Onboarding New Hires? Don’t Forget These 3 Key Things

For your new employees, the first days on the job are some of the most critical. As a leadership coach and creator of a leadership development platform, I've seen firsthand how crucial onboarding is in helping employees quickly become productive. Effective onboarding also pays off over the long run, with improvements in employee engagement and retention.

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Despite its importance, though, many companies are still falling short with their onboarding process. According to a Gallup analysis, "only 12% of U.S. employees say their company does a good job of onboarding" and "nearly one in five employees either report that their most recent onboarding was poor—or that they received no onboarding at all."

So why do onboarding programs so frequently miss the mark? Based on what I’ve observed, there are three key areas that onboarding frequently overlooks; addressing them can make a real difference in the success of your new hires.

1. Help new hires build connections, not just gain knowledge.

Beyond just imparting knowledge, onboarding should help new employees start building relationships with their team and throughout your organization. In today’s hybrid work environment, it's particularly crucial that onboarding includes relationship-building because it's less likely to happen spontaneously, the way it does when people are in the same office.

2. Have proactive conversations about goals and preferences.

Besides introducing new hires to different aspects of your company, onboarding can also be a time for you to learn about them. When I worked in leadership roles at Deloitte Consulting before starting my own business, I made a habit of sitting down with new team members so that each of us could talk about our goals and work styles. This conversation helped me achieve alignment between what they wanted to gain from their experience on the team and how I could leverage their strengths to advance business goals.

Learning about each other's preferences also helped us work together more smoothly and avoid misunderstandings. For example, we would establish what we'd communicate about via email and what needed to be discussed face to face.

3. Connect new hires with learning opportunities early.

Perhaps the biggest missed opportunity in onboarding is connecting new hires with training opportunities early, especially if they express interest in leadership training. Development is crucial for retention and engagement, and younger generations crave development opportunities. Don't wait until you see signs that they're a high performer or have high potential to consider them for leadership development. There's a lot of leadership potential at lower levels, and providing training helps strengthen your leadership pipeline, which is a big concern for many companies.

Investing early in new hires also signals your commitment to their success. And it can alleviate some of the pressure on managers, who are likely already too stretched to onboard their new hires effectively. Finally, going through a shared learning experience early on can help new hires form relationships that will give them much-needed support.

Final Thoughts

By focusing on these three often-overlooked aspects of onboarding—building connections, having proactive conversations about goals and preferences and connecting new hires with learning opportunities early—you can set your new employees up for success and create a more engaged, productive workforce.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com. To read more of my contributions to Forbes Coaches Council, click here.

What Leadership Skills Should Training Address?

As you continue to navigate a lean work environment full of change, are you looking ahead to next year to see how to develop your team’s leadership skills? Choosing a leadership training solution can feel like “one more thing” to tackle, so I’m sharing a series of articles to help make the process a little easier.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

In the first article, I shared some questions you can use to uncover what your team needs from leadership development training. This week, I’ll focus on helping you clarify the outcomes for your training solution. Remember, the program you choose doesn’t have to solve everything that’s going on with your team, but it should address your top two or three concerns. Below are common leadership challenges we hear about. Which ones affect your team?

Reducing Stress

I don’t have to tell you that everyone is busier than ever these days. Perhaps your team, like many others, is stretched thin because of staffing cuts or hiring freezes. According to findings of the Future Forum Pulse survey released in October, burnout is still on the rise, and 43% of professionals feel burned out. As a coach and facilitator who specializes in working with high-performing women, I was especially struck that the survey found 32% more burnout among women compared with men.

To be effective, leadership development solutions must address stress and burnout. Reducing your team’s stress burden will make it easier for all of you to deal with any other ongoing issues.

Prioritizing the Right Work

In a survey by Paychex Inc., 43% of respondents said a lack of time management skills is holding back their career advancement. As we navigate through uncertainty and change with lean teams, it’s no wonder that time management is difficult for many professionals.

To quickly gauge whether your team uses time effectively, ask yourself whether each member spends most of their time on their “Big 3”: the top three areas where they can have the biggest impact on the business. If not, aligning their capacity with what drives results should be a focal point in your leadership training program.

Improving Communication

Surveys consistently reinforce the importance of their employees’ communication skills, and leaders themselves say it is one of the most important leadership competencies. 

But, for many teams, the rise of remote work has introduced new communication challenges. Issues range from miscommunication over email and chat to overcommunication by managers who keep tight reins on remote workers to not knowing how to manage the volume of communication. The leadership training solution you select should reflect the new realities of workplace communication.

