Thursday, November 13, 2014

Onboarding Fail

Previously to joining CO I have worked for 2 of the largest Automation/Control companies in the world and they claim to be “people focused” & “invest in our people” however it has only my experience with CO and the onboarding process that has made me realize that CO is the only company that truly invests in its people.
    -   Jason, New Employee of CO (company named anonymized)

Onboarding.  It’s something almost every company does.  And in almost every instance they do it wrong.  Let me explain.

Most employees aren’t hired to do a specific project and leave – that’s what contractors are for.  I would submit that every new employee is hired after a careful (and expensive) selection process and hired because the employer has hopes of long term productivity.  So why “cheap out” in bringing them on board?

It’s like buying a top end luxury performance sedan and saying, “But let’s go with the cheap tires.”
Some of the biggest and well-known names in business boil their onboarding down to a WebEx or some canned eLearning module.   Why?  They just spent a great deal of time, money, and energy to find the candidate.  Most studies show that companies will invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in getting that new employee fully productive.   And they start them with a webinar?

One company even asked me, “How do we develop an effective onboarding program that runs remote?”

They just don’t get it.

The last onboarding program I designed take an entire week, and it doesn’t involve even 5 minutes of HR systems training.   (That is appropriate for a webinar).  My onboarding program is designed to immerse the new employee in the culture.  Everybody globally travels to the corporate headquarters to go through it.  Management heads come to them to answer questions - the CEO attends regularly.  They do activities where they examine the products and build presentations about our customers and industries.

The entire week is fun and comfortable.  And at the end the employees feel invested.  Isn’t that what you want from your own investment?