is an area in which firms can make progress before
Day One—and the earlier the start, the greater the impact to the Onboard-
ing Margin. Some firms offer social networking sites as a means of forg-
ing connections early on, presenting details on the backgrounds, interests,
roles, responsibilities, reporting lines, and contact information of the firm’s
members. New hires can search and sort (by keyword or tag) and identify
individuals with common interests or career paths. Virtual workers, a rap-
idly growing part of the workforce at many organizations, particularly
benefit from early exposure to online relationship building.
As part of connections made during the recruiting process, firms
can also begin to connect new hires to current employees or the rest of
the incoming class of new hires. Even the smallest of firms can set up a
virtual group at no cost using tools like LinkedIn or a Google group page
so that all new hires can see each other’s names, find out in which areas
they are living, and gain information helpful to the moving process. We
founded just such a virtual group at our firm, and as a result, at least a few
of our new hires actually decided to live together, making this housing
decision before their start date and creating a strong cohort support bond.
Universities such as UC Irvine and Dartmouth engage new students
pre-matriculation using new-student extranet sites; firms can do the same
with new hires, adopting tactics such as pre-start visits and relocation pack-
ets. On UC Irvine’s extranet site, new students make friends before even
setting foot on school grounds, using functions like chatting and note-post-
ing to share knowledge and ask peers for advice or help. An IT consultant
for the school told us that “having one central resource that does every-
thing really helps orient new students. Plus, it hasn’t required a lot of main-
tenance.” For companies and colleges alike, pre-start visits and other social
events included as part of the recruiting process allow potential new hires
to “interview” the city and not just the company. This ensures that the
organization acquires people amenable to the geography and that indi-
viduals are relocated more smoothly, so they are better able to hit the
ground running on their first day.
Like other components of systemic and strategic onboarding, the nur-
turing of social relations is not a one-off event; rather, it must be contin-
ued progressively over the entire first year of a new hire’s tenure. The
childcare provider Bright Horizons re-welcomes employees for months