On-boarding well

If you've ever been on a cruise, you know it takes more than a couple of minutes to actually make it from port to actually getting on the ship. It's a long process of the crew making sure you're supposed to be on the ship, you learning what you can and can't do while on board, finding your cabin, learning what do do in an emergency, and so on.

The process of introducing someone new to a team is called “on-boarding.” Sometimes it's written without the hyphen (“onboarding”), and I firmly believe the only reason the powers that be keep the hyphen is to avoid a spell check flag in office documents. :)


In organizations, on-boarding refers not only to the first day, but to a period of time that starts before day one and goes through at least the first 90 days (and often through the first 180) of employment. I'm writing in an employment context, but the ideas hold true for any time someone joins a new group.

Talent Management, a trade publication, has a nice article around on-boarding in the March 2010 issue.

Smaller organizations typically lean heavily on two on-boarding tools: the employee handbook and contextual learning. Larger organizations typically lean on standardized on-boarding templates (a list of trainings and conversations that should take place with key stakeholders). Both can work very well, and both sometimes fail miserably. The difference is execution.

In a small firm, it's easy to get lost in the immediacy of the work at hand. Smaller firms typically require more hats, and teams are able to connect with each other fairly informally. There might be an introductory lunch, some handshakes, then sitting down with a peer to learn how a system/process/tool works. The next day is the same, minus the lunch, and with more sitting-with-the-peer time. The obstacle that can occur is that the peer is likely committed to a full-time series of tasks already, and ultimately the new person is simply helping the peer with work – which means the new person only learns what the peer knows. Soon a fire drill may pull the peer away – or dump new and unexpected work in the new person's lap – and voila! The introductory period is over.

In a large firm, the tendency is to lean on process more than people. There is likely a standard template for on-boarding used across the firm or function. The manager is supposed to update the template, sit with the new employee, and get them started on understanding the firm. In the large firm the obstacle is that the manager assumes the on-boarding template captures what the employee needs to learn to do the job and says something like, “let me know if you have any questions.” The new person is left to make assumptions about the organization, learn the culture from sources that are possibly sub-optimal (the chatty co-worker, or the dotted-line manager with a personal agenda), and decide how to deliver results without guidance and context.

The difference in failure and success in organizations of all sizes is simple: appropriate time and thoughtful consideration of the needs of the new employee. The manager needs to spend the time learning about the individual and not just the role, understand what might be unique obstacles, and be willing to share personal experiences that helped foster team success. The other tools will be there as well, but the greatest boost managers can give to new people is a healthy dose of time and attention.

Final thought: if you're thinking to yourself that it's too expensive in time and labor to commit to a long on-boarding plan, consider that employees decide how long they'll be at a firm in the first 30 days – and going through the hiring process is often more expensive than it would have been to keep that person that just walked out the door.

-Bryan