How to Onboard Your New Employees with Impact

SUMMARY

Today let’s talk about a challenge that all businesses face. Have you ever felt that you should do more when a new employee is hired? Maybe he or she seems lost at first, constantly asking you obvious questions? I remember my first few employees. After I hired them, they would literally sit in their chair and start doing what I had showed them. Then the questions would come: What is that product name? Who takes care of doing this? Now we use an integration plan that I will teach you today. We are going to learn how to onboard your new employees with impact.

Why is it important?

1. You owe it to them to welcome and onboard them with impact. They’re taking care of your business and your clients!
2. They will feel more involved by being clear on what your business is all about.
3. They will be doing their job well and faster since they were integrated properly.

Here is the step-by-step instructions for onboarding with intent:

1. Build an integration plan, which should contain…
   1. Your business history, mission and values and who it serves.
   2. Who does what in the business. This could be an org chart with roles and names.
   3. Their own role, responsibilities and expectations in the big picture.
   4. Side by side with key roles that will interact with them, so they know the other side.
   5. On the job training with access to any documentation and mapped procedures.
2. A welcome lunch. Paid if the budget is there, pot luck if not.
3. A first one-on-one coaching meeting. (See my other post on the topic)
4. (optional) A welcome package with branded accessories and clothing, cards, desk setup, etc.

Here are some Do’s and Don’ts

• Don’t rush through parts 1 and 2. It is key to give the big picture.
• Don’t worry if you have not mapped responsibilities yet. Just a quick list will be fine.
• Don’t underestimate the power of side by sides to accelerate teamwork atmosphere.

That’s it! I hope you liked this session. Make sure you download the Integration Checklist. You can also create a quick one pager for your next hire and try it out. Maybe your website already has content that talks about your story, your mission. Or, it could be a team building activity. Please also join my Small Business Sherpa Facebook page by liking it or following it. Also, you’ll be advised when my Small Business Sherpa | The Course comes out, where I cover everything about running and starting a new small business. And, I want to thank you for reading because remember – if you have the right path to growth, and the right tools, you too can enjoy your business.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

[The following is the full transcript of this episode of Small Business Sherpa: The Podcast with David Salerno.]

Welcome, my name is David Salerno. I am the founder and owner of Solpak Packaging Solutions but that's not what I want to talk to you about today. Today I want to talk to you about something else. For that I need to do one thing, which is to put my Small Business Sherpa hat on. All right done. This is when you know the clip is going to be hard. But you and I are going to get it done, right? Watch this you're going to love it, all jokes aside.

Okay now let's talk about a challenge that small businesses, as well as large businesses face. I'm wondering if while you're watching you’re in a business, your business, your team. Maybe even you're an employee right now and you jump onboard or you have a new player jump onboard, you just hired them and they look like they're lost. You feel that you hired them but you didn't do really anything good for them, to make them feel welcome. You think you should have done more. Have you ever felt that? Maybe the new employee just joined and in the first few days or few weeks, is a bit lost and sometimes weeks later they ask you a question on the product or service and you're thinking "How could that be possible? I mean they've been working here for a few weeks." If that's happening there's a reason for it and that's because there's an issue with the way you are welcoming and onboarding them as they say.

I remember my first four employees, when I hired them it's basically, okay I had a process to hire them, to select them. Then they jump onboard and then I'd show them, "Okay this where you sit. This is your accounting system, the phone and you're going to take orders. If you have questions come and see me." And that's how I would start, terrible and then there would be frustrations on both ends because we assume certain things but that changed very quickly. I like to set up systems that help me in my job as an entrepreneur, so I set up an onboarding process that has evolved through the years.

So this is what we're going to talk to you about today. Today we're talking about how to onboard your employee with impact. Ready? Okay. Now why is it important to actually have an onboarding process, integration, or indoctrination, I've also seen as an expression for that process. Why is it important? First, you owe it to them to welcome them on the team. You owe it to them because they're going to be taking care of your business. They're going to be taking care of our clients. Don't you owe it to them to make them feel as welcome as possible in the team? First. Second, now they will feel more involved right off the bat because they will be much clearer on what the place is all about, what the team is all about. So the second thing. And finally the third reason why it's important, is they'll be doing their job much faster and well because they will have gone through this integration properly. So these are the three reasons.

