Page 220 - Successful Onboarding

204 • Successful Onboarding

• We will help you get settled in this new city—where to live, where to
“play,” and how to meet others outside of our company who are in
your industry.
• We will tell you how your role fits into the big picture: What the
company strategy is and how you support it, who the various role players
within the company are and how they support successful execution of the
strategy, how and why our strategy differs from that of the competition,
and what this means for you.
• We will provide you with progressive work assignments, so that you can
achieve gradual success and make steps to achieve your personal prospect.
• We will provide you with regular “pulse checks” throughout your first
year to find out how you are doing—how you are acclimating, how you
experience your role and your network, how your understanding of your
role and the strategy is progressing, and how we are doing in delivering
on the promises we made to you during recruiting and Week One.
• We will provide you with many opportunities to learn company
culture and strategy and to interact with other professionals. These
opportunities will range from formal “traditional classroom” type
training to “on demand” training you can access via Inter/Intranet, to
mentoring, small group discussions and networking, net forums and
blogs, and one-on-one conversations.

Now, these are pretty significant promises! Few if any firms possess an
onboarding department, but looking at the preceding list, you quickly real-
ize why such a department might be desirable. Of course, if your firm lacks
resources for an entire department, you can always limit the workload by
prioritizing which onboarding elements your firm offers and assigning
responsibility to an existing entity within your organization. But the key is
that it does become an expressed responsibility for that organization and/or
individuals. All program elements require at least some level of adminis-
tration, so the administrative resources (and supplemental external
resources) you have available will help determine your firm’s priorities and
the depth and breadth of your program. More on this in the next chapter
on diagnostics.