Page 43 - Successful Onboarding

32 • Successful Onboarding

with a run of the mill or nonexistent onboarding program. Let’s take a look
at how the different elements of an onboarding program can affect the
NHC. A strategically designed mentoring program that engages new hires
from Day One or earlier can pump up all four NHC variables: Capability
(mentors often provide informal training and skill development); Context
(mentors help ramp up new hires to the organization’s culture, mission,
business model, and strategy); Connectedness (mentors often provide
networking opportunities to new hires by offering to arrange meetings with
individuals within their own network); and Drive (mentors can assist
new hires in identifying stretch roles and other opportunities to drive
motivation). Formalized networking events, however, may affect on three
variables: through networking with more tenured employees a new hire
gains more context to the organization’s mission and strategy; networking
clearly impacts one’s connectedness; and one may argue that networking
can have a positive impact on drive, if a new hire engages with individuals
that get him or her more excited about career prospects. As all onboarding
elements have varying degrees of impact on the overall NHC, a well-
designed diagnostic (as discussed in Chapter 8) will identify for you which
elements will ultimately have the highest impact.
Employing basic algebra, what we have now is a way to describe the
effect that onboarding programs can have on NHC. Taking together
the onboarding elements referenced above, we can speak of a single
“onboarding multiplier.”
A successful onboarding program adds value by multiplying the
Onboarding Multiplier by the four key variables a new hire brings to the
organization. It must be acknowledged that at least some of the employee
output variables would develop naturally over time even in the absence of
high-quality onboarding. For example, an individual’s contextual knowl-
edge will increase as he or she spends more time at the organization
regardless of any formal onboarding program. However, a strategically
designed onboarding program will begin to act as a multiplier or acceler-
ator that greatly improves the outcome.
Let’s assign the Onboarding Multiplier a “standard” value of 1. This is
the value of a run of the mill onboarding program. Each element of the
Onboarding Multiplier, therefore, also has a standard value of one. The bet-
ter an onboarding program is designed, the greater the value those multiples