Page 175 - Successful Onboarding

162 • Successful Onboarding

In amping up the review process, your sole purpose should be to render the
new hire more successful and more excited. Increasing the breadth of feed-
back to include peers, the mentor, and other relevant employees provides
a wider scope of information, leaving the new hire with greater guidance.
At the household construction products company Marvin Windows
and Doors, new hires receive a “progress report” within the first 90 days.
The report distills new hire performance into such categories as work
quality, dependability, and judgment. 15
At Starwood, new hires receive feedback from a circle of about 10 review-
ers, not just a manager. Many of the additional reviewers are selected by
employees themselves and include internal and external customers and
peers. An online tool is used to make the submission of feedback and the
aggregation of results easier and more accessible to managers at different
levels. This “360-degree” system benefits all stakeholders by providing feed-
back that captures a variety of perspectives. Starwood can more easily iden-
tify individuals for progression planning using the online tool. New hires
can better identify which internal career paths are attainable and which skill
areas they need to improve so as to get where they want to go. They also gain
access to a personal network of resources to help facilitate career support
and social and cultural integration into the firm. Finally, multiple channels
provide “second opinions” and mitigate the possibility of poor mentoring.
At Bank of America Corporation, executives receive a great amount of per-
formance feedback during their first year on the job as a part of onboarding.
During the first week on the job, new hires identify important successes to
aim for during the first 90 days. Within three to four months, new hires par-
ticipate in a “Key Stakeholder Check In,” receiving “written and verbal feed-
back from a select list of their key stakeholders.” At the one-year mark, after
new executives have already made improvements based on stakeholder feed-
back, they receive 360-day feedback that helps them understand if their efforts
have borne fruit. This feedback “is used along with other data and feedback
mechanisms as input in the individual’s performance ratings and reviews.” 16

Best Principle #4: Encourage new hires to take ultimate
responsibility for their own careers.
Just because a firm accepts some of the responsibility for new hires’ career
development as part of a redefined employer-employee compact does not