Onboarding Shapes Culture
In 2021 we were experiencing some rapid growth and at the same time my brother was looking for a career shift. I recommended that he look at some of our open positions and he was able to fill one of the roles we greatly needed. What I didn’t know was while I had been writing software, the rest of the company had been building an excellent onboarding machine and I was about to get a firsthand view of that process.
It is pretty nerve wracking for me when I recommend a job to a friend. I think a lot about whether the work will meet their expectations and line up with how they want to be growing. I also want them to have a good experience and to be treated right.
After 7 years of growing a company and forming deep relationships with coworkers I consider close friends, I can also get anxious about recommending a friend to a job. I want my coworkers to be impressed with the recommendation and for that person to excel. I also want them to connect with our culture and add in their own unique flavor to the group.
A hot breakfast sandwich
I wasn’t prepared for the onboarding experience my brother had when he joined our company. I was expecting the slow ramp up as he got to know people and joined our standup meetings. It would be a win as long as it exceeded my first day at other jobs where people forgot there was an intern starting.
Instead, he was greeted his first day, in the midst of Covid, in our office with a hot breakfast sandwich. It was such a small thing but it still chokes me up a bit to think about this group of people that I love, at a place I helped build, welcoming someone else I love and saying through actions, “you’re welcome here, we want you to be successful.”
Before we became a completely remote company, I would see our office team go the extra mile - setting up people’s desks with all of the equipment, pens, and notebooks they would need. They could have just as easily left everything in boxes to be assembled as part of a bizarre first day hazing ritual. On top of a fully working computer station, the team would leave a handwritten post-it note that simply said, “Have a great first day!”
I had always thought these greetings were special. Seeing my brother go through this first interaction I was able to view it with a fresh perspective. Onboarding can set the tone for how people would engage with their coworkers going forward. Our team had taken the saying “you don’t get a second chance at a first impression” literally and it showed in the culture that was able to form around it.
Purposeful onboarding
We might forget the details but the feelings will stick with us. The small personal touches on a first day will get paid forward and multiplied when you’re the one welcoming new people in. As the world around us gets more commoditized I believe we seek out sincere connections. How we welcome each other is the foundation that inclusion and belonging can grow from.
One company I’ve talked to has built into their onboarding process a step of adding a 1 on 1 meeting to the CEO’s calendar. Many places talk about an open door policy but this is a much more powerful action that establishes it as a practice. They could have an office administrator automatically send out a meeting invite but that would send a very different message. By having the new person create the meeting the CEO is teaching:
1) This is the process for getting time with me
2) You are important and I value time with you
3) The door is open not just with me but also anyone else you want to meet with
Just about any onboarding process can be fine tuned with small changes that can make the new person feel valued while emphasizing important lessons that can be carried forward. We put so much time into recruiting fairs, job board advertisements, multiple rounds of interviews, or the many other aspects of hiring. Don’t forget to invest in the most valuable part, welcoming the new folks into your tribe.