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“Connections That Count”—Empowering Employees by Nurturing • 139

and by formally scheduling and tracking reminders with executive assis-
tants to allow time to find replacements, if necessary.
The senior leadership’s participation has an added benefit: It conveys
to the rest of the organization that the onboarding program has senior lead-
ership’s backing and approval. Firms can give onboarding its stamp of
approval in many ways. Yet having a chance to interact with senior lead-
ership conveys the firm’s commitment to onboarding and the success of
new hires like nothing else can. Hiring managers, mentors, IT personnel,
etc. will all get the hint that onboarding matters and it represents a
superbly important investment in the company’s future on the part of sen-
ior leaders. As many new hires as possible should have the experience of
getting to know the people who steer the organization and who themselves
model the successful maintenance of social networks.

Summing Up

A strong, nurturing social life is both a basic human need and essential for
career success. Yet most companies do not help nurture relationship build-
ing among new hires as fully as they might, and the organization pays a
price. As we have discussed in this chapter, firms need to take a more strate-
gic approach to building relationships. Specifically, they need to include
programs that help new hires nourish personal and professional networks
both inside and outside the workplace. Such measures cannot guarantee
that every employee will be perfectly happy and well adjusted. But a strong
social component can increase the chances that more and better relation-
ships will form, leading to higher productivity and lower attrition.
Over the long term, perhaps one of the most valuable functions a strong
network can serve for new hires is providing a means of professional devel-
opment. The relationships that new hires form—particularly within an
organization—are available for leveraging throughout an individual’s
career. This leads us to another pillar of state of the art onboarding: early
career support (Table 4.1). As will be seen in the next chapter, providing
new hires with the support they need to build successful, satisfying careers
is another important way we can redefine the employment compact to
benefit new hires while also carving out new value for organizations.