What Elements Typify a Solid Onboarding Program?

To address the issues that keep them up at night - motivation, engagement and retention of top employees - smart companies know they must shift their approach in the onboarding of new employees. Once a new hire is secured, the real process of "recruiting" begins, to ensure the right hire becomes the right fit. There are six keys to effective employee onboarding that deliver effective engagement, productivity, retention and long-term succession planning.

1. Begin Before Day One. Many firms believe that the first day on the job is the first day of employment. Not so. Make yourself available for any questions your new employees may have in the days prior to that first day on the job, thus letting them know you are excitedly awaiting their arrival, as is the team.

2. Orient, and Then Get On With It. Although many firms still believe that an orientation blitz is the most important part of onboarding, it is likely the least important. While participating in these informative yet often rote activities is important and mandatory, they should be succinct and high level.

3. Maximize Peer Networking. It is vitally important that new recruits engage socially with peers in the office, both on working projects and, more important, at peer networking functions and in relationship-building activities. These can be as simple as organized lunches or as complex as social hours after work.

4. Demand Accountability. Though it is not always the most popular idea, it certainly works: tying the success and rewards of senior firm members to the onboarding success and results of new recruits. By making everyone "pass or fail" along with a new team member, a one-for-all, all-for-one accountability takes root.

5. Practice Real-Time Performance Management. There is no success with any new hire, whether first job or midcareer level, without an ongoing performance management strategy designed to encourage frequent and immediate feedback—in both directions. Bad habits are given no time to develop and relationships are strengthened by the constant flow of communication.

6. Promote Long-Term Career Planning. Effective onboarding requires that managers and senior company leaders carefully groom employees for succession and are attuned to the idea that a corporation, though focused on strategic business objectives, must incorporate an employee's long-term career planning into those objectives.

There is no magic bullet for onboarding an employee successfully. However, through a process of careful cultural immersion, along with direct and supportive feedback, the opportunity to make an impact and managers who care about the employee's long-term livelihood, a company will greatly maximize its return on investment of recruiting dollars and not only hire the right people, but keep them.

[SOURCE: Randolph Harrison, Capital H Group, Chicago, February 13, 2007]