Successful onboarding in 5 steps

No time, no given structure, no ownership. Onboarding can be frustrating if the topic is not strongly embedded in organizational processes.

However, it is often the decisive factor for successful collaboration and may enable the new colleague to hit the ground running almost immediately after joining the team.
PROPER ONBOARDING IS FULLY WORTH THE EFFORT!

Onboarding should be delegated to several team members to foster networking and and can be achieved easily with the following five steps:

Assuming operational leadership
Taking charge of the team
Aligning with stakeholders
Engaging with culture
Defining strategic intent

At the bottom of this article you can download an Excel-sheet that I have created based on this framework. It is easy to use and will help you to track the onboarding status of your new employee (or even yourself).

Five steps in detail

1 – Assuming operational leadership

This is all about the business and daily job. Getting known to the relevant locations, the current to-do’s and general expectations:

Operational plans
Visit to key locations
Discussing SWOTs of the business
Quick wins and gradually integration into the key topics

2 – Taking charge of the team

This mainly applies to a leadership position. Of course, everybody benefits from a general briefing about the team structure and basic background information. However, a more detailed approach is required in case of leadership responsibility.

Career histories
Team performance data
Team workshop

3 – Aligning with stakeholders

Who are the stakeholders? How does the organizational structure look like? What are the superordinate entities and how to they play together?

Relevant organization charts
List of key stakeholders (internal / external)
Introductory meetings

4 – Engaging with culture

Get your new employee’s mindset with the culture of your company. If the company lacks this component you should better create one first: „Culture eats strategy for breakfast!“ – Peter Drucker

Mission statement
Values, norms, culture guidelines
Explaining the “why” (culture usually comes with a history)

5 – Defining strategic intent

Last but not least – and in case culture hasn’t eaten up your strategy for breakfast – diving into the department’s strategic plans and visions will help to lay out a clear road map for all future activities.

Business plans
Special topics and future priorities
Strategic meetings and workshops

Tracking the onboarding status

My onboarding sheet will help you to check the onboarding status at a glance. You can determine easily if there are gaps in one of the five topics as well as the general “onboarding level”:

Level 0: Sink-or-Swim (unfortunately, a level some new employees really have to deal with)
Level 1: Basic Orientation
Level 2: Active Assimilation
Level 3: Accelerated Integration (probably not necessary for all new employees)

The Excel-sheet automatically indicates the onboarding status based on a graded color scale.

Downloads

Feel free to adapt your learning modules; you could also add responsibilities to delegate and distribute the onboarding tasks.

Download File SuccessfulOnboarding-Framework_Worksheet.xlsx – 16.4 KB

References and further reading

Onboarding Isn’t Enough – HBR Issue; May-June 2017
Web-URL: https://hbr.org/2017/05/onboarding-isnt-enough

Organizational Culture