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

CHAPTER 10

Make Positive First Impressions Both Ways

Enable and Inspire

Your new employee is the lead player on day one, but you are the director.

Showtime

First impressions last. Goods one confer a benefit-of-the-doubt advantage going forward. Bad ones seed questioning for a very long time. Consider day one showtime. It’s your big chance to help your new employee and your organization get off to a winning start in this important relationship.

You have two constituencies to think about when planning day one. Your first constituency is your organization. On day one your new employee will make his or her first solo organization-wide impression. How will people react? Your new employee will have made a great impression on your organization if, at the end of the day, everyone is talking about how you made absolutely the right hire.

Your second constituency is your new employee. Day one will be the first, official opportunity for him or her to experience broad, unmanaged contact with your organization. This could be a warts-and-all encounter that triggers concerns, or a perfect validation of the high expectations you created during recruitment. Your organization will have made a great impression if your new employee feels the new job is exactly the opportunity he or she expected, or better.

Facilitate day one with an eye on both constituencies to achieve the positive and true first ...