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Our

Onboarding

Hacks

🏄🏻‍♀️

Tereza Machackova

@productboard

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So consider the first day at work. You can only have one day as a first day.

It means it is a huge day for the employee. Do you remember yours?

Because I remember every single one I have experienced so far. I bet you do too. Its a peak moment of your life.

I can share something about my first day at Hilton London. I just moved to London and this was my first day in England, alone, scared to get my first Hr job, so you can imagine this stressed feeling around my first day - and squared.

I did not get any welcoming email, no instruction, so my panic attack was like the panic attack squared.

I had to double check a week earlier to ask them if they count with me, I did not know where to go, what time to come, where to park, what to bring with me, what to wear.

But in the end I got there. When I came to the receptionist, she actually thought I was coming in next Monday. Then they told me off that my skirt is actually a different colour than my jacket. I felt so embarrassed.

When I got into to my desk, and the there was no laptop neither computer and there are cords dangling, and somebody thrusts an employee manual in your hand, and said. “Well, I’ve got to run off to a meeting, but maybe you could read this for a while,” and so I spent the morning reading about the expense policy and sexual harassment policy, it’s not the ideal first day. And so the amount of inattention that we pay to really important moments for people is just shocking.

My story?

I had to complete all the the paperforms like tax statements, Form W-4, what does that even mean?, sign things, like W4. that did not make any sense, I had to read loads of security, code of conduct papers, sign 45 papers of signing sheets. I came to my table with no laptop on it, I had to be solving PC with people from the annoyed IT department for a few hours. I did not know who is the person I can ask for any advice or if everyone expects me to know everything already? Are they going to fire me because I should know all these stuff before? Can I feel safe to ask stuff? Whats going to happen with me? Then my manager took me for showing around. I felt terrible as everyone who was introduced to me felt so interrupted and it was all my fault.

Thus what I just explained made me feel like I am such useless person at the very first day.

This lack of attention paid to an employee's first day is mind-boggling. What a wasted opportunity to not make a new team member feel included and appreciated.

The engineers for example need to feel so impactful and needed that they usually expect that they will be fixing bugs, sending them to production within first days.

Onboarding sets the tone for the rest of your new hires tenure at your company-- it's imperative to get it right.

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🎈 First day @ productboard

Agenda
Love package

🕹 Slack hacks & gamification

Riddler
Donut
Scavenger Hunt

🤔 Have a cadence to check-ins

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📈 Onboarding Statistics

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1. Great employee onboarding can improve employee retention by 82% (Glassdoor research) 🌄

2. 88% of organizations don't onboard well (Gallup) 💺

Research by Glassdoor found that organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82 percent and productivity by over 70 percent. Unemployment is low, job openings are high, and people have many choices when it comes to where they want to work—so it’s important to engage and retain employees from day 1. A strong employee onboarding process can help you accomplish that, while also helping new hires ramp faster, so they can be productive sooner.
Gallup found that only 12 percent of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding new employees. That means 88 percent don't think their organizations do a great job of onboarding! Given that a strong onboarding process can result in higher retention and productivity, there’s a huge opportunity for most organizations to do more on that front. Only about one in 10 employees think their employer does a great job of onboarding new employees—so survey your team to find out what you could be doing better!

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3. 58% of organizations say their onboarding program is focused on processes and paperwork (HCI) 🤯

4. A negative onboarding experience results in new hires being 2x more likely to look for other opportunities (Digitate) 🔎

3. It’s no surprise that only 12 percent of employees think their organization does a great job onboarding, when HCI Human capital institute found that more than half of organizations focus their employee onboarding on processes and paperwork. Furthermore, one-third said their onboarding program was informal, inconsistent, or reactive. The best employee onboarding programs structured and strategic, rather than administrative, with focus on people, not paperwork.

4. According to Digitate, employees who had a negative onboarding experience are twice as likely to look for other career opportunities in the future. The average US employer spends $4000 and 24 days to hire a new worker. With a negative new hire onboarding experience, your new hire could walk out and effectively double your cost and time to hire. Once you take into account the cost of vacancy, lost productivity, and the impact on morale, losing an employee so soon after they’ve been hired is actually much worse than it appears on the surface.