All right, are you ready for a step by step? I hope I convinced you on the fact that this was important. There's a ghost in the place, the door just opened. Did you hear it? All right, ready for the step by step? Okay, now I'm going to call it for today an integration plan, it could be onboarding, it could be indoctrination, it could be welcome. I'm going to call it integration. Fine with you? Okay. Number one, so integration. Take notes if you can. Just know that I'll have a Checklist available here, or there, or there, or there, somewhere around there. You'll get an email if you subscribe to this epic post about the integration plan. Okay, there's an n missing. Making a mess, all right, plan.

Number one. Very, very important when the first day your new employee arrives at the office, the first thing you want to do is not to show them their job. Trust me on this one. That can wait, they'll be doing it for hopefully years and years, right? No, you want to show them your business history. So what is your story of your business? I talk about that in the Small Business Sherpa other course. It's one of the most crucial thing you have to do for your business. If you don't have a business story, if you haven't storified your business, do it. Second thing, you're going to talk about, let's say the mission. You could talk about your values. Really the fluffy stuff, you start with that and that takes only an hour, maybe two hours. If you have many people hired at the same time, you make it a meeting, you talk to all of them at the same time. Finally, who it services. I think we've all been exposed to the idea that the most important person in a company is the client. Because no client, no company. So right off the bat you want to have that discussion. This is our story, when it was founded, how it grew. This is our mission right now. These are our values, this is what's important for us and finally who are we serving? These are the customers we are serving, very important.

Number two. You're going to talk about who does what in the business. All right, who does what in the business. Now I don't know if you have a team of three people or if you're running a business of 300 people, it doesn't matter. Ever player that comes in should have an idea of the business setup of who does what. Not necessarily by name but by role. So what we do at Solpak is we literally talk about, just pull out the org chart, quick, quick, nothing too fancy. Just to say okay, "This is me, this is David. Now we have three teams, sub-teams in the business. Those that take care of clients, those that take care of the team and those that take care of business, development, sales. And then tack, tack, tack and then you're here." That's what they need to know. You are here, this is you, you're going to be taking care of customer service, you're a coordinator of service. You're here, you're going to interact with that team. This is going to be your boss. Excellent, you're stuck with a problem, this team takes care of the team, the internal support team. Rachel example, will be helping you. Right, so they have a general idea of the business, the mission, the values, who does it serve and then finally who does what in the business.

Number three. Now you zoom in. Do you see how this is kind of a funnel? Then you zoom in on what's their role, their responsibilities and finally, you get bonus point because this was in a previous epic post about a tool that I actually offer, where you can list all of this very quickly. The last one is expectations. Now remember they're not sitting in their chair yet, you're still having a discussion, an exchange, you make it fun. What's their role, which you can link to their mission. What's their responsibilities, so those are mainly the tasks. So you want to have a list and if you don't have one, I strongly recommend you build one. You want to have a list of responsibilities. What are you responsible for? If it's a coordinator client services, then taking calls, calling client to collect, placing orders, coordinating the technical advisor with the logistics and what not. Taking notes at the meeting, whatever the case may be, responsibility.

And finally expectations. That's very important because one of the top reasons organizations are dysfunctional is because expectations are not set. What is expected of me and how good is it expected of me? Example in client services, the coordinators are expected to answer the call nine times out of ten. So that's an expectation. Orders have to be on the dock within half an hour when they get to the warehouse. That's an expectation. So you should have three or five expectations.

Number four. You want to do a side by side with key roles of people that will interact with them on a daily basis. Before they even start doing their job, you want them to experience what's going on around them. Remember how was talked to them about who does what, well now you're going to identify, "Okay, Lucy you're going to be interacting a lot with the technician because you're going to send him out for jobs. So I want you to be with him, a couple of hours tomorrow morning. Go with Jacques, go on the road and I want you to see what it is on the other side with the clients. Because you're going to be invoicing these people. You're going to be talking to these people. They're going to talk to you about Jacques." Do this.

