Page 91 - Successful Onboarding

80 • Successful Onboarding

searches to get these people, and Deere prided itself on low turnover of
employees. So the company knew it would have to provide special
support to these newcomers. Instead of simply making itself available
when a VP called for help in getting a new manager up to speed, HR knew
it would have to take the initiative. The department wanted to design a
“bulletproof” process to ensure that every new leader got the training
and networking needed to be effective early on. At the same time,
outside research into orientation showed that HR-only processes did not
pack as much punch for employee engagement; managers needed to be
involved, too.
John Deere wound up creating an executive onboarding process that
addressed their concerns about retention. Every week, members of HR
run reports to scope out all the senior-manager level job offers accepted.
For each new hire, HR schedules a half-hour meeting with the hiring
manager a few days before the start date. The meeting is especially impor-
tant for managers who have not hired under the new approach, but every-
body receives it. The HR manager informs the hiring manager about what
the newcomer will go through, emphasizing the manager’s responsibility
to jump start the new hire’s networking. The HR manager has the hiring
manager compile a customized list of stakeholders for the newcomer to
meet: senior leaders, peers outside the division, direct reports, even out-
side suppliers and key customers. HR might suggest certain people to
include, but the list must come from the manager; this is not just HR going
through the org chart.
HR then encourages the manager to send a group email to all of these
stakeholders, typically 20 to 30 people, asking them to set up a one-on-one
meeting. To help move this process forward, HR even prepares a generic
email that needs insertion of only a little detail about the person’s back-
ground; but the manager is free to write what he or she likes. All the man-
ager has to do is populate the group email with addresses (all of which are
hidden to the recipient) and send it out.
This has typically been enough to get the networking going. Since the
hiring manager is usually pretty senior in the organization, his or her
requests carry weight. And in any case, most stakeholders are eager to do
their own networking with this new leader in the company. HR has not
had to push the process.