We all know how expensive it is to hire a new replacement.

So now we know how important is the onboarding process, so lets talk about how to improve your onboarding using little tiny hacks, BUT ACTUALLY IT STARTS EVEN BEFORE

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before the very first day...

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So now we know how important is the onboarding process, so lets talk about how to improve your onboarding using little tiny hacks, BUT ACTUALLY IT STARTS EVEN BEFORE

Before we dive deeply into our first day. Imagine, you accepted the offer. In Czech its very specific, because usually you have to wait up to 2 months with this frustratingly long notice period.

It is a way too long. And you have to make sure that you are in touch with your candidate, new hire. She definitely gets counter offer. Or even worse she changes her mind. Or move. Anything can happen in two long months. Unless you surprise her and keep in touch with her.

You may agree that so many things can happen in these 2 months. They can be flirting with another company, they can get a counter offer, their boss becomes to be nice again. Maybe their family will start to get worried about this new change. So it is your role to make them feel included and valuable even before their first day!

Preboarding sets the tone for the rest of your new hires tenure at your company-- it's imperative to get it right.

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🎈 1. First day @ productboard

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For this We created the onboarding agenda for the first weeks in Notion, and we share it with a newbie a day before the first day, so they know what to expect, what topics we are about to cover in the next few days. Where to park, who are they going to meet, what time we are taking them for a lunch. This is very helpful for both sides!

I use notion also for my 1::1 agenda or to set up 30-60-90 goals for a newstarter, so the expectation are set up right. They know that within first days they should be expecting becoming a sponge, learn everything and I will not fire them for not hiring 10 developers or something like that.

Maybe a little tips for your team here and what we forgot and it was really lame, that you have to book your time and every other stakeholder in the calendar when the new joiner is startin. Team Lead should not be on her vacay. There should be pre-boarding checklist is completed ✅ Chase the responsible team lead/buddy to be prepared too! They should not be on their vacation during this most crucial week!

We have all the manuals (like the address, FQ, benefits), checklists for pre-boarding and onboarding in Notion. �Thanks to this we will never forget about for example having prosecco as the last thing on your first day. So Notion recommended.

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What helps and brings the new starters attention is definitely bringing founders and having them to share their stories, or other stakeholders, we develop tools for product managers, so bring our pm to talk about a tool itself

We definitely do this also offline/or remotely online. Like our CEO Hubert session, founder story, PM story and intro to our tool, lunch with cofounder Dan

What helps and brings the new starters attention is definitely bringing founders and having them to share their stories, or other stakeholders, we develop tools for product managers, so bring our pm to talk about a tool itself

💡Tips - What We Have Learnt we need to do from the feedback!

What is truly important is making sure the new starter and her team lead are on the same page. What can help them - is to have regular communication together. As much it sounds like a cliché, lack of communication always leads to friction in the onboarding process, unclarity and uncertainty of every new starter.

set up the regular one on ones 🗣
be clear in the newbie's 30-60-90 days' goals, the expectation between the manager and the new starter must be VERY clear 🎯
find out more about how does the new starter wish to receive feedback - introverts usually hates public praising 😳
find out more about what does make her grumpy 😨 so you both know how to work with together once it happens, and it does not feel uncomfortable or even better - how to prevent it
help her to get to know everyone! let her schedule some lunches with everyone who is going to be her partner in crime from other departments in her role in the following weeks, we also schedule a session and cup of tea/dinner with our founders 🌮
let her shadow your sales team's calls - they're experts on your product, and they answer loads of questions every call, every new starter should better know what you are really doing! ☎️
invite her to attend your internal but also other community meetups and team buildings 🍻
let her organize her own yoga session or initiate beers with other new starters 👭

There are plenty of even cooler ideas! You are welcome to share yours in the comments below! 🙏🏼

