Page 151 - Successful Onboarding

138 • Successful Onboarding

Best Principle #8: Involve senior leadership.
In the book so far, we have been making the case for involving stake-
holders across the enterprise, up to and including senior leadership. In
helping new hires nurture relationships and build networks, senior lead-
ership has a special role to play. Research has shown that new hires yearn
to be inspired by the organization and its vision, and nobody is better
placed to speak for the organization than senior executives. For many
new hires, it is the charismatic and accomplished leader of a firm—
a Bill Gates, a Sir Richard Branson, a Steve Winn, a Jeff Immelt, a Meg
Whitman, or a Steve Jobs—who makes you want to join the firm in the
first place. Senior leaders represent the opportunity that lies ahead for new
hires; they ignite new hires’ imaginations by talking about their own jour-
ney to success within the organization and the challenges and opportuni-
ties encountered along the way. New hires benefit from potentially forging
personal contacts with people at the top, and the firm benefits if leaders
can focus their conversation explicitly on what they want out of new hires.
It is not necessarily the senior-most leader (e.g., the CEO) who has the
most impact. For many new hires, occupying second- and third-tier lead-
ership positions seems a more realistic goal than becoming CEO, because
so few people can achieve that honor. Many new hires are thus more
inclined to feel inspired by the stories of lower-level leaders who have beat
the odds and achieved satisfying successes.
Although their time is scarce, every leader must make some effort to
engage with new hires, even if it is limited to, say, a monthly breakfast with
a few specially selected new hires or a regularly organized “surprise” visit
to an office with the names and backgrounds of the new hires in hand. At
the non-profit IT consulting firm Mitre, new hires receive short personal
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notes from senior vice presidents. Many professional services firms have
successfully involved senior leaders in onboarding and are seeing great
results; in this industry, leadership involvement has become the gold stan-
dard. Even if leaders only attend events for a short while, they can still have
an impact. The onboarding program designer can handle the challenges
of scheduling busy leaders by developing a pool of willing senior leaders
well in advance of each event, by scheduling events several months in
advance, by providing the executives with a one-page cheat sheet with guid-
ance on the importance of and the best methods for engaging new hires,