Assimilating C-Suite Executives with Essential Pre-Boarding and On-Boarding

Assimilating C-Suite Executives with Essential Pre-Boarding and On-Boarding?

Executive recruitment of promising new leaders typically has good companies focussing on the onboarding process, but amazing companies pre-board as well. Pre-boarding is a proactive strategic approach to assimilating your new employee well before their first day in the office (if offices still exist). It involves informing, preparing, and exciting employees prior to their first day.

Pre-boarding and on-boarding fulfil promises made during the executive recruitment process lays the foundation for the rest of a new top-level manager or C-Suite members work life cycle. For those joining a new company, onboarding can be a draining process even during the best of circumstances. With new challenges created by the changes in the work environment over the past year, companies need to overhaul their board-level onboarding strategies to address longstanding shortcomings.

Greg McHugh – Founder at GTS International has over 22 years experience of in pre-boarding new employees for technology and financial businesses worldwide. “Pre-boarding can reap rewards when it comes to future performance, impact, and retention and also makes the entire onboarding experience seamless, as well as mitigating risks. You will find that most leading consulting recruitment agencies have developed highly evolved pre-boarding procedures granting the streamlined service that is known and relied upon”, says Greg.

How does GTS guide clients with pre-boarding?

Preboarding Tips For Executive Recruitment:

• Brief hires thoroughly
• Share information - Completely & quickly but also have documents they can revisit?
• Set definite objectives - Clearly articulated and documented in a success profile to ensure there is an objective assessment of the individual’s progress and clarity if in time these are not being met
• Communicate effectively & regularly
• Personalise onboarding/pre-boarding processes?
• Finalise all exact office details - Is the executive a Mac or PC user? iPhone or Android? Have they got a suitable chair and desk? Do they have the right programmes or access to the cloud?
• Raise excitement/motivation
• Learn employee personal norms - Working and personal lives operate in tandem, and currently, many people’s lives are in flux.

Human and emotional connection – How do you ensure that your new employee is going to be engaged when they join? Over-communicating is not a bad thing. Make sure you speak to new executives regularly in the post-offer phase. Making the human/emotional connection strong by relationship building is fundamental. We recommend calls, video calls, and training sessions in the pre-joining phase.

Personalisation – We all know that ‘one size does not fit all. Share your plan for the onboarding process so they can see what the weeks will look like and how you’ll communicate with them. Enable them to have oversight and prioritise whom they speak to first and in what order. Also, spread out the meet and greets to ensure there is depth of conversation. Mass meet and greets do not allow existing employees to build a connection and relationship with new leaders.?

Make the implicit explicit - One of the key challenges for those in leadership positions joining remotely is that there are few opportunities to gather insight into the informal working practices, behaviours, cultural values, and ways of doing things. “We suggest briefing them thoroughly on their peers, team, and how things get done in the business can really help. This is why it is so essential to know the business you are working with.”

Information and Data - There is always a huge amount of information to absorb, and the quicker it happens, the quicker your new recruit will be able to impact. Therefore as soon as you feel comfortable doing so, share relevant data that will help the individual to build a picture as to what is really happening in the company and, if a functional director, what is happening in their department.?

Excitement…not anti-climax - The importance of ‘purpose’ is sometimes overlooked.? Employers should take time to discuss mission and values, how the company began, and the plan for the future. Include the new hire in those plans and discuss the part they will play in it. Tell them what parts of working at your company other employees value the most.?

GTS International? are specialists in the fine art of executive recruitment. We focus on the technology & Financial sector at the board and executive management level.

We locate, target, attract and place senior-level candidates globally every year across our specialist industry sectors, leveraging our endurance in our market, our unparalleled networks, and the knowledge and proficiency of our specialist consultants.

GTS International partners with companies around the world with their executive talent acquisition through our international reach in Europe, America, Asia Pacific, and MENA.

The GTS International team of head-hunters and researchers target the world’s best and brightest talent. To discuss your executive search requirements please get in touch at?info@gts-search.com

Pre-boarding: the success secret behind your executive onboarding strategy

Winning before they even start: why companies use pre-boarding to boost executives’ onboarding

It takes an average of 4-6 months to fill a CEO-level position, with VP-level not far behind at 2-3 months, according to research. What’s more, 31% of new hires have reportedly quit within their first 6 months because of poor onboarding. With that much time invested into screening, interviewing, selecting and constructing an offer, there’s much at stake when the successful candidate actually starts.

So how can a company, after spending considerable time, effort and ultimately costs on a hire, maximise their chances of success?

The answer is preboarding, an often overlooked part of employee engagement that happens after an offer is accepted and before the chosen candidate starts.

What is preboarding?

Pre-boarding is a proactive strategic approach to helping your new employee integrate before their first day and feel welcome and equipped to make an impact in the organisation quickly and smoothly. Preboarding involves informing, preparing, and exciting employees prior to them starting.

With new challenges created by the changes in work environments over the past two years of the pandemic, companies are having to address and overhaul their board-level onboarding strategies with even greater urgency.

What are the steps in preboarding?

There are three aspects to preboarding - the professional, the social and the practical. These don’t have to happen at the same time. For example, the practical aspects of preboarding such as choosing technology or setting up accounts can happen closer to the starting date.

The professional and the social aspects of preboarding, however, are critical steps in engaging with the executives to help them gain an edge when they start and manage their expectations of what’s expected from their performance and people interactions.

• Ensure consent
• Some executives are unable or unwilling to engage with their future employer, so it’s important to agree on the extent of contact an executive is willing to commit to prior to joining.
• Ensure confidentiality
• Remember your future executive isn’t an employee just yet, so confidentiality agreements are essential when sharing sensitive documents or KPIs.
• Share strategic information
• Whether it’s data dashboards, go-to-market plans or financial projections, it may help your C-suite member to familiarise themselves with key documents in advance.
• Create opportunities to ask questions
• A continuous engagement isn’t just one way - the future employee may want to drive their own preboarding agenda, such as understanding team challenges or ways of working.
• Create opportunities to meet peers or direct reports
• Positive relationships are a key predictor of onboarding success, so it may be helpful to organise early meet & greets with key team members.
• Set mutual expectations
• Everyone works differently, but there are objectives to be met. Your future executive would have articulated their ways of working during the interview process, but it’s helpful to codify it in mutual agreements, without compromising business goals.

Who is using preboarding successfully?

In our years of executive search, GTS has identified that the most successful hires are in companies that use preboarding as a strategic step in their onboarding process.

Not all preboarding is created equal

Greg McHugh, the founder at GTS International, has over 22 years experience of in designing preboarding programmes for technology businesses.?

He found that the key differences between successful and lukewarm preboarding programmes are:

• Only focussing on the practical, ‘tech ops’, side of prepping for the first day such as tech gear and logins
• Not creating space for the executive to engage with team members ahead of time
• Articulating challenges, not only drumming up excitement
• Making assumptions about ways of working (e.g. Slack)?

“At GTS, we have designed a structured checklist for preboarding designed specifically for C-suite level appointments. It follows a tried-and-tested methodology honed from 20+ years of practical experience helping businesses mitigate the risks of hiring new executives. We have seen retention rates skyrocket as a result of following our advised steps”, says Greg.

About GTS

GTS is a global talent staffing group delivering a global consultative, professional and intelligence-driven approach to staffing, connecting brands with the best talent. We offer org design, hiring, preboarding and onboarding strategies that maximise a company’s potential through its human resources. We work with clients across Europe, America, Asia Pacific, and MENA.?

To discuss your hiring requirements or to design your talent plans, get in touch with us at info@gts-search.com

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