Page 46 - Successful Onboarding

The Business Case for Onboarding • 35

job on Madison Avenue, but she was unhappy as a floor salesperson. This
woman said she couldn’t imagine ever entering the corporate side from
her current position as a clerk in the retail division. She was looking for a
better job of any kind. From our perspective, this woman held the poten-
tial to become a classic success story—the smart employee who starts on
the retail floor and works her way up. Unfortunately, she couldn’t con-
ceive of how her current job folding shirts and straightening the dressing
room could ever lead to a fulfilling career with the company. Many cus-
tomers that she interfaced with were demanding and obnoxious, and noth-
ing about the job stimulated her intellectually. If delivered correctly,
onboarding could engage this woman, open her eyes to career paths within
the company, and get her excited about the role she plays on the front line
delivering the brand to consumers. As part of a strategic program, man-
agement could inspire her by connecting her work to the larger mission.
It could stimulate her to deliver a superior experience by showing her pro-
files of people who entered this company at the same very level and today
hold senior executive positions in every core function of the enterprise.
Would she fully buy in? We can’t tell you for sure, but we can tell you that
some numbers of her peers would, and that the outcome would be tremen-
dous for the company.
Let’s look at a contrasting example—that of Apple’s retail division.
The tech support personnel at Apple’s retail stores—called “Geniuses”—
offer a highly differentiated and (and some say) superior customer expe-
rience in support of Apple’s brand and products. Geniuses seem to know
almost everything about the products and associated problems, and they
patiently and enthusiastically help resolve customer problems, on occa-
sion even going the extra mile and fixing items for free. It is largely seen
as a contrast in expectations (both of consumers as well as business stu-
dents) given the general perception that a tech guru is not likely to be
the same kind of person who may hold excellent interpersonal skills and
make wise business decisions in real time when interfacing with cus-
tomers. How do the Geniuses get so good? Exceptional onboarding.
From conversations with individual Geniuses, we learned that prospec-
tive Geniuses who have proven their technical prowess must first make
the grade by working at an Apple store for a month out on the retail floor
to get a feel for consumer interaction. Prospective Geniuses are then