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Our 💖 Package

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👾 2. Slack hacks

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👾 Riddler

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🍩 Donut

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👋🏻 #hello channel

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🕵🏼‍♀️ Scavenger Hunt

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🤔 3. Have a cadence of check-ins

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✅ 4 weeks check

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🌡 Mood temperature
👨‍👧 Team Leader
🚧 Blockers that are making her job more difficult
🤔 Expectations from the interviewing process till now and how those have been changed
💪🏼 Biggest challenge

🌈 Culture
🏋🏻‍♀️ Self-development
💡 Ideas for improvements, feedback
🎭 Benefits
🤔 Is there anything I haven't asked and I should?
🔎 Sourcing jam, sit down and look at her network on LinkedIn!

🌡 Mood temperature I often start with asking to rate the prevailing mood on the scale 1 - 10. It helps me to get the overall quantitative mood temperature, and if the rating is below 10, I always ask WHY, what can we do to be on 10. This feedback helps us to improve the mood of the employee and our onboarding processes!
👨‍👧Team Leader, overall team support Is the one on one with her team leader scheduled? How does it work? Tell me about your first one and the last one? How did you feel, what did you discussed? Do you have your 30-60-90 days goals set up? Do you know about your goals? How can you be sure you are doing a good job and meeting pb's expectation in your fist, second month?
🚧Do you feel there are any blockers that are making your job more difficult?
🤔Tell me about how your expectations from the interviewing process till now have been changed.
💪🏼What is the biggest challenge of your first month? What is the most challenging thing in these 4 weeks?
🌈Culture, do you feel uncomfortable with anything? What do you like the most about our culture? Have you met everyone? Is there any friction in communication anywhere? Can we improve anything? Would you help us with improving it?
🏋🏻‍♀️Self-development, What do you desire to learn in your first month? Have you set up your own personal dev-growth plan?
💡Do you have any other ideas for us to improve the onboarding process? Or any other feedback to share?
🎭Benefits, are you aware of all the benefits we have here? Do you have any tips for any new ones? Do you miss any benefit from the previous company?

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✍️ Let them share their experience

There are plenty of things we still need to work on and implement! We are building everything from scratch and as we all are perfectionists, we still do retrospectives, post mortem that is helping us to look back, collect very useful feedback, learn from failures and develop further.

👨‍👧Onboarding buddy

During our 4weeks checks with new joiners, I realized that we need to start working on this. There is a need to have a soulmate whom you can always ask about anything (now we have these channels "ask me anything" on slack), but you need this person in person. Many times in a startup you feel your team lead is super busy and it would just feel so silly to ask, or you started as a manager, and everyone expects you to know everything since the beginning. Buddy would be a dedicated, experienced Productboarder who would always be there. Help you to adapt smoothly. More tips here in this HBR.

The end. I never know how to say goodbye in the last paragraph, so I usually just disappear 😳😅

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📚 Literature

There are plenty of things we still need to work on and implement! We are building everything from scratch and as we all are perfectionists, we still do retrospectives, post mortem that is helping us to look back, collect very useful feedback, learn from failures and develop further.

👨‍👧Onboarding buddy

During our 4weeks checks with new joiners, I realized that we need to start working on this. There is a need to have a soulmate whom you can always ask about anything (now we have these channels "ask me anything" on slack), but you need this person in person. Many times in a startup you feel your team lead is super busy and it would just feel so silly to ask, or you started as a manager, and everyone expects you to know everything since the beginning. Buddy would be a dedicated, experienced Productboarder who would always be there. Help you to adapt smoothly. More tips here in this HBR.

The end. I never know how to say goodbye in the last paragraph, so I usually just disappear 😳😅

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HBR: 7 Ways to Set Up a New Hire for Success
HBR: Every New Employee Needs an Onboarding “Buddy”
Chip Heath: The Power of Moments
Lever: Sourcing and Onboarding Hacks
First Round Review: 6 Must Reads for Onboarding Tactics that help new hires succeed and stay
Medium: A step by step guide for onboarding new hires

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Thank you 🙏🏼