Page 245 - Successful Onboarding

226 • Successful Onboarding

this assessment not only helps an organization arrive at the best result; it also
helps designers sell the program into key stakeholders in an organization.
The exercise also allows you to objectively determine if onboarding renewal
merits investment in the first place. (We have found some cases in which
performance was strong and the business case for additional investment
weak.) After exploring in more detail why the diagnostic phase is so impor-
tant, this chapter offers a rigorous four-step process for measuring the
opportunity, determining a program’s highest value improvement areas,
understanding the root causes and focus areas, and beginning to galvanize
stakeholders behind wide-reaching, systemic change.

Don’t Skip the Diagnostic!
When designing an onboarding program, many companies feel an
impulse to skip the diagnostic process and put something in place that has
worked elsewhere. They want that silver bullet answer—the all-powerful
set of “best practices”—and see no need to spend valuable resources on
a drawn-out analysis of their needs. Yet rushing to embrace a best practice
without taking the time to determine its suitability to your company is
a horrible idea. The ancient Greek phrase “Know Thyself” inscribed at
the Temple of Apollo at Delphi guides us not merely to success in life, but
in onboarding, too.
The rush toward best practices has been fed in recent years by onboard-
ing’s emergence as a topic in the human capital community and press.
Articles advising HR specialists how to jump on the onboarding bandwagon
often appear in online communities and blogs. A few onboarding confer-
ences have emerged over the past few years. At these events, discussion
threads and interest areas commonly center on questions such as, “What
best practices do you employ?” and “How do you convince management
that this is important?” We know from reviewing these articles and speak-
ing with publishers of this material that way too little analysis goes into
determining which practices become “best practices.” We usually find that
most of these supposed “best practices” are tactics that sound attractive but
have not been assessed for their efficacy. These might better be considered
“progressive practices.” One recent Wall Street Journal article reduced the
process of “acclimating newcomers” to a few easy tips, such as “make
1
space,” “find face time,” “inform your staff,” and “set goals.” Taking such