A Founder’s Guide to Employee On-Boarding

As startups seek funding, the primary driver is, of course, growth. Serving new customers and going to market both require money, and the core piece of that spend is typically allocated toward a company’s most important resource of all — people. With all the news about the “great resignation,” early-stage companies need to make sure the employee experience for new hires is nothing short of exceptional.

I was given some early advice in my venture career, “start as you continue.” The employee experience is one of those areas which is hard to scale and keep at a high quality so figure out how you want employees to feel when they start on your team.? Employee on-boarding is an under-explored component of healthy, unencumbered growth for early-stage startups. We’ve all been the new person at an unfamiliar company, and we’ve all witnessed it from the opposite perspective when new hires join, too. The most common refrain when a new hire is asked how they’re doing is a cheerful, “Drinking from the firehose!” Being overwhelmed is the norm and the expectation. But you don’t need to be a firefighter to know that drinking from a firehose is a lousy (and downright dangerous) way to hydrate. Wouldn’t it be infinitely better to provide new hires with, say, a normal, everyday water fountain that they can sip from at a reasonable rate?

Of course this probably all sounds much easier said than done to the average founder. Early stage startups rarely have an operations team in place. That only makes a clear, repeatable on-boarding process more critical, not only to employee productivity, but to your company’s underlying infrastructure. Small IT teams, in particular, bear the brunt of the consequences when there’s a lack of process in place. So where do you start? Here are a few tips for how to approach employee onboarding in the early days.?

Consider the Timing of Onboarding

Think about the actual, human experience itself. On-board new employees on a Friday, when they can focus on getting their equipment and desk set up, meet their new teammates and ask questions on a what could be a lighter day. They’ll then have the weekend to process what they learned, come in on Monday and be ready to go. Conversely, Mondays are always busy. It’s tough for employees and managers to put aside the requisite time for a new hire when you have to deal with regular meetings and putting out fires that occurred on the weekend.?

Account for Remote & Hybrid Scenarios

More and more people are remote these days, so think strategically about how you on-board remote or hybrid employees. Be aware of the reality that simply swiveling toward the person at the next desk to have a quick question answered, isn’t feasible for everyone. Find a balance between doing regular one to ones and higher-level check ins across the company. The more people in the company a new hire gets to interact with the better. Is there a number that is too high or too low? Does it just have to be their own team members? If they were in the office they would interact with people outside their team. How do you make that happen? How do you keep it going??

Set Objectives

The ultimate purpose of employee on-boarding is to get your people productive as quickly as possible. Set an objective of getting new employees productive on day one, then work backwards to figure out what’s required to do that. What do you consider to be productive from day one? How do you even define that an employee has been fully on-boarded??

Invest in Best-In-Class Tools

The peripheral processes of IT and HR on-boarding are also very important. Work with your IT team to get things like standard naming conventions and email address formats in place right away. This might seem like a small consideration, but it is very messy and difficult to fix down the road if it hasn’t been thought about early. Similarly, invest in the tools your HR and IT teams need to effectively and quickly on-board new employees, and do it early. Okta might feel like an expensive tool to purchase when you’re just getting started, but before you know it you’ll be adding 10 new people a week without a framework in place. Best-in-class tools are a worthwhile spend, even for fledgling startups.?

Build Out a Knowledge Base

Make sure each department has its own specific one-pager, wiki page and standard questions that highlight need-to-know departmental information, team priorities and working style. Include information about how the team works and even some non-standard items which speak to the personality and characteristics of the team. Teams are made up of people not machines.?

Incorporate Templates

Your on-boarding process will evolve as you grow, and in the early stages it will probably change rapidly. Simplify the on-boarding process for core roles and provide a template for managers to retain consistency across different pieces of the business. Remember that your employees don’t need to know everything right out of the gate, but there are key things they need to know on day one. This information may vary from department to department, but the core should remain the same.?

Content Storage Protocols

Think about where you want people to store content, agree on it and don’t have multiple services. If it’s going to be a G Drive in Google Suite, stick with that. The same goes for collaboration and collaborative tools. If you’re going to use Slack, be prescriptive about what you do and don’t use it for. Is it a place you’ll share documents and links? If so, it will need to be integrated with your content store. Think about the conventions that go into that early to avoid confusion down the line. And don’t introduce them to tools or processes which are still early in adoption unless you have made a definitive decision that they are here to stay.?

Clearly State the Culture

Make sure your culture is clearly stated. Don’t just talk about the values, provide specific examples of what it looks like and specific examples of what doesn’t fly. Signal up front that culture is something you care about, and be descriptive about why. Feel free to give examples of where some new hires went wrong.?

Meet the Leadership

If you’re a founder, you (or members of your leadership) should meet with every new employee early and consistently until you reach a prohibitive size. Have a consistent talk track that you use with all new hires, get to know them and let them get to know you without any other agenda. Make sure you have alignment with your employees and set clear definitions around how you work and what you expect from them.?

Request Feedback on the Process Itself

Think about on-boarding as a part of your talent acquisition process. Solicit feedback from new employees after they join.? When I was CIO, one of the things I tracked at each company was \ IT support tickets created by new hires. This gave me a signal regarding what information we as an IT were not providing at the onset and therefore affecting the new team member’s ability to be integrated faster into the company.??

If you believe you’re building a company of lasting value, it’s important to take employee on-boarding seriously and to give the process some dedicated, strategic thought. It’s both a part of your talent acquisition strategy, and your ability to retain that talent. It’s the key to ensuring alignment of message, culture and expectation. It paves the road to productivity, and, as you scale, ultimately enables faster, more impactful growth.