Page 17 - Successful Onboarding

6 • Successful Onboarding

forward if you have a revolving door atmosphere, with key people leaving
after short tenures and new people entering, bringing with them different
skills, agendas, and commitments?
Even if Charles had stayed, his hiring firm’s onboarding program would
have failed to satisfy the organization’s needs. By limiting to a short pro-
gram that merely familiarized new hires with the culture and helped them
with some basic administrative tasks, Charles’ firm failed to acclimate new
employees to their organization and its broader business goals. As a result,
Charles would have been unable to connect his efforts with the firm’s strat-
egy as creatively and proactively as he otherwise might. And if there were
elements of the onboarding experience that caused Charles to get excited
about a future at the company, there is a chance that Charles would have
forgiven the company over his their initial entry snafus. Finally, by failing
to explore with Charles over a sustained period how the organization
defines success and how this could relate to the specifics of his own career,
Charles’ firm was failing—by a long shot—to maximize its return on
human capital.

Strategic Onboarding: A Burning Need

The sub-par performance of non-strategic onboarding programs seems
especially troubling for firms when we consider the broader business con-
text. Managers have long understood the financial and strategic challenges
of integrating new talent. For decades, firms have wrestled with how to
reduce time-to-productivity for new hires and increase retention. Yet today,
it is not uncommon for organizations to battle 10 to 15% annual attrition,
and they face the daunting prospect (or opportunity, depending on your
perspective) of replacing over 50% of their employee base in a three- to
five-year period. This phenomenon has received much attention in the
business press. In 2008, in the midst of a weak economy and rising unem-
ployment, BusinessWeek ran an article entitled “The Global Talent
Crisis,” which cited “attracting and retaining talent” as one of the top
threats to business success perceived by the over 850 C-level executives
2
surveyed. “Competition” was the only threat that ranked higher.
The broad trend facing hiring managers today is a dramatic increase in
demand for high-potential recruits. Most large companies have highly