There are a couple of onboarding pivot points for hiring managers that can make a huge difference in the success of their new employees: the Total Onboarding Plan (TOP), the Personal Onboarding Plan (POP), and managing the Announcement cascade.
TOP - Align Before starting anything, the most successful hiring managers craft and build consensus around a Total Onboarding Plan (TOP) that lays out the role, its responsibilities, expectations and interdependencies, as well as the complete plan to acquire, accommodate, assimilate and accelerate the new team member.
POP – Hand-off Another pivot point is the co-creation of a Personal Onboarding Plan (POP) by the hiring manager and new employee as soon as practical after the new employee accepts the job and as far as possible in advance of starting the job. This allows the hiring manager and new employee to partner on expectations and plans and is the moment when the new employee starts to take charge of his or her own onboarding.
Announce Even though the new employee is in charge of his or her own onboarding after the POP hand-off, the hiring manager is not done. He or she still needs to take responsibility for ensuring the new employee’s accommodation and helping with assimilation and acceleration. The Announcement cascade can make a big difference. Who hears about the new employee from whom and when is important.
Net, onboarding well requires a strong partnership between hiring manager and new employee. TOP, POP and the Announcement Cascade are important pivot points. These definitions and the ideas in this note are discussed in far greater depth in Onboarding – How to Get Your New Employees Up to Speed in Half the Time (Bradt and Vonnegut, Wiley, 2009)
George Bradt, Managing Director of PrimeGenesis Executive Onboarding and Transition Acceleration, has a unique perspective on helping executives accelerate transitions based on his combined senior line management and consulting experience. Prior to founding PrimeGenesis, George served as chief executive of J.D. Power and Associates’ Power Information Network spin off and in general management, marketing and sales at Coca-Cola in Europe and Asia, Procter & Gamble and Lever Brothers. AB Harvard; MBA Wharton. George is presenting at an HCI webcast on Feb 3 on fast ramp-up onboarding- check it out.
photo courtesy of Abux 77
Hiring Managers are so critical to this process, and unfortunately many are still not engaged. These three specific "pivitol points" that George describes are essential. I would add one additional one--the importance of what we call the Role Clarity Discussion. We know from our experiences that the job that is accepted is not always the same job 2 or 3 months down the road. It is the hiring manager who must communicate changing expectations and scope. Role clarity is one of the leading reasons for disengagement or failure of a new hire.
I would be very interested in hearing if more hiring managers participating in the onboarding of their new people.
Best,
Erika Lamont
www.connectthedotsconsuting.com