Developing Stronger Relationships

Closely related to communication is the ability to nurture productive relationships at work. Even before the pandemic, many high performers fell into the trap of keeping their heads down to focus on results at the expense of relationships.

Today, we have to be even more deliberate about relationship building. Research shows that employees find it harder to form a sense of connection with their colleagues in a hybrid workplace. And that impacts everything from collaboration to employee well-being. An effective leadership training solution should guide employees in how to build relationships with remote employees. If a training program involves peer learning or affinity groups, that in itself can strengthen relationships.

Engaging and Retaining Employees

One of the most important outcomes of a leadership development program isn’t necessarily part of the curriculum. Simply offering training and development is a big step toward keeping your employees engaged and retaining them at your company. In a 2019 survey, 94% of employees said they would stay at their company longer if it invested in helping them learn. A study that year by Sitel Group found that 92% of U.S. employees said that learning increases their engagement and motivation at work. 

What’s Ahead in This Series

As you consider the outcomes I’ve mentioned today, what is most important for your organization? With this in hand, you’ll be one step closer to selecting the leadership development solution that’s right for your team. In the final article of this series, I’ll talk about what effective leadership training looks like. In the meantime, I invite you to explore one of our newest leadership development solutions, the award-winning app New Lens. New Lens is designed to teach your team members how to manage their capacity, focus on the right work, communicate with impact - in a way that fosters connection and fits into their busy schedules. We would love to see if it can help you. Schedule your demo now.

Five Things Employees Want from Their Leaders

Have you heard the old saying that “employees leave managers, not companies”? As turnover rates remain elevated (one in five employees said they were extremely or very likely to leave their companies this year), the stakes are high for developing the kind of leaders that employees don’t want to leave. But what do employees actually want from their leaders? This list will give you some insight and aligns with what I see as an executive coach time and again.

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Appreciation

According to a survey by McKinsey & Company, employers underestimate how much employees want to feel valued by both their manager and their organization. They also underestimate how much feeling valued affects whether employees stay with the company. Providing the appreciation that employees crave doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming. Here’s one idea you can start using right away: Start your next team meeting by asking people to share their recent successes or what’s been going well so that you can all celebrate your wins together. This doesn’t take long, and it makes people feel good as they start noticing what they’re actually getting done. Bonus: Besides giving your team members a lift, this appreciation exercise also gives you more information and insight about what is working well with your team.

Clarity

A survey of 1,000 U.S. workers about communication issues that hamper leadership found something striking: 57% of respondents complained that their leaders do not give clear directions. That was the second-most-cited issue in the whole survey. As an executive coach, I have also personally observed this. I frequently hear from employees who get frustrated because their bosses don’t set clear expectations for their work or define what success looks like for their roles. In addition to sharing this information, it also important to “connect the dots”: Explain the reasons behind your actions, questions, or decisions so that others understand what you are thinking. As Brene Brown says, “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”

Feedback

Employees want to know how they are doing and expect their leaders to tell them. Even if it might be hard to hear in the moment, most of us value getting practical, actionable feedback. However, a Gallup survey found that only about one in four employees strongly agrees that the feedback they get helps them be better at their job. If you always dread offering performance feedback, it can help to reframe how you think about it. Approach feedback with a spirit of generosity. You're not being the "bad guy" by criticizing. Instead, you're giving the employee valuable information to help them be successful. Wouldn't you be grateful if someone took the time to tell you what you should know?

Learning and Growth

Employees want leaders to care about their growth and development. Providing feedback is part of that, but so are recommending employees for training opportunities, delegating with growth in mind and exploring new ways your organization can promote ongoing learning. These efforts will pay off in engagement and retention. In a 2019 survey, 94% of employees said they would stay at their company longer if it invested in helping them learn. A study that year by Sitel Group found that 92% of U.S. employees said that learning increases their engagement and motivation at work.

Respect

There’s one critical factor that trumps everything else: respect. If you remember just one thing from this article, remember that employees want their leaders’ respect. In her research, Christine Porath, an associate professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, found that treating employees with respect outweighs all else when it comes to making a leader successful. “No other leadership behavior had a bigger effect on employees across the outcomes we measured,” she wrote in Harvard Business Review.

What Can You Do?

As a leader, how are you doing across these areas? How is your organization’s leadership doing as a whole? What are the top one or two biggest opportunities to improve? Remember that Newberry Solutions has resources that can help you, including the award-winning New Lens app, our program to develop effective leaders at all levels in a way that is affordable and scalable. We would love to help you determine if it’s a fit. Schedule a demo now.