Onboarding

The Apple inspirational note left of the desk of Instagram user "M" and discovered by New York Times columnist Nick Bilton, sums what it means to be an Apple employee.

Are you pushing your finest employees out the door without realizing it? If staff retention is an issue for your company, then you’ll need to think about what could be causing your top talent to look for other opportunities.
There are numerous ways that bosses and top management can drive star employees away without even realizing it. Understand that people don’t walk out on companies; they walk out on managers. These are three of the worst things a manager can do to destroy the loyalty of his top performers.

 
I’m counting down the days until Christmas while checking out some interesting blog fodder across the Web.
With the holidays just around the corner, I find it appropriate to get into some of the techniques and challenges of on-boarding perhaps the most important members of the workforce this time of year: the temporary kind.
But before we get into that, there’s something a co-worker passed along that caught my eye.
Twitter, as we all know, is taking the world by storm. It seems as if nothing trendy can be said nowadays unless you can do it in 140 characters or less and use some brand of unusual Twitter jargon — like the “hashtag.”

 
On one of my recent coaching hour conference calls with Azzarello Group members, someone asked me, “What things do you when you start a job so you make sure to get off on the best possible footing?”
I gave an answer along the lines of my DO Better, LOOK Better, Connect Better model about building credibility and getting an action plan in place, but the person said, “No, I meant, what do YOU do? Is there something you did the same way each time you started a new executive job?”
So I thought about it and in fact there was one thing that was part of my playbook pretty much every time I started a new job. And it worked really well.
After we discussed it, someone on the call said, “you should write a blog about this.” So here you have it.

 
My good friend, let’s call him “Herb,” started a brand new job yesterday. Herb was very excited because it’s an opportunity with a particular financial institution that he had been coveting for some time. Rewinding two weeks … the submission and recruitment process went fantastic as Herb actually located the position online, submitted his resume, and was contacted immediately.
His initial interview was via phone on a Friday, and he did so well that he was invited in for second-round interviews that very next Monday. On Monday, Herb once again wowed the hiring managers and the very next day (Tuesday) he received an offer of employment which he readily accepted with great enthusiasm. Herb kept me up to date through his interview process with this financial institution, and even I was amazed how quick this large giant seemed to move. He told me how everything was great, the people were awesome, and how he was looking forward to day one to get going on his new role.

 
Approximately three months ago, on Aug. 19, I penned my first blog entry as an associate editor at Talent Management. In typical on-boarding lingo, that means that, yes, I have completed my first 90 days in my not-so-new-anymore job.
Looking back, is there anything I would’ve done differently throughout my initial on-boarding process? For starters, I probably wouldn’t have led my first blog post with an awful hang-gliding reference. Did I think that was funny?

Everything is magnified on any CEO’s first day.  If being CEO is like living in a fishbowl (which it is), day one is the day when the lights are turned up full and everyone gathers around the bowl for their first glimpse into the future.

Mark Johnson is something of a miracle worker for Groupon. No, he isn’t a Master of the Universe salesman, nor a code-slinging prodigy. What he does is just as important.
 
Johnson is in charge of coordinating the mind-bending task of moving bodies and equipment into a bigger satellite office that houses 75 people in nearby Palo Alto, Calif. Groupon has signed a lease for a more polished space in 2012.

I recently helped someone get a job. There is rarely any better feeling in the world than when a person who wants to work finally gets that offer. When I get to help them feel this way it is a great experience. One of the best quotes that sums this up is from Dave: 

"If you’ve ever seen the look on somebody’s face the day they finally get a job, I’ve had some experience with this; they look like they could fly. And it’s not about the paycheck, it’s about respect, it’s about looking in the mirror and knowing that you’ve done something valuable with your day."

There's no doubt that it would be a daring move for Facebook to hire former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, as has been mentioned in published accounts. The question is whether it would be reckless or brave. One of the critical differences between the two is the potential level of the cultural fit.

The strongest athlete -- or an individual with the best skills -- is not always the right person for a particular role or organization. Take a look at managerial superstar Cathie Black's recent experience as Chancellor of the New York city schools. She lasted just 95 days, partly because she didn't have the strengths required for her new job, and mostly because the culture rejected her.

In a Leadership Podcast on TotalPicture Radio, Bill Epifanio explains his approach to "making the right offer, closing the right sale, the right way," when presenting a key executive with a job offer. Epifanio, a top level executive search consultant, specializes in the Clean Tech, Renewable Energy and Financial Tech sectors. He is managing partner with Stratis, a human capital consulting and search firm.

Content sharing has evolved through several distinct stages over the past decade. Enterprise content management (ECM) systems established centralized repositories that were organized, indexed and searchable to make content readily available. Ideal for many applications, they fell short when project-oriented collaboration was required, which led to the emergence of document-centric collaboration platforms. More recently, social software platforms have provided a way to share information in a dynamic and flexible way. New software tools that allow information sharing such as through peer-to-peer file sharing or thin-client viewers offer yet another set of options.

Effective employee onboarding has a positive domino effect: it ensures that new hires feel welcome and prepared in their new positions, in turn giving them the confidence and resources to make an impact within the organization, and ultimately allowing the company to continue carrying out its mission.

Much like the dreaded first day of school, the first day at a new job is rife with potential for embarrassing oneself – from getting lost on the way to the bathroom, to forgetting important paperwork, to not knowing the rules (both explicit and unspoken). But as nerve-wracking as starting a new job is for new employees, this time is no trip to wine country for managers either.