Onboarding Senior Hires - HR Viewpoint careers advice blog

Onboarding Senior Hires - HR Could a structured pre-start strategy help your newest staff hit the ground running? Onboarding: reveal your company values early Early days at any job are usually spent learning names, forgetting names, developing a mental floor plan of the office and making notes on everything possible. Now imagine if an employee walked into the office on their first day, recognised some friendly faces and was able to sit down and immediately become a productive part of the team? This is the real benefit of onboarding. Ironically, junior positions often involve a better induction plan than for top level staff. The more senior the hire, the less hands-on the induction generally is and yet senior members of staff are meant to lead and promote the company ethos. “I think some new CEOs fail because within a three-to-six month period they’re not able to sort the wheat from the chaff and really understand what is meaningful to the business and what isn’t,” says Shane Buckley, CEO of Xirrus. This failure can ultimately cost your business a huge amount of money between 4 and 6 times base salary, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). How should onboarding actually work? The key is to start integrating and educating staff before they officially start with a company: Supply them with useful induction packs to help them understand the business ethos, company culture, goals and operations Informally introduce colleagues and key stakeholders before Day 1 Designate a peer or ‘office buddy’ to chaperone new employees How does it benefit employees? Whether you host informal meetings over breakfast or small sit down coffee meets with key members, these casual interactions are essential to establish cohesion between both current and existing employees. For example, Bonobos clothing turns a new starter in a bonding exercise for the entire team. An email with a brief bio and picture of the new starter is sent out, including two truths and one lie. The first person to correctly guess the lie, discovered by speaking to the new employee, wins a $25 store credit. Existing employees are incentivised to meet their new team member and everyone benefits from the good natured angle of the onboarding process. By using onboarding as an enhanced induction, new starters can really see how they fit into the company’s culture and their new role. In addition, you can see how they interact with the team and if they are a good fit. What do you think about onboarding? To share your thoughts on this article and to stay up to date with the latest HR news, please join our LinkedIn group HR Insights with Hays.