Ask Zanna Anything | How do I re-design our onboarding for more emotional engagement?

No happy customers without happy employees.

It sounds simple but how do you make sure your employees are happy?

Let's start with one of the first impressions they have with your company, the onboarding.

During onboarding, you not only want to keep the promises you made during the application process, but you also really want to connect with them and create emotional engagement.

Let me share 5 tips with you on how to do this.

Share 'Best Self Stories' (NO 'Introductions')

In most onboardings, but also in other meetings where colleagues from different departments join, you start with a short introduction for everyone. What's your name? Where are you from? What's your job? Etc. Not very inspiring, both for the narrator and the audience.

In 'Alive At Work', my holy bible when it comes to employee engagement, Dan Cable shares an exercise that's called 'The Best Self'. It's really simple, impactful and we gave it a little of our own additional magic by tweaking it a bit ;-)

You ask everyone to think for 5 minutes about a situation in which they felt their 'Best Self'. For example, a situation they couldn't wait to share with their partner or family immediately when they got home. The situation can be personal as well as work related. After the 5 minutes, everyone shares their 'Best Self Story' with the group. After sharing the story the group thinks of a hashtag (1-3 word summary) that fits the story. #MakePeopleShine or #HeatfeltDrumbeat or #KingOfInnovation.

I've done this exercise in a lot of workshops and it's amazing. You feel the energy in the room changing when these stories are shared. Even when it's virtually. In the book, Dan Cable shares insights from experimenting with this exercise. Employees who have done this exercise during their onboarding work longer for the company and are more happy in their jobs.

Share 'Pride' (NOT 'History')

Also part of the onboarding is the CEO telling something about the history of the company. Of course this can be valuable, but it can also be a little boring, too functional. When you want to spark some fire with your new colleagues, ask the CEO to talk about why he or she is proud to be part of the company. You can feel the difference already, just thinking about it. Talking about pride gives another energy to the story. Next to that, new colleagues can connect their own purpose to the story.

Share Customer Impact (NOT internal structures)

You know the picture with the hierarchical structure of the company. Very useful if you want to know more about the internal structures, but do not make it part of your onboarding.

Instead, talk about the impact the company makes for customers. To make it as concrete as possible, share not only figures but also examples of concrete, individual situations. Employees are looking for purpose and meaning in their jobs. Ultimately, they want to make a difference for customers. By sharing the customer impact, you link directly to these drivers.

Share how you solve problems (NOT the Way of Working)

The Way of Working describes procedures and how you work together in your company. It's shared with new colleagues during the onboarding. Yes it sometimes matters that they know the instructions, but just do if after they have had their energizing onboarding.

By sharing how you solve problems in the company, new colleagues get a clear view of how it works in practice. Next to that, it gives energy to feel that there is room for mistakes and creativity and flexibility to solve them in the right way for the customer.

And last but not least...

Thinking about your first day at a company, for sure you know the feeling of spending all day with your colleagues from the IT department to fix your laptop. Of course, that's not what you wish for when you start all fresh and vibrant. ;)

So, a no-brainer, make sure to have a seamless process when it comes to laptop and other tools and stuff. Start with this on day 2 and block day 1 for the 4 tips above.

Happy Saturday! ??♀?

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