Page 68 - Successful Onboarding

The State of the Art: Essentials of Strategic Onboarding • 57

to executive concerns about turnover, HR and operating managers at the
most progressive firms now envisioned a timeline of support, not a one- or
two-day affair.
One onboarding pioneer was the Ford Motor Company. The firm
implemented a “boot camp” that emphasized teamwork and networking
as much as employee satisfaction. All salaried workers started with a multi-
week program of experiential learning and team building, trying to solve
real business problems under tight deadlines. The intense program aimed
to build relationships that lasted long after the boot camp.
Reflecting this new approach, a number of companies moved tradi-
tional, administratively focused orientation work to the days before an
employee started. Cisco’s “Fast Start” program, developed in 1998, put the
standard paperwork online and asked employees to fill it out before
the first day. The work also included reading a variety of documents on
the company’s operations, strategy, and culture. The company’s IT depart-
ment aimed to have new employees’ computer, software configurations,
and phone ready by the time they showed up for Day One. Aiming to free
recruits from the bureaucracy that often dampened enthusiasm and
energy, Cisco put its new employees through two days of training and then
had them work closely with their managers over two weeks to set personal
goals (a rudimentary version of what we’ll address in Chapter 5, “Personal
Progress and Prospect: Early Career Support”). Each employee also
received a peer sponsor or “buddy.”
At Cisco, orientation now had a much larger purpose than administra-
tion and compliance; it aimed to have talent hit the ground running
almost immediately while making that talent feel connected to the organ-
ization. In recent years, a growing number of companies have jumped on
the onboarding bandwagon with precisely this goal in mind. Yet as we’ve
seen, Cisco remains one of the few companies to have implemented a pro-
gram that extends past the few days or week traditionally devoted to ori-
entation. Some of the more progressive large firms have implemented
program content that improves upon traditional orientation, such as incor-
porating social networking programs or activities designed to introduce
new hires to the organizational culture. Yet we’ve found that even these
firms have not rolled out programs that fully embrace a more elaborate
strategic approach.