Introduction

Onboarding is so important to give a great impression, but also setting up the scaffolding of what a new employee would expect the culture to be like at a company.

Needless to say, it’s not normally a great experience, it normally starts with spending the first two weeks getting access to systems and tools. Then once you have access, especially in the remote working environment - sometimes you get only a brief introduction with your manager, and get a small glimpse as to what you are to be working on. This common scenario, makes people feel less connected to the team, and no excitement or passion for the work - they feel undervalued, which isn’t a great start from day one or two.

It doesn’t have to be this way however. Some of the key elements that our organisation introduced are below - which we believe make that onboarding path more enjoyable.

Business Goals

New employees need to be immersed into the culture of the organisation from day one.

Focusing on just the technical elements, doesn’t provide the correct alignment on why we do things as a organisation. So giving them that alignment early on, gives a sense of understanding at scale the impact they will have.

Running over the company’s vision, mission - and then give a view of what role our team plays. Also going over the core values we have as a company, and why they are important to the work we do.

Allowing this to tie into the current work that is in flight, and how that drives that company vision or work, or the alignment. Really drives through how the team makes a impact - and gives that sense of purpose.

That said, this business goals should be re-iterated often and always re-linked to the work you do even beyond day one.

A loose introduction on the key people that we interact with, and their roles. Not only the senior people, but also the people whom make things happen.

It’s also a good opportunity to explain the organizational expectations when it comes to being sick (how to notify someone), working hours and cadence of work. Explaining the common meetings, rituals we have setup; from standup, to planning, to retrospectives. Also how we solve some bigger issues as a team through mob programming.

Highlighting the key forums or groups outside of the team, that they can go to for help - allows them to be more independent for seeking answers and, gives them opportunities to network.

Along the way, making sure that calendars line up, and they have all the relevant meeting invites, so they don’t miss out or feel left out.

Tool and Environment setup.

After the initial orientation work, it good to pair them with someone to make sure they have all the necessary access to do their job. Making sure that the access is working;

Some high level items are;

  • Database Access
  • Code and Repo access
  • Jira/Confluence Accounts
  • Elevated User Accounts, setup and usage.

There is also the aspect of Style guides, having a guiding north direction of what code should look like for committing. Having people write in a similar format, allows people to pay attention to the problem when reviewing - rather than aligning the format to make it easier to read.

Some references;

There are also tools like sqlfluff that can auto format your code, into the above styles. Which can also be handy to automate that styling.

Productivity: How to be successful in their role.

Any new employee wants to be productive, as soon as possible - so they can feel valued to the team, and there skills are being contributed to the group.

So to get there, there needs to be transparency on what success looks like, within the team and organization. Help give short term goals, and expectations of where you feel they should be and different stages - then setup regular meetings to review that journey together. Making sure they have the opportunities to meet those goals.

At the same time, you want to empower the new employees with the ability to think independently, and offer ways to make decision autonomous.

Once they are soaring along then you can move these conversations to more growth orientated.

Review and Adapt

During the onboarding process, it is important to get feedback - but also to ensure that the documentation or the process is growing, and changing. Encourage it to be crowd sourced and amended by the new employee’s. People shouldn’t feel worried or dis-encouraged to amend to the process, as this also empowers that independent and creative thinking early on.

After employee 10 or even 30, you will have a rather hardened repository or document for your onboarding process.

The cost and energy spent on recruitment is large and also important to the success of the company. So getting it right, will have great rewards later on.