The importance of onboarding

How SafetyCulture is redefining the new starter experience.

Within the first few minutes of my first day at SafetyCulture, I was handed a document and told it was my onboarding schedule.

“But there’s nothing there,” I noted, a little bemused to find it blank. “Yes,” my team leader responded. “And we need to solve that problem.”

This blank document would go on to become the biggest project I’ve owned to date. When I started my journey at SafetyCulture, we were an 89 person start up. As I sit here a year later, I now call 200 customer-obsessed Safety Geeks across five offices my fellow teammates.

This is by no means an onboarding manifesto - I admit, I don’t have all the answers. But I am going to share how that blank document has since come alive and successfully helped onboard over 100 newbies.

It’s no secret onboarding is critical to a company's success. Beyond the data that suggests attrition/retention positives can be credited to great onboarding programs, our primary goal was to scale effectively with three things in mind:

i) our mission, ii) our customers and iii) our people.

With differing time-zones, language and cultural barriers, scaling internationally is really hard. That’s why we need to continue to invest in our growing team to ensure we retain and build on everything that makes our company so special. It’s this mindset that led us to create our onboarding 1.0 program (aka, The SafetyCulture Bootcamp.)

i) Unearthing our founders vision (Our Mission).

People join SafetyCuture to work for a team and a product that has a real impact. As our CEO, Luke Anear, puts it: “Not everybody wants to change the world - but SafetyCulture is a place for those that do.” Luke meets with all our new employees to share his first-hand stories and vision for the company. Each new starter is also sent The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, a book he believes captures the foundations of why the software we build can ultimately make safety and quality available to every worker in the world. We have incredibly ambitious goals and we will only achieve them if every new hire resonates with this ethos. While I initially felt a little uneasy about putting the expectation on new team members to have read the text prior to day one, I now understand the significance of this timing and how it can set them up for success from the start.

ii) Onboarding bootcamp (Our Customers).

Forget induction day, we fly every new Safety Geek to Sydney for a week-long, intensive bootcamp that focuses on our customers, values, mission, product and teams. By the time the last day wraps, each person walks away as a product expert with a connection to the problem we are trying to solve and a deep understanding of each department’s role across the business. Our newest colleagues get hands on experience with our Customer Experience team, which enables them to empathise with the problems we are trying to solve every day. In addition to this, every leadership team member spends time with the new starters. Having our international teams together gives us a chance to improve connectivity between regional offices and keep knowledge-sharing and problem-solving nimble.

iii) Nobody gets left behind (Our People).

They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression and a new employee is no different. I like to call this part ‘Ops Wizardry’ - it's all about making a new hire's first day (and months!) at SafetyCulture so special and the transition so seamless they're almost magical. Our wizard has a name - we use Sapling to frictionlessly onboard each employee. By investing in this software, we said 'adios' to endless spreadsheets, stacks of files (and crying) come payroll time. It allows us to automate customised workflows, go paperless and feel confident in the fact that each new team member will get the information they need at the right time. Our onboarding workflows begin two weeks before the employee starts, right up to their six-month anniversary. However, we ensure all newbies have the capacity to make an impact right from the get go – as far as we’re concerned, their contribution in those initial few days and weeks are just as important as the rest of their journey.

As we scale, we continuously collect feedback and iterate on what onboarding looks like at SafetyCulture. So, what’s on the onboarding roadmap for this quarter?

Getting People Leaders excited about onboarding.

We will be focusing on coaching and providing people leaders with the tools they need to ramp-up their employees more efficiently, harmoniously and with more impact than ever before. The People Team doesn’t own the entire onboarding journey. This means as we continue to grow as a company, it’s more important than ever to ensure leaders are laying down the foundations for each member that joins their team to hit the ground running.

Team specific onboarding experiences.

Every manager and team member should feel excited about onboarding a new starter. Why? At SafetyCulture, teams are the cornerstone of achievement - we climb, win and lose as a team. But most importantly, every day, we get better as a team. Which means the quicker we embrace new team members, the quicker they can begin to have an impact.

Crafting magical experiences.

We will continue to dig deep for imaginative, innovative and fresh ways to approach onboarding with a focus on what is unique to SafetyCulture. It’s not a chore, it’s not boring, it’s not an automated checklist - it’s an integral part of an employee’s experience that we, above all, want to get right.

How do you onboard your employees? I’m always keen to hear new ideas, so reach out if you would like to share!