Startup CXO

Chapter 37Onboarding

One of the more people‐focused roles within People Operations is onboarding. Effective employee onboarding is critical, even in startups. Most people think of onboarding as getting a benefits overview and a computer. That's important, but that's really just “orientation.” The first experiences an employee has with your company will help determine longer‐term success. With a small team you may not have time to create a fully curated and personalized experience for every new employee; instead, put some structures in place to ensure hiring managers and teams are creating that great experience for new hires.

As you start to increase hiring, you can build a more robust onboarding program so that each manager doesn't have to re‐create a program for their new employee. The onboarding manager can be responsible for setting up the programs that will be run for all employees, and then build manager and new employee guidelines that give them each a framework for job‐ and company‐specific activities and outcomes in the first 90 days. In addition to building the guidelines, the onboarding team can manage or collaborate with other teams to manage things such as:

• Training in soft skills that are critical to success at your organization as discussed in leadership development above.
• First day setup. You don't want people to show up and no one knows who they are or to have to put a desk together. Get buy‐in from office management so they understand the impact that the first ...