Bring New People Onboard
Effective onboarding requires personal communication and integration, not requiring new employes to read a four-inch-thick notebook in their "spare time." --Deena Katz
Onboarding starts during the interview process. During interviews, you can set expectations, assess skills and ascertain whether these capabilities, along with a person's personality and work style, amount to a good fit with your company's culture. At our firm, along with several tests we require—including Kolbe (www.kolbe.com), Wonderlic (www.wonderlic.com) and Myers Briggs (www.myersbriggs.com)—we use a series of situational questions that we've developed to help us understand how a new employee is likely to perform relative to our expectations.
Many advisors tell me that they have job descriptions, policy manuals and other good stuff that they give to their new hires. I bet that stuff is collecting dust in employees' bottom drawers and has probably never been updated. These materials' best use may be to represent the effort taken to prepare them. Effective onboarding requires personal communication and integration, not requiring new employes to read a four-inch-thick notebook in their "spare time."
-Deena Katz is an associate professor in the personal financial planning division of Texas Tech University, in Best Practices in Assimilating New Hires
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Posted by Mike on December 03, 2008 at 07:16 AM EST #