Second thing you're going to be spending some time with Rachel, who's in charge of system. She's going to show you how systems work because you're going to rely on those systems. Spend some time with her. Maybe spend some time with somebody in the business development, right, before client becomes client. Just to have that interaction, what questions are they asking, what are they interested in? In your context it could be completely different, if you're a design firm for example it might be spending time with a client in a needs analysis and also it makes it more friendly in the contact. Okay so side by side. Finally, number five. That was number four.

Number five. On the job training with access to documentation. That's something that you might be already doing but that's when the on the job training starts. If you have documentation, if processes are mapped. Don't take for granted people are going to look at it, they're probably not going to look at it because we don't like instructions, right, we get the new iPhone pull everything out and we just use the phone, right? In the case of a job, is that what you want? Not necessarily, you want them to be really acute to the way your business has built each roles. So on the job training with the docs. And that's it. There's an optional that really depends on your resources, the time you have. So the option, the bonus I'm going to call it. Is a welcome package.

It's funny because I've been seeing on social media pictures on LinkedIn, I've seen it on Facebook too, of a desk with branded things on them as a welcome package. So there's a trend these days, and that's very good. A welcome package is something that we've done a Solpak intermittently and basically a welcome package could be getting ready with their computer being all set up. That's a very nice touch. They arrive and they already have a profile set up. They feel welcome, they feel "Wow, they took time before I arrived to set it up." It could be clothing, if you have branded clothing, having it ordered before they arrive. It could be, if it's a car that they will be using as an advisor on the road, well then you can have the car set up, cleaned and what not. If it's transferred from another position. Whatever the case may be, welcome package is a very nice bonus, if you have the resources and the time to set it up. And that's it. Not more complicated than that.

Quick recap, integration, that could happen over a few hours or a few days. First, story of your business, mission, values, who do you serve? Spend some time talking about your clients. Number two, who does what in the business. So have an idea, a visual idea of who does what, so that they understand where their role is in all the big picture. Zoom into their role within all this, their responsibilities and the expectations in their position. Then it's side by side with key people that will interact with them, so they see the other side. And finally you jump into the on the job training with documentation, if it's the case.

Bonus, welcome package. Prepare something ahead of the time. Another idea, we had sent an actual package at the front door of one of our employees, because she was living remotely, with branded clothing and business cards and whatnot. Cool. All right, now a few do's and don'ts about this. Don't rush through part one, part two. This and this, VIP. Do not underestimate the power of giving the big picture to your team members, the new team members, it sets a tone of what your place is all about. Second don't worry if you haven't mapped all the responsibilities yet. Maybe you're like "Oh my God, but, okay, well, I don't have a list." Don't worry about it, make a quick list. Think what are the top five, seven things they'll be doing in their jobs. What are the top three expectations? Okay that's really important, so I'm expecting this, and this, and this. And that's it.

And finally don't underestimate the power of side by side with their colleagues. This is so important and I must admit at times at Solpak we hadn't taken the time to do this. Funnily enough two weeks later, there'd be questions about this, or that and then not understanding why is my colleague having an issue with this? I don't understand. Well you know what you don't understand because you haven't walked their shoes. Side by side is worth it. One or two hours per key player around them. Maximum one day, in the whole onboarding sequence.

So that's it. So I hope you liked this session, download the Integration Checklist. You can also create a quick one pager where you could have these things. Maybe your website already has content that talks about your story, your mission. It could be a team building activity. So anyways download the Checklist and implement this with your next new hire. Just test it out. Trust it, you can do it. It's not that complicated. I have a favor to ask of you, if you can just join my Small Business Sherpa Facebook page by liking it or following it. Also, you'll be advised when my Small Business Sherpa | The Course comes out, where I cover everything about running and starting a new small business. And I want to thank you for watching because remember if you have the right path to growth, you have the right tools, you too can enjoy your business.

Okay sorry.

Download the FREE Onboard New Employees Checklist here.