Why On-Boarding Matters
I recently had a conversation with a hiring manager who was upset that an employee they worked hard to recruit and train for a key staff position, had resigned with no notice.
When asked why they were resigning, the employee shared a lengthy list of issues, none of them were known to the manager. As the manager said to me, “They were total surprises. None were deal breakers. They each had a solution.”
I asked about their hiring process, and it sounded as if the organization had done a good job interviewing and checking refences so that probably wasn’t the issue,
I then asked about how they bring people into the organization. What is their onboarding process?
The manager looked at me with a blank expression and said, “That’s HR’s job and I am not part of that process.”
No, onboarding is not HR’s responsibility. While HR collaborates with other leaders to craft the careful steps needed to successfully bring a new hire into the organization and coordinate who is responsible for which portions of the onboarding process, managers play the critical role.
A good onboarding process has built in checkpoints and milestones when the person’s manager asks a series of questions designed to find out if there are any issues that might cause the new hire to consider leaving the organization. These conversations are typically conducted at the 30-60-90-day marks so there aren’t any surprises or unexpected resignations down the road.
The manager I mentioned above, who thought they weren’t part of the process, had totally missed the point. If they had been doing the periodic check-ins, chances are the employee would have shared their concerns and the organization would have done their best to resolve those concerns.
The employee said, “No one ever told me I had that authority to speak up or ask questions, so I just kept working 12-hour days.” I’d like to think that this issue would have surfaced if the manager had been doing the periodic conversations.
Yes, in this case, the employee bears some responsibility for not speaking up before they resigned, but the manager is the one who wasn’t paying the kind of attention needed to bring a new staff member successfully into the organization.
New hires need attention and information. They need to be told to whom to go for answers to their questions. They need to be asked often how things are going, and whether they have what they need to do their job.
It is a difficult process to hire these days, so why not invest in a well-crafted onboarding process? There is more detail on onboarding in The Big Book of HR to help you get started. You may also want to read our article in the HR Exchange Network, Creating a Successful Onboarding Experience and our recent blog Onboarding in a Brave New World.