We're on lesson 4.2.3, Bringing on an individual. So the most difficult thing about dealing with onboarding and employee engagement is that you're working with humans. And that means that everybody is different. And every single time you bring in a new hire, it's going to be a little bit different. Here you are trying to create processes and checklists and tools that make your life easier, but the reality is, you're going to have to change things up every time you get a new hire. Because every new hire is going to be different. So, in this lesson we're going to go through some things for you to consider. I can't possibly go through every different type of new hire that you may find, but I'm going to give you some general templates and some ideas and things to consider. That you then can adapt to the people who you have coming into your department. You need to think about, what is unique about this person? Why are you hiring them? What do they need to know? And what might they already know? It doesn't have to be hard, or complicated, or expensive. You just need to put in a little time beforehand to make sure your onboarding process is personalized for your new hire. Sometimes you're going to bring senior level people into the organization and they may need things that are a little bit different. Some people think, you hired a senior person, she should be able to figure it all out herself, right? The senior level executive says, I'm a smart person. I need to be able prove myself and make my mark as soon as possible, so I don't need any of this onboarding stuff. But the reality is, while not everyone will be working on the onboarding of new executives, but if you are, you have to be thinking about them a little differently. Everybody needs onboarding, and you'll want to create an onboarding scheme that has a commitment from the other senior executives and from the new hire as well. A new executive will have his or her own ideas about what they want to do and see. After all, they come in with a wealth of experience from their previous positions. But there are still at least two things that they will want to know. They will want to know who to talk with to get things done. Where the bathrooms are. Or maybe how to use their parking card. You can't assume that the new executive will simply be able to get themselves up and running in your organization. And you shouldn't just allow them to do it all themselves. Work through a checklist and a schedule. Just think of things a bit differently. Veterans. Now I am not a veteran, nor a member of the military service. And while every company and every veteran has their unique personalities and issues, it's a safe bet that proactive training and development can help your company retain and gauge and grow your veteran hires. Certainly, vets are a potential pipeline for talent and leadership, but some vets that either they or the organization may have undefined expectations that get in the way of successful careers. Emily King, in her article in T+D Magazine, gives some good starting points for working with veterans. Prepare, educate yourself about the most common pitfalls and success factors experienced by veterans in civilian organizations and how to set the stage for success. Work with your HR team to explore the range of accommodations for veterans with disabilities, and demystify these challenges for yourself and for the vet. Connect, ask veterans to describe what it was like to be a new employee at your company. And ask line managers to describe their experiences managing veterans. Personally connect with military new hires from day one. Translate if need, answer questions, make suggestion and most importantly, be a helpful colleague that the new hire can reach out to in the coming days, weeks, months and as we've said before, even up to a year. And finally, manage. Learn to distinguish a performance issue from more of a transition issue. Provide some training and coaching and other resources to the veteran as part of the onboarding process to establish context and support them. The most important thing you can do is something. Really, sometimes it's just anything. It's easy to feel overwhelmed by everything that could be done. But sometimes doing something is really much better than doing nothing at all. So, prepare yourself. Make sure that they're connected and that you connect with them. And manage them, and understand that there could be differences here than how you manage your other employees. When we think about what we want out of our work lives, different things would be true for different people. You may want more control over your work. Or, maybe you'd like to work on a team. Perhaps you crave more appreciation from your manager. Or, maybe you just want more compensation. Does loyalty towards the organization spur you out to greater innovation? Or, do you want to move on to something new? Any of these things may be true of you as an individual, but each of these things tend to be true across certain generations as well. As with anything, each individual is different, that's true. But there are similarities among people who grew up with professional understandings for work and reward based on world events or cultural norms, what was happening when they grew up. And your new hire's definition of what they want out of work and how they want to be rewarded may be significantly different than what you know to be true for yourself. Learn more about the generation your new hire is coming from. Think about how the generalizations afforded that generation may affect how you onboard the new hire. And then check with your new hire to see if those generalizations apply for them. You may think that your younger employee will be a technological native, but he may be just as lost when learning a new software program as anyone else. Take generation differences into consideration, but check with the individual. Remember that in many countries around the world, including the United States, age is a protected class. This means the employers cannot discriminate against older workers because of their age. Adapting your onboarding to fit with all generations is great, but don't make assumptions based on age alone. A protected class in the United States means that you cannot discriminate against someone on the basis of that protected class status. So, you cannot discriminate in hiring, promotion, etc, based on a person's sex, or age, or race. This also means that you shouldn't make assumptions about your new hire on the basis of their protected class status either. But the reality is that some of these statuses provide an opportunity for individualization in onboarding that should not be ignored because it is a protected class status. So, for example, if you have a pregnant woman who is coming in to your workplace as a new hire, she may need an accommodation to have a stool to sit on during her shift. You shouldn't assume that she needs a stool and automatically have one there for her there in the workplace. But during the onboarding, you should talk with her about how you are there to make the workplace comfortable for her and offer to help her with accommodations if needed. Similarly, if the new hire's protected class will be new to the workplace, the fist person from another country, the first person who has a visibly obvious disability, the first vet, the first person with children, etc. You should not make assumptions about how the new hire would like to handle the situation. But having a conversation and letting the new hire know you are open to more discussions can help foster constructive dialogues about the welcomeness of the workplace. Some new hires are open to discussion, some are more private, and those attitudes might shift over time. But conversation with a new hire and in concert with your HR team, can help you feel more comfortable with bringing the new hire onto your team. You may also want to think about what resources your organization has available to diverse members of your team. Are there infinity groups, or are there other kinds of organizations within your larger company or organization that they might be interested in? Be aware of making assumptions about whether or not someone might be interested, but think about ways that the information can be available to them and easily accessible. Finally, lets talk about individual strengths. In the article, Reinventing Employee Onboarding, the authors talk about really creating an onboarding process to fit each individual. We've got the individuals again. How could an organization work to support a new hire's individual identity, rather than simply telling the new hire how best to adapt to the organizational culture? To me, that was somewhat confusing at first. And certainly sounded like a near impossibility, I mean how can we adapt organizational culture to each individual employee? But I don't think that's what the authors are getting at. They're saying that you should look at your new hire as an individual. With strengths and ideas of a lifetime of experiences that they bring to the table. Don't lose that opportunity. Use the onboarding process to encourage your new hire to use what uniquely bring to the organization. Do they sing on the weekends? Maybe the new hire can choose entertainment for the summer picnic. Do they prefer time to think about an answer before they answer that question you asked? Maybe ask them to summarize the meeting notes and add their own commentary and ideas at the bottom. Or maybe, instead of just having a new hire listen to you about how great the organization is, talk instead about how you are excited to have their individual strengths as part of the team. And then, listen to them. When they talk about why they're excited to be there, and why they hope to bring to the team. Treat the new hire as an individual, and maybe they will surprise you about what they want to bring to the team. Really, it's about being intentional, about designing the human relationship. Creating an onboarding process and individualizing it can certainly take time. But you don't have to do it all and get it all perfect before you have a new hire coming in. You can build as you go, just make sure that you keep notes so that you know what worked and what didn't, and you can change things if you need to for the next time. But let's say you have a new hire coming in next week. What can you do now to get prepared? That's what we're going to talk about in the next lesson.
