Page 72 - Successful Onboarding

The State of the Art: Essentials of Strategic Onboarding • 61

onboarding, or after seeing weak content being delivered, pulls the new
hire out of the orientation program to “get them going on the job.”
Most large organizations maintain dozens of micro-onboarding pro-
grams distributed across business units, functions, geographies, and even
small teams. These offer little consistency of experience and rarely lever-
age best practices across programs. This approach is not only inefficient,
but also ineffective. Although many leading onboarding programs choose
the “state” versus “federal” model, in which most delivery and some design
of the program occurs outside of corporate, a holistic approach requires at
least some consistency in structure, branding, and experience. By apply-
ing a common platform, all business areas share in the ideas of their peers,
and the organization can feel confident that all new hires are benefiting
equally from a common onboarding standard.

The Scope of Strategic Onboarding

Inspired by these shortcomings and the more progressive approaches we
have seen unfolding at our clients, we have developed a framework for a
state-of-the-art strategic program that integrates new hires into any orga-
nization, large or small, in any industry. In essence, we think firms should
seek to shape the varied experiences new hires have upon entering, just
as winning brand marketers try to convey a 360-degree experience across
multiple touch-points.
An organization will never be able to control all of the experiences a new
hire has, nor should it try. Rather, we seek to help new hires assimilate into
company culture and workplace reality as fast as possible and with upmost
enthusiasm. If there is too much hand-holding, white glove service, or other
forms of support during initial orientation or, worse, throughout the course
of the entire first year, post-orientation will present an abrupt and unpleas-
ant shock as new hires begin to encounter the organization’s unfiltered real-
ity. The real opportunity lies in engineering the right kinds of experiences
from offer acceptance through Year One—experiences that will allow new
hires to acclimate to company culture, understand opportunities and expec-
tations, master the firm’s strategy, build valuable relationships and skills,
create new value for the enterprise, and begin to develop their careers
within the firm.