Reports in the news these days point to layoffs and downsizing. However, companies are still hiring for key roles, and startups are hiring new employees with skills to match reinvigorated business models.
During this difficult macro environment, it’s crucial to make sure that the employees that you hire are set up to gain traction immediately.
But many companies - which go through a lot of time and effort to find great talent - miss the most important element that will enable new employees to get up to speed quickly.
For example, I recently conducted a 360 feedback for one of my clients, the President of a large division for a public company.
In addition to getting feedback about him, I discovered that almost all of the employees I spoke to who had been with the company for 18 months or less didn’t feel fully utilized. They were hesitant to speak up or take action, so it took them a long time to get things done. They didn’t know who was responsible for what. They were concerned about stepping on people’s toes, and they felt left out of key decisions.
When I talked with my client about the company’s onboarding process, it was clear that they did a good job of getting new employees set up tactically: training them on their technical areas; making sure they were seamlessly tied into the payroll system; getting them the right technology; even setting up lunches in the first few weeks of work.
But what they lacked was the emotional side - the team bonding that builds influence and makes it easier to get work done.
To get the most out of new employees quickly, you have to make sure you’re covering emotional onboarding as well as tactical onboarding. The goals of emotional onboarding are simple: make sure your new employee feels a sense of belonging to the team, and make sure the new team integrates your new people to help them be successful.
Here are 4 ways you can ensure your new employees will bond with the company:
Dedicated onboarding buddy. The most important way to make sure new employees can onramp easily is to help them interpret what’s going on. So they need a translator. And a friend.
Enter the onboarding buddy. Ask a coworker of the new employee to be responsible for acclimating her. The coworker will then feel a sense of ownership that this new person gets off to the right start and gets inculcated into the culture.
The onboarding buddy should be an influential peer who knows the inner workings of the company. The buddy can help interpret culture and language and the little quirks which are part of the unique fabric of this company.
For example, one of the companies I coached had a habit of “checking in” personally before meetings to build rapport. My client, a new executive, thought this was a “nice to have,” not an important routine. In his desire to get things done, he would often skip that part of the meeting. His direct reports were not comfortable explaining this to him.
Luckily, his onboarding buddy saw this and was able to explain to him the importance of this ritual. My client was able to quickly course correct, apologize for not upholding this tradition, and made sure it was included in all of his future meetings.
Create opportunities to bond (camaraderie): In addition to a single onboarding buddy, it’s helpful to think about opportunities to bond the entire team together. New employees will often feel new for quite a while. They’ll be polite and wait to be invited in. Social and informal activities help them break the ice.
When you create opportunities for employees to get to know the rest of the team, they’ll feel a greater sense of belonging and community, which in turn allows them to have the confidence to speak up, take risks, and contribute to their potential.
The longer-tenured employees will also get to know this person, and then be more apt to invite them into meetings at work or bounce something off them for input. This simple sense of comfort builds the capacity to get more work done more quickly.
Informal events don’t have to take up that much time. They can include group lunches or a social event or two after work. During team offsites and working sessions you can include a more personal or social aspect. All of this helps bond the team together, and this social capital helps the new person fit in.
Help them create wins in the first week:
There’s nothing like success to give someone the “it” factor and get them to find space in the team. Help your new employee create a win in the first week or two. This can be very simple, like making a presentation about early insights, or diving into an important project that has been left fallow for a long time.
One of my clients was the new CFO of a startup. When he came into the organization, nobody understood the budgeting process, which created resentment towards the finance department. When the CEO pointed this out, the CFO did something very simple to get an immediate win: at his first all-hands, he announced that he understood that the budgeting process was a problem. He promised to make it more transparent and give an update about it in 2 weeks. He then came back to the all-hands in 2 weeks with an update and a plan to fix it.
Even though it took almost 9 months to fix this process, his simple acknowledgment of the problem and commitment to fixing it gave him an immediate boost in the eyes of the employees.
Dealing with the cliques. Old Guard. In many companies or departments, a group of tightly knitted employees form themselves into cliques. They hang out together, go to lunch and coffee together, and tend to gravitate toward each other during meetings and social gatherings. Cliques aren’t always bad, but it’s hard for a new person to break in and feel included. One of the problems with cliques is that they often reject change. And your new employees almost always represent change.
The first step in handling is to proactively create a company culture of welcoming newcomers and adapting to change. As a leader, you need to narrate this for your team, celebrate it when you see it happening, and quickly deal with people who don’t maintain this cultural norm.
To deal with cliques in particular, make sure you know which ones exist in your organization by keeping your eyes and ears open. Then, proactively engage the clique members by making them onboarding buddies. Ask them to take responsibility for the emotional onboarding of new team members by planning events. And if you sense them acting in a hostile way with new people, quickly let them know that you won’t accept that kind of behavior.
When you help cliques act in productive ways they can often have an outsize impact.
Emotional onboarding is easy to miss in the frenzy of day-to-day activities. But it’s an essential aspect of your onboarding process and will help you get more out of your new hires more quickly.
