Page 240 - Successful Onboarding

The Onboarding Margin Life Support System • 221

improve onboarding experience continuously. Measurement of individual
feedback in this way increases responsiveness, provides the means for
change, and also provides a means for testing pilot programs. Of course,
for this to work a firm needs permanent feedback mechanisms as well as
tools sufficient to collect and interpret feedback.
Finally, General Mills ensures the responsiveness of its onboarding
program by fielding frequent and regular surveys as a component of com-
pany-wide climate surveys. Corporate-wide results are gathered every two
years and used to plan new program rollouts. Progress in addressing con-
cerns raised during the corporate-wide survey are evaluated with more
focused status updates in the off-year when a complete survey is not
taken. Departmental climate surveys are conducted more often as
required by departmental needs to gather more specific insights. Surveys
include questions about onboarding effectiveness, career support, plan-
ning programs, and training needs. The firm also gauges onboarding
through new hire process evaluations at the end of each onboarding
phase. All of this yields a responsive and constantly improving program.
It allows for new hire input, and it also ensures that the mechanisms for
change remain in place, allowing for early adoption of innovative prac-
tices. Measuring program performance in this way requires a survey
infrastructure, tools to conduct status reports, and tools to track changes
in survey results.

Summing Up

Onboarding administration and governance might not be sexy, and by
themselves these elements will not provide the big value boost that
onboarding as a whole promises. Yet administration and governance
underlie the success of any program and comprise a vital part of the new
employer-employee compact that firms can and should offer through
onboarding. To realize the Onboarding Margin, the onboarding experi-
ence and program must be systemic; this means firms must implement the
administrative means to coordinate stakeholders and take actions across
the firm, and they should also implement the mechanism for assuring
compliance and continuous improvement in the program’s workings.