How we onboard talent makes a big difference in their success

It can be shocking to hear that many people are still being thrown into the deep end of the pool on day one of a new job. How we prepare our salaried, hourly, and even temporary employees for success says quite a bit about us. We only have the one, fleeting opportunity to demonstrate respect while we equip them for the job they will soon, inevitably face. Regrettably, many organizations opt out of taking this opportunity seriously and they always suffer for it.

I’ve worked for companies that put quite some effort and energies into onboarding people properly, and for others that most certainly have not. For the ones that do, I’ve been seen some notable good practices. I appreciate the emergency contact list, the organizational chart complete with photos and titles, and the personal introductions guided by my supervisor on day one. But these alone aren’t enough to set someone up for success. These are barely adequate table stakes for new employee onboarding these days.

Some companies go farther than most by preparing extensive Computer-Based Training (CBT) regimens that occupy a few days of your time, helping you acclimate to specific policies, local procedures, or compliance concerns. Helpful as CBT may be to disseminate information, it has an overt weakness in that employee questions remain unanswered and meaningful learning validation rarely follows.

One helpful practice we instituted in our team was to rotate established people into the role of “onboarding buddy” for new team members to rely on for their first month. It has the practical effect of making sure all new members have a designated, personal on-call oracle for their questions as well as to provide an instant friend while they are getting their footing in new territory. These arranged relationships are a cheap and effective approach to deepening team dynamics in your department.

I was inspired by the way Toyota trains their new employees. They take cues from the military and require a full two-week bootcamp experience that serves two important roles. First, the structured onboarding bootcamp helps Toyota objectively evaluate if the employee has the right behaviors, attitude, and temperament to fit within their cultural expectations. Skills come later, and frankly, anyone can learn the skills. While HR is the first line of defense to prevent incompatible people from contaminating the organization, the bootcamp experience is designed to detect and filter out problematic individuals. Toyota sees almost 20% of their candidates wash out during bootcamp.

The second role the bootcamp plays is to equip the employees for all the tasks – both physical and mental – they should expect to encounter on the job. Special exercises tailored around dexterity, endurance, inspection, proper ergonomics, teamwork, and attention to detail are included. Additionally, repetitive practice around the concepts of detecting errors and asking for help are required for eventual graduation. Many employee behaviors have to be “unlearned” in this environment to prepare the employee for Toyota’s unique operating system.

One area that is often missed when onboarding new team members is the capturing and assessing of any competencies and experiences. Skills management is an important aspect of good team management, but it’s rare to have a comprehensive database of applicable skills, certifications, and personal experiences from which to draw. It is best practice to assess and validate all relevant competencies objectively before they are accepted into any formal record.

Finally, I would strongly recommend that any structured onboarding program include a deep dive into the company’s “Operating System” if it has one. Aspiring Lean companies, in particular, that have their own formalized business operating systems need to acclimate new employees well to the specific principles, processes, systems, and forms associated with their unique models of daily operations. Simulated problem-solving sessions covering the appropriate improvement methodology might be a good fit in this regard. Review of standardized forms and of specific periodic routines would be very helpful, as well as conveying established naming and storing conventions for digital documentation. The best means of preventing mistakes and errors is by providing clear and thorough preparation to a team member well in advance.

It’s true that “If we do what we’ve always done, we’ll get what we’ve always got.” It’s time to improve our onboarding process so that we can spin new team members up for greater and faster success moving forward. What novel ideas have you tried to improve the onboarding of your talent?

Lean in, and Lean on.