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Example of best and worst onboarding experiences

According to Bauer (2004) onboarding systems range and vary from highly structured to a more 'sink or swim' approach.  Research shows that formal onboarding significantly increases employee satisfaction and retention, yet many companies lack solid onboarding processes to help the new employee to understand their job and the organizational culture and to become connected to the organization.  Onboarding has four distinct levels or building blocks: Compliance, Clarification, Culture, and Connection.  The degree to which an organization addresses all four of these is broken into three levels:
1.     Passive
2.     High Potential
3.     Proactive
Bauer, T. (2004)
·        Consider the best and worst onboarding experiences you've had and compare them by applying the Onboarding Strategy Levels and how they addressed the four C's.
·        Put yourself in the shoes of an employer who has limited time and financial resources for onboarding, what strategies would you use to effectively onboard your new employees?


Consider the best and worst onboarding experiences you've had and compare them by applying the Onboarding Strategy Levels and how they addressed the four C's.

I had my best onboarding process in the first job I got. We had onboarding for 7 days. And four C’s were addressed with great details.
Compliance – I joined the company on 10th December, 2007 and on our first week we were given overview of compliance. Since we would be dealing with customer data, it was important to know what not to do to stay compliant.
Clarification – As trainees we were given the understanding of our roles, what was expected for at least next 1 year.
Culture – We were given some idea about the culture, but later I understood it was not the whole picture, so I would not say it was extensive overview.
Connection – Although we met some higher ups but we did not really have any assigned mentor or coach, so there was not any scope to establish any interpersonal connections.
So it was a “High Potential Onboarding”. Compliance and clarification were well covered while some culture and connection related knowledge were also in the place. After working in the first company for 7.5 years I moved on to the next job. And there I had had worst onboarding experience.
Basically, none of the C’s were touched upon. Which was really strange and shock to me. The first day I was put in a project. I cannot say I left the job in 3 months because of the bad onboarding experience. But it is true that my confidence level was low on the, going from a large organization, I expected something similar culture. But it was different, and that made me question my judgement of joining that company. So eventually I left and moved on. So, I cannot even say it was a “Passive” onboarding strategy, because nobody even talked to me about Compliance or culture. Since I already had experience in the industry I had fair amount of idea, but an onboarding would have been nice.

Have you ever left a job because of poor onboarding? 
I am working for third company. In this company I had a fair onboarding experience. So, no, I did not ever quit a job solely because the onboarding experience was bad. But, Like I mentioned above, in my second job, I did not have any onboarding experience, or it was my worst onboarding experience, I lost confidence in that company because of that. And I eventually left because of the cultural shock.
Put yourself in the shoes of an employer who has limited time and financial resources for onboarding, what strategies would you use to effectively onboard your new employees?
I work for a large organization with 20000+ employees working for it. We have college pass outs with and experienced professionals joining the company. So, college pass out might not have much idea about compliance but experienced professionals would have some idea about compliance and culture. Now, keeping this in mind I would like to adopt the “Proactive” onboarding strategy. Where all 4 building blocks are formally addressed (Bauer, 2004).
I would like to implement 10 onboarding steps (Halvorson,2015)-
·       Invest in training.
Every employer has limited resources and the better the resources can be utilized the more profit the company can make. But investing in new joiner can be beneficial in long term, as making them better prepared for projects can help the projects run smoother. Moreover, it can actually make the employees stay longer with same employer that will be a great return on investment.


References:
Bauer, T.N. (2004). On-Boarding New Employees: Maximizing Success.SHRM Foundation. Retrieved from:  http://www.shrm.org/about/foundation/products/documents/onboarding%20epg-%20final.pdf
Halvorson, C. (2015). 12 Employee Onboarding Best Practices Every Business Owner Needs to Know. WhenIwork.com. Retrieved from: http://wheniwork.com/blog/employee-onboarding-best-practices/



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