Manager's Library Series

This collaborative series between Purdue University and The Ohio State University explores key areas essential to effective management, including human resource management, strategy, finance, decision-making, risk management, time management and others. Each article offers thought-provoking perspectives to help you navigate the challenges of running a successful farm or agribusiness.

Managing Employees: How to onboard new hires successfully

 Jay Akridge, Trustee Chair, Teaching and Learning Excellence and Professor, Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University

John Foltz, Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University; and Dean Emeritus, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, and Professor Emeritus, Agricultural Economics, University of Idaho

Margaret Jodlowski, Assistant Professor; Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics; The Ohio State University

Picture this: You have just received a phone call you had been hoping for—the new sales manager you have been recruiting accepted your offer. You kick back in your chair and put your feet up. It is late on a Friday afternoon and you have a day off scheduled for tomorrow. Life is good and you can enjoy your weekend. The new manager starts in a couple of weeks. You expect she will hit the ground running. All you have to do is get her here, show her around the office, and get out of her way. She’s a go-getter with a great track record, and you know she is the perfect fit. Yep, your work is done on this one!

Unfortunately, here is where we interrupt your daydream. As any experienced manager knows, hiring the right person is one of many important steps to a productive and healthy employer-employee relationship. What you do before and after an individual is hired will have a huge impact on whether you have an employee who “delivers the goods” or you lose them in a few months out of frustration—yours, theirs, or both. With the war for high-quality talent raging, great hires are more and more difficult to find. This is why onboarding new employees has never been more important. Whether an individual is new to your operation or an existing employee is moving into a new position, a well-designed onboarding process can make or break employee retention. What steps can you take as a manager to make sure the new hire who looked great on paper is onboarded successfully in your operation?

Who do you want to hire?

If you do not have a well-developed job description for the position you are filling, no onboarding strategy will work. Your new employee will have the wrong expectations. You and your current staff will have the wrong expectations. “Right person, wrong job” and “wrong person, right job” are recipes for a quick exit and a lot of frustration. A well-developed job description, along with a carefully considered set of capabilities and characteristics, go a long way toward making sure you select the right person and that everyone is on the same page when the new hire joins your organization. Spending a long time thinking about the skills needed by your new employee may feel like time wasted daydreaming, but when it is done thoughtfully, it can make a huge difference in finding the right person. As an aside—don’t forget the role internships can play in developing new talent. Working with someone less experienced, whether the intern is in high school, community college, or college, can serve as a low-risk trial run. It allows you to determine if the person will be a good fit for your company and allows your intern to learn whether your organization is a good fit for them.

What Does A new hire need to know?

What is a typical onboarding process? Often, managers allocate an hour of a new employee’s first day to onboarding. The new employee may spend the rest of the morning with their team members and then tour your facilities. By the next day, everyone, including you (the manager), gives the new employee space to begin working independently. Of course, we know this form of new employee training is more commonplace than we would like to admit. This “data dump” approach is quick, easy, and, in general, very efficient. We also understand the realities that drive managers to implement such short onboarding programs. Who has time for coaching, mentoring, or even thinking about what a longer or more intensive onboarding program should look like? We would argue that given the challenges involved in finding and retaining great people, managers must put more effort into their onboarding plans. Unfortunately, for the average manager’s busy schedule, that means new employees need more than a one-day data dump. But it is not too difficult to get started. First, establish what the new hire needs to know. Some of this will be obvious:

  • Who are their direct reports?
  • Who are key customers?
  • What are the reporting relationships?
  • What are the important company policies?
  • Are there important norms that underpin the company’s culture?

Make sure the answers to this brainstorming are recorded. Putting this list on paper means it can be easily deployed again in the future.

Once a general list of “need to know” items has been established, an onboarding program should then be tailored to the specific new hire’s situation based on their background. Are there important gaps that need to be addressed? For instance, is this person a first-time supervisor? If so, a people-management or supervision course may be needed. Is this person in a new sales role? Maybe a distance education or online course on selling could be of value. Are there any professional licenses or certifications the new employee will need or that will improve their performance? Think about and plan for such needs upfront by including them in your onboarding plan.

The real work of onboarding comes next and is often found in the least obvious questions:

  • How will you help your new employee understand the culture of your business?
  • What was the culture of the organization this new employee came from, and how does it differ from your organization’s?
  • How will you integrate this employee into the social or informal networks within your organization?
  • Are there any pressing issues that this individual will need to address quickly to earn the trust of customers and other employees?

For example, perhaps the previous sales manager was popular and seen as “one of the guys.” Customers loved him. You had to let him go for reasons that were not obvious but his departure was not well-received with either his direct reports or your customers. How will you help your new employee establish her credibility in this situation? How can you create space for her to be successful, knowing that her personality and characteristics might be different from the previous sales manager’s? Addressing such barriers to success head-on will likely be far more productive than the “data dump and cut ’em loose” strategy.

Finally, it is important to acknowledge that onboarding is a two-way street. While the new employee should, and will, be expected to adapt to the company’s culture, current employees should also be prepared for new expectations. Think about what your employees may need to know about the new hire and how the new employee’s role is changing the existing structure. Are there any changes in reporting relationships and/or responsibilities that need to be communicated? Clarity is important. New hires can run into real trouble early on simply because managers avoided difficult conversations before hiring a new employee. Existing employees are often told, “This won’t affect you,” when, in fact, a new hire does affect their role. Think through how the new employee’s position affects everyone. It is only fair to your new employee. It gives them the best possible chance of success, rather than setting them up for problems that could have been addressed up front.

your onboarding strategy

Now that you have your carefully crafted list of what your new employee needs to know, you might be expecting that one good, well-focused day of training should cover the onboarding process. Hardly. Think back to when you started a new job. Did you ever encounter a difficult issue weeks or months into the job only to discover that it could have been solved quickly using information covered during the “day one data dump?”  We are all human.  Only so much information can be absorbed at one time, particularly when dealing with something new amid the emotions and excitement of starting a new job. For an external hire, it is all new—you may even be hiring someone into their first job. So questions as simple as where to park; how to dress; the names of employees, customers, and community leaders; how to complete mandatory paperwork; etc., start to pile up. Capturing and remembering all this information require significant mental energy. The metaphor “drinking from a firehose” comes to mind.

No matter how much information needs to be conveyed to a new employee, delivering it in digestible chunks is possible. First, take your list of what a new employee needs to know and start breaking it down into a schedule. What does the new employee really need to know on day one? What information can be held back until later? Such a schedule should incorporate necessary training courses or certifications. It is also important to determine the best method for sharing certain types of information and who from your existing staff should be involved. Maybe the best method for onboarding is a one-on-one meeting or a series of one-on-one meetings. Maybe something less formal over lunch would be more effective. Showing is usually better than telling, so perhaps a tour or hands-on demonstration would be most productive. Other options that require more groundwork include setting up a shadowing program. This allows new employees to work side by side with, and model the performance of, a member or members of your current staff. Maybe rotating new people through all positions, branches, or departments is the right method. Remember, you will always need to balance the needs of your organization, bring new employees up to speed quickly, and take into account the human capacity to absorb information. Plan accordingly.

Regardless of what strategy you choose, encourage new hires to ask questions. People are reluctant to admit they do not know something. This is especially true for new hires who are trying to make a good impression. Creating a formal structure that encourages and rewards them for asking questions and/or builds in the time for such questions is a good practice. For example, telling a new employee to “write down any questions during the week so they can be addressed Friday at noon” sends the message that questions are part of the process and are not a sign of poor performance.

Next, give some thought to who should be involved in onboarding your new employee. In some cases, the participants will be obvious: your accountant, your safety manager, etc. In other cases, it may take more careful consideration:

  • Do you want to create a formal mentoring relationship for your new employee? If so, who should be the mentor?
  • What expectations do you have of a mentor? Does he or she have the training and personality it takes to be a successful mentor?

After onboarding or mentoring assignments are made, ensure that those involved understand their role. Recognize that these assignments add to their workloads and that it is often the best employees who receive these assignments. Mentoring should not be a burden or a punishment for success. Think about how to appropriately compensate mentors and onboarders. It will go a long way in helping your staff take their onboarding or mentoring roles seriously while sending the message that you value their service.

As always, address any circumstances that may represent barriers to early success. You may need to spend time with the new employee to help them navigate barriers, especially in cases where a new employee is replacing a longtime or favored staff member. Of course, your new hire ultimately has to deliver, but they deserve a fighting chance and to be set up for success.

Finally, self-evaluation is crucial. Think about your role in the onboarding process. What can you do to make sure this new employee understands your organization and gets off to a great start? Helping your new employee understand your culture—where the rough spots are likely to be, and where there might be quick wins—shows that you have genuine interest in their success. Doing this while investing some personal time to check back on the employee can go a long way in helping them get up and running.

Give them some time -- then follow up

As mentioned previously, a new employee can be overwhelmed with all of the things involved with starting their new job. Many employees and their employers find it helpful to schedule a session six to nine months after the employee’s start date to discuss how things are going, address any questions, and review what the new employee should be learning. Some employers hire an employee with a probationary period—typically three to six months. This period can be used to monitor the new employee and decide whether to retain them. However, many employers use this period to support the employee’s on-the-job learning and provide an opportunity to meet, ask questions, and air concerns.

Expectations

Finally, think about your expectations for the new employee. In some cases, a few weeks may be enough to get the employee up to speed and to see real benefits in your organization. For some jobs, such as senior management positions, it may take a full year for a new employee to master the role. Determine where a new employee should be in terms of metrics that matter, like customer visits, trainings attended, sales, plans developed, goals, etc. Provide the new employee with a predetermined schedule of meetings to review their progress on these metrics. Make sure expectations on their metrics are clearly communicated. Periodically review milestones with and without the employee and take remedial action if necessary to correct issues and get the new employee back on track. At the same time, we understand the truth of market realities. You can’t wait forever for a new employee to deliver—the individual must hold up their end of the bargain. Make it clear what their “end of the bargain” is to set them up for success.

upshot

We know how much work goes into the hiring process and the uncertainty that comes with hiring a new member of your team. Investing in a carefully designed onboarding process gives that prized new hire every opportunity for success. In today’s battle for talent, the investment in onboarding is one well worth making.

WATT Global Media originally published portions of this publication in Feed and Grain Magazine at:
https://www.feedandgrain.com/grain-handling-processing/grain-facility-management/article/15401823/bringingem-safely-onboard-launching-new-employees-successfully

In partnership with Ohio State University Extension.