Page 88 - Successful Onboarding

The State of the Art: Essentials of Strategic Onboarding • 77

SPOTLIGHT:Wipro

At Bangalore, India–based IT services firm Wipro Technologies, new college
hires undergo a three-week training program before their start dates and while
still attending school. New hires hit the ground running, and the company
builds stronger relationships with the schools attended by new hires.

Source: ASTD 2008 BEST Award. T D, October 2008.

if they are in a larger development program, and the program itself should
feel distinguished. It should rise above the actual work and diffuse a
broader sense of vision and purpose. And it should be honest (more on
this point shortly).
Approaching onboarding in terms of the four phases helps us under-
stand more clearly how onboarding can enhance a company’s productiv-
ity. Initiating the Prepare phase at the moment of offer acceptance gives
companies more lead time to get people productive; in the case of some
new hires, months can go by between the time an offer is accepted and
the first day of work—time that can be used to handle administrative tasks,
begin networking and career path exploration, generate enthusiasm for
the job, and build contextual knowledge. By proceeding through a more
engaging, thoughtful introduction to the firm during the Orient phase,
and by providing resources for new hires to become more familiar with
the business during the Integrate phase, the firm brings more new hires
up to full productivity faster than they could using a standard orientation
program. The Excel phase then solidifies the integration process, bump-
ing up new hires’ performance (and achieving the Onboarding Margin).
This allows the firm to carve out new value while affirming that the
new hires’ choice to join the company was a wise one. By distributing the
content throughout the first year, and deferring largest content distribu-
tion to later phases, the onboarding program will maximize the value the
new hire can contribute to the firm by the end of Year One, as depicted
in Figure 2.7.