Onboarding is much more than a meeting with HR, it is the integration of new person.
TL; DR
Onboarding is an important endeavor. If we approach it seriously and conscientiously we can make the new person feel more welcomed and part of a team.
Initial Onboarding Meeting
Human Resources has a job to do with its onboarding process which is important for all kinds of reasons. This onboarding covers legal issues and is often the first, if not only, exposure a new hire has with the company’s culture as defined by its executives. However, this should only be the start of the onboarding process.
Integration
It can take several months to integrate a new person into an existing team, so that they are emotionally and mentally part of that team. During this time, we need to help them, guide them, and be there to support them as they have questions.
My department has extended its onboarding process to three months and provided the new hire with a buddy. We choose a buddy from the newest employee who has been at the company at least six months, who are on the same team as the new hire, and is willing to accept the responsibility. The buddy is chosen this way to maximize the empathy for the new hire since buddies have the most recent memory of what it was like to be a new hire.
Buddies
They are a buddy, not a mentor. Buddies are there to answer questions and give support. They are not there to teach. Which is to say buddies are not given any authority over the new hire and are a model of the flat organization structure of the department.
Department and Team
We also extend the onboarding process to the team and the department. When a person is added to a team, that team is no longer the same team. To emphasize this fact, the team, the new hire, and their buddy all undergo training about the Satir Process Change Model by Virginia Satir.
This creates a cycle of repetitive learning for the new hire. The new hire learns about the process as part of their onboarding. They then learn about it again with each new hire brought onto their team. They again learn it when they become a buddy. We do this because we believe understanding of the Satir Process Change Model is important to the successful integration of a new person into an existing system.
The team and department then undergo activities to introduce the new hire to everyone, and to introduce everyone to them. These activities might include a Market of Skills, a Lean Coffee on hobbies, or many other activities. One of the main goals of an onboarding process is to make the new person feel welcomed, wanted, and appreciated. These activities done over a three-month period seem right to me.
Request for Comment
How do you, and your company/department/team approach onboarding in a new way? I would love to hear about it.