new hire experience
Make new hires feel welcomed, help them understand their roles and their importance to the organization, and be totally prepared for the first day at work — and beyond.
New hires and new leaders have different onboarding challenges. So, we have different onboarding solutions. Connect the Dots will help make sure your onboarding process is effective.
The onboarding process is one of the most important activities that a company performs, yet many managers still question its true value. As a result, they too often see the new hire or new leader walk out the door within the first year. We can help fix that.
Did you know? Over 75% of those who are actively involved in a formal onboarding experience become productive, engaged team members who stay. Likewise, when new employees take part in a formal onboarding process, manager satisfaction increases by 20%.
So, the question is not whether to provide a formal onboarding program, but how to start creating one.
The answer for many companies has been the same: by partnering with Connect the Dots.
Since 2006, Connect the Dots has helped companies design onboarding experiences that make new hires feel like they made the right decision to join the team. And, equally important, managers feel they made the right decision in hiring them.
Our approach is highly customized to meet your needs. We work as an extension of your team to define and design the experience that will produce productive and engaged new hires, and strong, effective new leaders.
Make new hires feel welcomed, help them understand their roles and their importance to the organization, and be totally prepared for the first day at work — and beyond.
Unfortunately, 60% of new leaders fail within their first 18 months. This is costly to your bottom line and culture. We will help you purposely integrate your new leaders into the organization and give them the ability to deliver what they were hired to do.
The fact is, you only get one chance to successfully onboard a new hire. And we can tell you why it’s so important to get it right in less than a minute.
Onboard new hires like a CEO? What would an “executive onboarding experience” look like and how could it impact your new hires’ engagement levels? Per Gallup, 88% of employees don’t think their current organization is good at onboarding and 76% of HR professionals don’t think they are doing a good job at onboarding employees. Robust onboarding addresses organizational challenges–attracting top talent, increasing engagement, boosting productivity, and reducing high turnover.
Here are six strategies borrowed from executive onboarding that you can implement immediately to quickly build organizational knowledge and key relationships and deliver timely feedback to adjust and avoid negative turnover.
Employees at all levels are dissatisfied with their onboarding experiences, and the cost of replacing them has never been higher; however, there are some “bright spots” of best practices that tend to show up for the highest-level leaders, like CEOs.
Audrey Jarre, Head of Learning at 306Learning, put it plainly:
“A mere 12% of employees agree their organization does a good job of onboarding new employees. What’s more, if your organization isn’t among the ones that get onboarding right, it’s likely your new hires will be hunting for new jobs before you can say pro-ba-tion.”
We are not suggesting that all components of senior leader onboarding translate to the rest of the population, but here are some scalable strategies.
Strategy #1: Make it personal.
No CEO or senior leader would appreciate a generic onboarding experience, so why put your new hires through one? Try one or all of the following to make your new hires feel welcomed and expected:
We worked with a client to create a virtual tour of their offices narrated by the CEO so that the new hires would have some familiarity with the environment before Day One. The video was on the new hire onboarding portal that we helped them create. The “tour” was a fun, unexpected extra feature added to what the new hires need to know in the pre-start phase of onboarding; and some new hires watched it several times, even sharing it with friends and family members. The portal also allowed the manager to add a personal welcome message which she simply recorded from her phone and uploaded to the site. These personal touches helped the organization’s employment brand stand out and kept new hires engaged and excited before they ever walked into the building.
Strategy #2: Don’t use a firehose approach.
Too often, new hires are inundated with tasks, training, and meetings in the first weeks which makes it difficult for them to really absorb the knowledge they need. They forget who they met with during the first week and can miss key onboarding information if it is not clear how it is attached to their roles.
Use these tips to combat the “firehose” approach:
Our client, Mark, benefitted from this approach when we helped his manager and HR partner build a realistic onboarding plan with “meet-and-greet” meetings that supported his plan’s objectives and timing.
An example was that he met 1:1 with other functional heads who helped him understand how the company measures success, how they make decisions, and how long he was “allowed to be new” in this organization.
Cultural learning during the first weeks on the job is priceless and this approach avoids early burn-out and costly missteps. If new hires are bombarded early with meetings, presentations, and deliverables, they can often miss the most important onboarding lessons.
This is Part 1 of 3 installments of our series, “Onboard Like a CEO: 6 Strategies from the Corner Office that Will Engage and Develop Your New Hires. Read about the next two strategies in an upcoming issue.
Erika will be a featured speaker at the Gulf Coast Symposium on HR Issues address the topic: Onboard Like a CEO: Strategies from the corner office to engage and develop your new hires
Description:
Onboard new hires like a CEO? What would an “executive experience” look like and how could it impact your new hires’ engagement levels? Per Gallup, 88% of employees don’t think their current organization is good at onboarding and 76% of HR don’t think they are doing a good job at onboarding employees. Robust onboarding addresses organizational challenges – attracting top talent, engagement, productivity, and high turnover . You’ll get six strategies “borrowed” from executive onboarding you can implement immediately, including how to quickly build organizational knowledge; build key relationships and deliver timely feedback to adjust and avoid negative turnover.
Brenda Hampel & Erika Lamont, co-founders of Connect the Dots Consulting, were recently featured on the podcast series: Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future as onboarding experts.
More than 40% of new leaders fail within 18 months. Why?
Don’t blame the leader; look at the organization instead! Most organizations don’t onboard a new leader well, if at all. They assume a person’s success at one company will automatically transfer to theirs – but there are far too many variables at play to bank on that. Instead, an onboarding plan that goes beyond HR protocols and benefits sign-up is necessary: a plan that considers company culture, history, team dynamics…even quality of life differences if the new leader is coming from out of town!
Brenda Hampel and Erika Lamont of Connect the Dots share tips, tricks, and outright wisdom from years of experience helping organizations maximize the success of their new leaders.
Here’s what Brenda, Erika, and host Maureen Metcalf cover:
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Email: info@connectthedotsconsulting.com
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We start with thoughtfully diagnosing the team’s current culture by using available data, assessments and interviews.
This provides the team leader with a clear view of what is getting in the way of the team’s success.
We design a series of structured team sessions that:
Measure progress by leveraging CTD’s team-connect Survey to: