Conquer onboarding with help from three HR leaders

Daniel Blaser (00:05):

Hello and welcome to On the Clock presented by Workstream. If you care about hiring and retaining hourly employees, you're in the right place. I'm Daniel Blaser, and today we're clocking in with three talented HR leaders to discuss the topic of onboarding. The audio comes from our recent webinar we co-hosted with our friends at Checker and includes the panelists, GIA Demic from CultureAmp, Jamie DRA from Workstream, and Jacob McKay from Point Meadows Health and Rehab. These awesome leaders weigh in on many different topics, including getting leadership buy-in for onboarding, being data-driven in your strategy, how to make sure your onboarding experience reinforces company values and more. If you like what you hear in this episode, we recommend giving the complete webinar a listen. You can find a link in the show notes to kick things off. Gia discusses how she goes about convincing leadership of the value of onboarding.

Gia Demichele (00:56):

So a good onboarding where you're not making your employees suffer through something redundant and duplicative sets your people up for success. And one of the hardest pieces of buy-in to an onboarding process is reframing it from this energy and time suck for your leaders, for the employees who are going through onboarding into something that's investing in their future success. It's the hardest thing to do to change the way we're thinking of it because we only think about it in terms of productivity. A lot of the time we're trying to get people ready to work and doing their job tomorrow, other than this onboarding process and this reframing, another great way to look at it is to really think about our turnover. Are we seeing a lot of early turnover for that three to six, six month timeframe? If we are, then we're probably not doing an adequate enough onboarding because something about it isn't matching what I was sold through the interview process and what I'm actually doing every single day. So that's another place to look as we're trying to make that pitch to our leaders who need to invest in onboarding. It is a time and energy commitment from the organization, but when we do it well, we see that massive return on the reduction in turnover for that one year employment group.

Daniel Blaser (02:24):

Next up, Jacob shares something his team created called The 90 Day Challenge.

Jacob McKay (02:29):

My team, we created what's called the 90 Day Challenge. So their first three months. So the 90 Day Challenge, it's kind of laid out like a game board and each of our 15 managers is assigned a week to check in on the employee or to take them to lunch or to buy them a soda or to just give them a shout out in the group chats. So our administrator takes them out to lunch on week two and tries to get to know 'em, tries to make an a non-work connection with them. On week seven, our discharge planner talks to them about a piece of our core values and maybe gives them a soda or something. So I know it made a huge difference for me. When our administrator took me out to lunch on my first week, I felt like a million bucks, and I received constant praise for my efforts, even my failed ones throughout that whole process of getting to know my position. So anyways, we want to create that sort of environment for each new person, and it really doesn't take that much effort to help people feel like part of a family, right? A text here, a message here, you got to go to lunch anyway, right? So maybe take a new employee along with you.

Daniel Blaser (03:45):

Onboarding is a crucial time to introduce and reinforce company values. Jamie talks about how she approaches this.

Jamie Dyra (03:52):

We know that first impressions are critical, and onboarding is our opportunity to make a great first impression and bring those values to life. So we introduce our company values before they even join our company. Often we'll share decks that are public that they can look at as they're in the interview process, and then we make it a big part of our onboarding and our orientation as well. But introducing values is not enough. Talking about them is not enough. They need to see it live and demonstrated. We need to model them. We need to draw their attention to it as much as possible. Culture is really built through doing things and demonstrating how you want that culture to live. You are going to have a culture whether or not it's intentional. So the more you can think about it, the more you get to control what that looks like in a positive way.

(04:45):

So we're transparent about what we do well. We're transparent about what we want to improve on, and that's true with our values as well. We invite active participation. We want feedback. One of our values is direct feedback as a gift. So we try and start that from day one. We encourage them to be a part of that. We reinforce that they were brought here because they have expertise and their voice is critical to our success. We continue reinforcing our values in a celebration quarterly where we're awarding streamers for living our values. And when our new hires see this happen at our company all hands, it just reinforces that this is important to who we are. We build it into our performance reviews and we explain all of that as we're onboarding. So people, it's never a surprise what our values are. It's never a surprise what that looks like. I think what we never want to hear is that it's just words on a paper.

Daniel Blaser (05:44):

Collecting feedback is key to improvement, and GIA shares how CultureAmp makes this a top priority.

Gia Demichele (05:50):

We actually do an onboarding survey at week two, week six, and then again at three months and use that feedback pretty immediately. As I understand from my mentor and manager in the organization, if something's going wrong in that onboarding feedback that's coming through, our HR business partner will actually reach out to that leader to say, here's the latest. What do we need to be doing to improve these scores for your people? Something here isn't quite adding up. So it's pretty immediate that we start to take action from that feedback, and that's at the really local level for that one leader and their team. But then we also take that feedback from the largest organizational level. For example, from our onboarding feedback and employee engagement surveys internally, we heard from our new employees that they were feeling a disconnect after that three month time. We shower people with love and affection and holding their hand for three months, and then after that you're released into the world and sometimes that's a really abrupt release.

(06:58):

So we started this new practice that we call Basecamp, which is added as part of our onboarding process about three to five months after someone has been in the organization. And it's to address that drop off in the connection and belonging that people can feel once they're a fully independent worker, especially in a virtual workforce. So we bring people together at one of our main offices and bring that connection back in. And I actually had the opportunity to experience that before the end of the calendar year 2022, and that was a really lovely experience and absolutely fueled that engagement moving forward.

Daniel Blaser (07:37):

Next up, Jamie shares how some personal experiences taught her the importance of providing a positive onboarding to new employees.

Jamie Dyra (07:45):

So I personally have experienced some pretty terrible onboarding in my past. I think we can all connect to that. I started one role that was new location, new role, had never done this before. And I walked in and my onboarding consisted of a piece of paper with three bullet points. That's it. That's it. I was in charge of an entire site. I had no idea what I was doing, and it was insufficient to say the least. When I left that role, I think I wrote a novel to hand off to the next person, which was also not a great experience for them. Let's be honest there. That's not the way you bring people in. I try and take learnings from my own experience, gather feedback. We do surveys as well. We do focus groups. I work a lot with our leaders to say, how are these people coming into your department?

(08:35):

How are they feeling? Does it feel like they're set up for success? Is there anything missing? And we make real changes based on that feedback. So I mentioned earlier that we do a three day orientation. That's pretty new. We were doing two days before and before that it was one day. And after three days I was like, Ooh, is this the right? So I gathered real time feedback, what do you guys think? Is this good? And they're like, yes, please keep it. Please. This is so perfect. It would be overwhelming if it was shorter or longer. So we try to take in the perspective of those who are experiencing it. And then to G'S point, reaching back after in the moment, you're probably going to get fairly good feedback. It's that recency bias. They're happy, they're excited, they're new, but then in 30, 60, 90 days, their attitudes might change a little bit.

(09:28):

So gathering feedback at different intervals to say, were you really set up for success by how we brought you in? I think that's really key to understanding the longevity of how you bring people in and whether or not it has impact down the road. We have also brought people into the company, and if you don't do that right, they're going to tell other people who are coming in, right? Oh, I wasn't prepared for this. So getting that feedback and doing something with it before that kind of spirals out of control is pretty important. And as we mentioned earlier, onboarding is more than just their first day or week at the company. It's how they're treated before they even walk in the door. So I was headhunted for a job once and I had to finish up the work that I was doing. I was in a role that was pretty critical for my last company, for the company that I was leaving.

(10:26):

So there was a good month, month and a half before I started the new role. Once I signed my offer, I didn't hear from anybody again, and I finished out my other job and kind of went, I hope I have a job that I'm going to. I quit mine. So let's see. And it wasn't until literally the Thursday before the Monday that I started that I had someone reach out to me. So that's something that our product and our company for our hires are very attentive to, and we want to make sure we're keeping people warm and engaged if there is a gap between when they accept the role and when they start. You don't want people to feel like, does this company value me after I've signed the contract? So we as a team here, we're looking at how can we even do a better job at that knowing that maybe there are some gaps and being really honest about those gaps to make it better. I think something we should all be doing regularly.

Daniel Blaser (11:23):

Most new employees bring with them a willingness to learn and grow. Jacob shares his take on making the most of this.

Jacob McKay (11:29):

We do have a formal survey that we send at week four. At that point, the employee is still pretty new and moldable. And so we want to see how everything's going. Do you have a relationship with your manager? Do you have friendships at work? Do you feel like you have the supplies that you need? Do you feel like you have the training that those are kind of basic questions. And then at that point, if there are some issues, then we'll bring 'em up to our management team, our feedback process, you could say. Our pulse surveys are more of when our managers check in, when they get during our 90 day challenge, when they get to week three and our social services director goes and checks in, they'll try to ask them and try to make a connection and say, Hey, how's everything going here? Is there anything I can help you with?

(12:23):

And hopefully the employee can feel comfortable enough to tell them if there really is something wrong. But yeah, the only formal things we have set in place are just that four week survey, and then they do have a 90 day review as well with their manager to make sure that everything's going okay and they set goals with them for the future. And it's a good meeting. I like to think about new employees as this clay ball and that they are super moldable right now. And so for those first few weeks, few months, we can kind of shape how they perceive our company. And so literally for the first shift, I mean for everybody, probably you could say for everybody's experience, we're just going to be a fly on the wall for the first shift. We're just going to be watching, observing. If it's a manager, they're just going to be across the desk from the seasoned manager or whoever's helping them get trained.

(13:23):

If they're a therapist, they're just going to be pushing the wheelchair behind the actual, the licensed and seasoned therapist who's helping give therapy. So they're picking up on things all around. They're picking up on how did they talk to their coworkers, how do they talk to the residents, how do they talk to people? Or picking up on those little social cues. So I feel like at week four when we give that survey, that's a good enough time to feel like, okay, they have a good grip on how things are working here. We had a CNA, his name was Josh, and he left feedback at week four saying that we were low on supplies for maybe it was briefs or something, or different supplies that we didn't have. And so I brought it to the management's team attention, and we actually ended up creating a new position and we said, we need someone who is really focused on supplies.

(14:21):

We had somebody else doing it, and it was like their other hat they were wearing, and it wasn't really a focus. And we realized that Josh was a very accountable person, even though he was a new employee, we could see that he had a passion for learning and making this facility a great place because of that feedback that he left. And so we decided to make him our supplies manager, and he had such fire for that. And now we don't even worry about anymore. He works on the night shift. And so he does his ordering at night and then he puts everything away. And so we don't really see him working, but everything is just taken care of and we don't even have to think about it anymore. And it's because of that feedback that he left, and it's really been a huge benefit to him and to our company.

Daniel Blaser (15:15):

The best onboarding experiences are collaborative and personal. Jamie discusses how she encourages engagement with new employees.

Jamie Dyra (15:23):

I like to get to know people, right? That's the thing that I love the most about my job is that I get to know people on a personal level. So building in opportunities for our new hires to share bits about themselves, not just be talked out the whole time is really important. I know I mentioned that we bring all of our departments in. Our marketing team actually runs like a thought experiment with the group. That gives them an opportunity immediately to voice ideas for the company that we could later put into practice. So really, that engagement piece is critical, and making it personal for us helps go a long way.

Daniel Blaser (16:02):

And lastly, Jacob connects customer service best practices to a positive onboarding experience.

Jacob McKay (16:08):

The number one rule of customer service is to treat the customer how they expect to be treated. Not necessarily how you would want to be treated, but how they would want to be treated or expect to be treated. And so you have to read each new employee and figure out, okay, are they going to be comfortable with this activity or whatever it is, are they going to be more reserved and maybe they are going to have a bomb orientation experience by just filling out the paperwork and having small talk, or are they more outgoing and they want some swag and they want to be introduced to all the new managers and they want to have a tour around the building and say hi to everybody? I think you just have to tailor each experience to each new employee. And again, that comes back to just getting to know them. What do they, what do they dislike? What's their personality like and how would they expect to be treated?

Daniel Blaser (17:10):

Thank you for listening to On the Clock. For more info, visit workstream.us/podcast. Look in the show notes for links to connect with the three panelists on LinkedIn and to watch the complete webinar that sourced today's episode. Until next time, we're clocking out.