Page 250 - Successful Onboarding

Getting Started: Conducting a Program Diagnostic • 231

high-attrition regions without much problem or cost (e.g., transferring the
tools and techniques and a little education for the challenged managers).
All of a sudden, what had started out as a “feel good” HR initiative got the
attention of the CFO and the EVP of sales and became a critical mission
to improve revenue and control costs during a prolonged recession.
Now imagine if the HR leader had not conducted this deeper analysis
but simply brought forward some generic onboarding improvement prac-
tices to these same departments after attending an onboarding conference
and learning about best practices. If this HR leader approached the head
of sales and asked him or her to implement time consuming and possibly
expensive new onboarding programs, the head of sales would likely have
shown little interest; after all, he or she is way too busy contending with
declining sales in a very challenging environment. Selling-in an onboard-
ing program involves answering the question, “What’s in it for me (the
“wiff’em”). By performing a thorough diagnostic up front, onboarding
designers can identify areas of great opportunity and develop the hard-
edged business case that serious organizations require to drive wide-
ranging change. And if you cannot build a real case for onboarding after
a diagnostic process, then you should not be doing it.

Conducting a System Diagnostic
In our work with leading companies, we’ve developed a four-step process
for conducting a diagnostic evaluation of a firm’s onboarding efforts. The
four steps are:

1. Internal discovery
2. External benchmarking
3. Opportunity identification
4. Obtaining organizational validation and buy-in

In running through these steps, you need to take a long-term view, starting
at the hour of the candidates’ acceptance of your job offer and running
through the greater of the new hires’ first year employment or a complete
business cycle for your business. You also need to assess all four pillars of
the onboarding framework, as well as the administrative and governance
resources available to support onboarding. You need to evaluate not only