Page 235 - Successful Onboarding

The Onboarding Margin Life Support System • 217

Before Implementation, the program manager should have a clear
plan in place for gathering data on a quarterly or semi-annual basis, as
well as a performance dashboard that rolls up the relevant data cuts for
easy comparison and analysis. As an example of a dashboard, CheckFree,
a provider of electronic services to the financial industry and today a part
of Fiserve, has implemented an “onboarding excellence scorecard” meas-
uring “efficiency, quality and attrition, process completion, and associate
satisfaction during all phases of onboarding.” The system divides onboard-
ing elements into distinct tracks (e.g., recruitment production, transition
and mentoring, retention), and each month process improvements are
generated for each track to drive onboarding metrics. 2
Figure 7.2 provides an example of a metrics dashboard that links and
forms the relevant data cuts for the Program Manager.
In developing metrics and a performance dashboard, onboarding
designers should assign responsibility to individual participants for each
metric, thus tying key onboarding players, including managers, mentors,
and trainers, to the broader onboarding program’s success. New hire tasks
and objectives should also be clearly defined and tracked as a metric.
Onboarding objectives and timelines should be codified for all new hires,
while managers should collaborate with each new hire on an individual
basis to define specific onboarding objectives and chart the new hire’s
career development progress. Ownership and responsibilities should be
clearly defined, and a new hire’s performance against his or her onboard-
ing objectives should help comprise a basis for early career performance
evaluation. As we noted when discussing early career support, it is impor-
tant for the new hire to demonstrate progress over the course of his or her
first year as a key element of the new hire’s development.
Companies should also hold hiring managers, human resources, and
other key players accountable for the completion of objectives. Objective
completion and execution rates should be treated as a metric for assessing
the success of the entire onboarding program, as this ties program success
to the individual onboarding objectives of each new hire, providing for
personalization of experience and allowing new hires to attain desired
onboarding goals in a proactive way. Onboarding responsibilities should be
written into the job descriptions of the role participants and should
comprise part of each participant’s general formal performance assessments.