Page 81 - Successful Onboarding

70 • Successful Onboarding

for doing the onboarding task properly, presented on a just-in-time basis.
Would you expect anything less of any other process that contributed to a
high-yield initiative, such as lean manufacturing?

Branding your program

To make onboarding recognizable as a strategic initiative, and to sharpen
its impact, firms should take care to brand it for new hires and existing
employees. The brand is more than just an easy name that you give it; it
is the reputation that you earn. Is your onboarding brand going to be about
self-service and self-reliance? Or should it emphasize the support provided
by the company? As part of the process of designing an onboarding pro-
gram, managers should go through a branding exercise (and not simply a
naming exercise) with representative stakeholders, considering what they
want to achieve and making sure the onboarding program content deliv-
ers on that. Branding should also reflect what firms learn in the diagnos-
tic phase of creating an onboarding program.
Developing a brand identity package (the program’s name, logo,
tagline, and supporting graphics) will serve your program well, not least
by providing you with a platform to summarize and communicate the
intended new experience. Creating a brand gives you a chance to take the
necessary piece parts of onboarding scattered throughout the organization
and define them as a unified, well considered experience. It provides a
high-level map for new hires and employees responsible for delivering
parts of the program. By branding your program, you are also making an
explicit commitment to your new hires, thus establishing and in most cases
raising expectations. As with any other branding effort, you must design
and execute on your onboarding program to ensure that the brand prom-
ised conforms to what you actually deliver. If not, you have only managed
to create a community of “buyers” (employees who bought into your
promise) who now feel passionate about how much they have been let
down. At too many companies, the recruiting process dangerously inflates
the value of the employer-employee compact in the course of selling the
employment brand, leading to many poor onboarding outcomes as reali-
ties fall short of expectations.