Page 93 - Successful Onboarding

82 • Successful Onboarding

HR keeps a list of people from throughout headquarters able to present
on all of these topics, and they rotate assignments so the same person isn’t
on the hook for most of them. As Mindy Moye, Ph.D., Manager of
Employee Engagement, found, the key to making all of this work is to
avoid burdening anyone. Fortunately, she’s gotten a lot of cooperation:
“Directors and Managers want to connect with these new leaders as well.
The original meeting schedule was a good deal shorter, but people from
various areas actually approached me and said they wanted their areas to
be on the list.” These training sessions run through four months, at the
end of which the executive should be fully informed and have established
his or her basic network. Additionally, because these individuals are the
leaders of their respective functional areas—vice presidents and directors—
the new hire can quickly see the commitment John Deere has to his or
her success and key relationships are formed early.
Other program elements comprise the company’s regular performance
management process. Hiring managers become involved with the new-
comers pretty quickly in order for them to enter their goals into the
system within the first six to eight weeks of employment. The company
emphasizes measuring people according to the goals they’ve set, but
coaching is also important, so HR strongly recommends that hiring man-
agers help set up newcomers with a mentor. Sometimes, the global talent
manager steps in to help make an appropriate match.
At the end of the four-month onboarding process, HR interviews
every newcomer for feedback. Many of these managers have had expe-
rience joining two or more companies, and they are often quite
impressed with the extent of John Deere’s approach. Hiring managers
also seem to appreciate the effort; they say they wish the company had
the process when they started. Besides the positive feedback, evidence
suggests that attrition is declining. The internal response has been so
positive that John Deere has started a slimmed-down version of the pro-
gram for internal promotions into leadership positions. To date, this
entails a shorter set of sessions with a slightly different focus for the
internal transitioning leaders. The company has not set up the net-
working component, assuming that internal people already developed
pretty good networks.