Employee New Hire Training: A Tale of Two Employees (Part 2)
This is the second in a series of three articles that focus on how to improve your employee onboarding program.
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In the first part of this series, you met Sydney and Charlie, two employees who were experiencing very different new hire programs. You also learned some tips on how to improve your own program. Let's continue with the tale of these two employees and the lessons you can learn from their stories.
Definition of Success
| Sydney | Charlie |
Sydney doesn't let these manuals discourage her too much. She reads them, takes notes and then re-reads them all in the first week. Eager for something more, she asks her manager if they can meet to discuss goals she can work toward in her first few months. Her manager explains that she will learn about the performance review process in her orientation, but Acme doesn't set goals for employees until after their first three months of employment. Instead, the manager introduces her to Jerry, a team member who can help her get her laptop set up with access to the intranet, and she receives a list of documents to find and read on the team's Sharepoint site. Sydney wonders if anyone else heard that bubble burst in her mind. |
Charlie completed his first three days of onboarding at Zeta, and now he's meeting with his supervisor to review what he learned about the company and to meet his team members. Then they set 90-day goals and interim milestones. At the end of the meeting, Charlie has a summary with clear expectations, goals and actions he can take each week toward meeting those goals. He is confident that he can achieve these and is more excited than ever to prove his worth. |
Would you agree that new employees need to understand what is valued in their company, how decisions are made, how success is defined and how they are to achieve success? If so, when should they learn this?
The 2012 Allied Workforce Mobility study reports that 60% of companies don't set any milestones or goals for new hires. However, an effective onboarding program should address these topics and allow learners to get a clear vision of their path to success in two ways:
- Definition: During onboarding, employees meet with their supervisors to review key points from the interview process and job description. Together, they define what is expected from the employee and set benchmarks, such as for the first 90 days.
- Alignment: It's important for everyone to be aligned in their thinking and direction, so the supervisor and employee should also discuss how the goals and expectations are aligned with the team, business unit and company.
Program Format
| Sydney | Charlie |
It's been three weeks, and Sydney has been struggling to find the information she needs on the team Sharepoint site. The site is just not intuitive, and she feels like a pest when she asks her teammates too many questions. Today, she is finally taking her orientation class. So far, an HR representative has explained benefits and the company's sexual harassment policy. She's also been told the company's mission, vision, values and goals for the fiscal year. It's 3PM and Sydney is wondering when she will find out where she fits in the scheme of things. |
Charlie is well into his onboarding program and is enjoying the wide variety of training he's experiencing. Each topic comes just when he seems to need it, and the well organized reference materials and job aids on his team's intranet site provide him with a wealth of helpful information when he needs the extra support. He's especially enjoying the pretesting and post-testing because he can discover what he will be learning and then immediately evaluate how well he understands it. And it's easy to go back and retake any learning that he didn't ace the first time. During the program, Charlie meets with several people on his team for coaching and mentoring. He's also completing a case study and will meet with his mentor this afternoon to discuss his solution to the scenario. |
New employees like Sydney, who have brief presentation-style instructor-led training, just don't realize the same benefits as employees like Charlie, who receive a just-in-time, custom, blended, instructionally sound program. The abbreviated programs are often created by teams without experience in adult learning fundamentals, so they may not have instructional integrity and new hires typically do not have the opportunity to build skills needed to do their jobs.
To avoid employee disengagement and frustration, try implementing the following ideas into your new hire program:
- Think outside the instructor-led training box. Sure, ILT is a tried-and-true way to get employees on board, but it's not always a realistic solution for your budget or for the learners. Instead, develop content in a wide variety of media that you can deliver in any format, anytime, anywhere. Try offering self study, elearning, case studies, videos, small group activities, coaching, pretests, post-tests and scavenger hunts. Don't be dependent on costly instructor-led training as the only format.
- Ensure only the appropriate and relevant content is developed and delivered. Information overkill is easy to do in a new hire program, but carefully analyze each topic you want to include and determine if it's absolutely necessary for employee success in the first six months of employment.
- Chunk information in short, easily digestible components, and follow up with real-world application. This allows learners to immediately apply what they learn, experience success and get the reinforcement they need before moving forward.
- Devise a training schedule that provides employees with key foundations first and then builds on those foundations throughout the program. Managers will thank you for providing new hires with skills that make them productive early on in the onboarding process!
- Provide online tools that employees can access prior to their first day. These tools can provide information about the organization's performance, including its history, mission, values, challenges, recent changes and expectations.
- Plan for strategic socialization of employees, making sure they meet the right people at the right time during their development.
- Provide easy-to-use, easy-to-find tools such as job aids so employees can get the help they need when they need it.
- Include mentoring programs, so employees have a trusted advisor to discuss their concerns and get answers to their questions.
Do you see how a more holistic approach to new hire training can build employee skills and confidence while making them productive earlier? Which of the ideas for beefing up your program do you want to try? In our next article, we will discuss more strategies for improving your new hire program.
Continue reading:
Employee New Hire Training (Part 1) →
Employee New Hire Training (Part 3) →
