Onboarding: How to Get Your New Employees Up to Speed in Half the Time

CHAPTER 7

Co-Create a Personal Onboarding Plan with Your New Employee

Big Head Start

Getting a big head start is one of the best ways to get up to speed faster.

By the end of this chapter, your employee will have a personal onboarding plan. Because you co-create the plan, you and your new employee will be in complete agreement.

Co-creating the personal onboarding plan is a powerful demonstration of your interest in your new employee’s success. People quit people before they quit organizations; so by working together in consultative cooperation to put together the plan, you invite the emotional engagement that should result in encouragement, leaving little room for regret to sneak in. In this first official interaction with your new employee, you begin leading at a most personal level.

This chapter walks you through the personal onboarding plan from start to finish. Sequence matters. Think about four phases: prework, listening, working together, and handing off.

Pre-work gives your employee information and, thus, opportunity to be knowledgeable enough to work with you as an equal player when you meet face-to-face. Listening warms up your interaction and gives you a heads-up on potentially important issues by allowing your new employee to present his or her thinking unencumbered by your expectations or preconceived notions. Working together completes the personal onboarding plan ...