Episode 853 - The Blueprint for Onboarding New Employees

0:04 Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building, and goal achieving. This is the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast with your host, Paul Falavolito.

0:21 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast. It's episode 853. Today's episode is called The Blueprint for for onboarding new employees. And I want you to think about the last person your organization hired. Think about their first morning. They probably walked through the door excited, nervous, curious, and trying to figure out one very important thing. Did I make the right decision coming here? And here's what a lot of organizations do next. They hand that person paperwork.

1:00 Here's the employee handbook. Here's your login. Here's where you park. Here's the break room. And here's the policy you need to sign. And then somebody says, you're going to follow John around today. Who's John? John wasn't told he was training anybody. John doesn't want to train anybody. John has been here eight years, does half the job differently than everybody else. And his entire training philosophy is, you'll figure it out. Congratulations, your onboarding program is gone. And leaders wonder why six months later, the employee isn't performing consistently.

1:43 The problem may have started six hours after they walked through the door. Great onboarding is not an HR function. It's an operational function. It's a leadership function. And most importantly, It's the first real demonstration of your culture. You can tell a new employee that your organization values excellence. They are watching to see if you operate with excellence. You can tell them communication matters. They're watching how your people communicate.

2:18 You can tell them standards matter. They're watching which standards everybody ignores. That's onboarding. It starts today. before the training manual ever opens. Look at the Ritz-Carlton. Their approach to onboarding has become a case study for a reason. New employees aren't treated like people who need to be processed through orientation. They're introduced to the culture and the gold standards.

2:47 Learning coaches help guide employees and the process continues beyond the first few days. The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center describes onboarding as part of the systems and processes required to create their service culture. Think about the message behind that. Before we teach you everything we want you to do, we want you to understand who we are. That's powerful because onboarding should answer a fundamental question for every new employee.

3:18 What does good look like here? Not theoretically, operationally. When I walk through the door, what does good look like? When I answer the phone, what does good look like? When a customer is upset, what does good look like? When we're busy, tired, frustrated, or short-staffed, what does good look like? If your new employee can't answer those questions, they're going to create their own answers, and eventually you will have 10 employees performing the same job 10 different ways.

3:51 So here's the blueprint. Start before day one. When someone accepts your job offer, onboarding has already begun. What happens between you're hired and welcome aboard? Does somebody contact them? Do they know where to go? Do they know what to wear? Do they know who they're meeting? Is their workspace ready? Do their credentials work? Or do they arrive at 8 o'clock Monday morning and somebody starts saying, Hang on, I don't think anybody told IT you were starting today.

4:25 That's not a technology problem. That's a leadership signal. The organization knew this person was coming, so make sure you prepare for them. Then day one needs to accomplish something bigger than completing paperwork. Day one needs to create belonging. Someone should be expecting that employee. Someone should know their name.

4:48 Someone should introduce them to the team. Their equipment should be ready. Their schedule should be clear. Their trainer should know their training. And somewhere during that first day, a leader needs to sit down with that employee and explain why the organization exists. That's the conversation many companies skip.

5:12 We become obsessed with teaching tasks before explaining the mission. Chick-fil-A is a good example because Its public description of its culture puts purpose directly at the center of the organization. Its values are connected to serving people, and its leadership development program emphasizes real operational experience, coaching, role clarity, and training around service standard. That's the connection leaders need to understand.

5:44 Your mission cannot live on a wall. It has to make it into orientation. And then we move into the next phase. Teach the standard before teaching the shortcut. This is where organizations get themselves into trouble. A veteran employee says, the policy says to do it this way, but nobody really does that. There it is. You have officially trained your new employee to ignore your organization. They haven't even received their first paycheck yet. If the official process doesn't work anymore, fix the process. If the standard matters, enforce the standard. Never allow informal onboarding to become the place where organizational standards quietly die. And don't overwhelm people. A new employee doesn't need 20 years of organizational knowledge in

6:36 20 minutes. Build the training in layers. What must they know today? What must they be able to perform safely before working independently? What should they understand after their first week? What should they demonstrate after 30 days? What should competence look like at 60 or 90 days? Now onboarding becomes a process instead of an information dump. Apple provides another good lesson here. Apple says new employee orientation includes business conduct from the beginning, and its training uses real-world scenarios to show employees how policies apply. Apple Retail also describes training, coaching, and customized development as ongoing support for employees. That scenario piece matters. Stop asking new employees, do you understand? Of

7:31 course they're going to say yes, they're new. They don't want to sound or look stupid. Ask them to show you. Give them a scenario. Walk them through a difficult customer. Give them a problem. Put them in the environment. Watch how they perform. Then coach. then repeat. That's how you find the difference between information and competence. And there's another piece of this blueprint that leaders miss. Check in when nothing appears to be wrong. Don't wait until the new employee makes a mistake. Ask them after the first week, what's confusing? Ask them what they're seeing other employees do that doesn't match what they were taught. That question alone can expose some serious culture problems because new employees see

8:19 things we stopped seeing years ago. They're walking into your organization with fresh eyes. Make sure you use them. Then somewhere around 30 days, sit down again. Don't make it ceremonial. Make it useful. Where are you confident? Where are you struggling? What do you need more practice with? What did we fail to explain? That last question is important. What did we fail to explain? Because onboarding is a shared responsibility.

8:51 The employee owns the effort. Leadership owns the environment where that effort is developed. Then repeat the process as they move toward independent performance. And here's the goal. You should be able to take two new employees on Put them through the same onboarding system with different trainers and produce employees who understand the same standards. They don't have to become the same person. You want personality. You want individual strengths.

9:24 You want people who think. What cannot depend on personality is whether your organization's core standards are taught. That's where consistency matters because eventually the new employee stops being new. And then something interesting happens. They become the person standing next to your next new employee. Now the cycle starts again.

9:48 The person you onboard today may become the trainer tomorrow. So every shortcut you tolerate today can become part of somebody else's orientation later. Every bad habit can be inherited every unclear expectation can be passed down and every strong standard can be passed down too that's why onboarding is bigger than training one employee you're building the next generation of your culture If I walked into your organization tomorrow as a brand new employee, would I experience the organization you describe on your website? Would I see the mission?

10:27 Would I see the standards? Would I see leaders involved? Would the people training me reinforce what leadership says matters? That's the test. Because you only get one first day. You only get one first week. And you only get one opportunity to show a new employee from the beginning that This is who we are. This is how we operate.

10:52 And this is what you can expect from us. So before your next employee arrives, stop asking, who can they follow around? Build the blueprint. Prepare for their arrival. Teach them your mission. Show them the standard. Give them real situations to work through. Check their progress and coach what needs improvement. And when they're finally ready to work independently, make sure they aren't simply capable of doing the job.

11:24 Make sure they understand what it means to do the job your way. This has been the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast, and I thank you for listening.