Onboarding New Hires with PlaybookBuilder

Onboarding a newbie is loaded with risk, cost, and urgency. Fail to nail this one down and you might lose precious time getting them locked, loaded, and generating a return on your investment in them...or lose their confidence in your company and have them leave you in 90 days. 

Leveraging video training to accelerate and make consistent your onboarding is a huge advantage that pays dividends in all the important areas: Simplicity, speed, consistency, and making that solid first impression, “yes, we’re ready for you Ms. A Player.”

Recently, a client of ours hired a relationship manager to join their growing team. This hire is super bright, hard working, and comes from a top company. My client not only wanted to assure her success in the role but to impress upon her that coming aboard this small start-up would be a good career move.

With the costs to a headhunter, the disruption to staff, introductions to key partners, investors and clients, and 2018 growth plans all hinging on her success, they had one goal in mind:

They wanted to knock this one out of the park.

To create a solid first impression and assure her quick adoption of a host of tribal, technical, and industry details and information, we built a Playbook of her role and the company’s culture using our professional services and software solution, PlaybookBuilder.

Here’s what worked and what you can steal to build your own onboarding training:

1.    They made it personal. 

They provided role specific training so that she could dive right in. Assuming she was excited, highly motivated, and eager to attack; we got her right in the mix with specifics on how to do her role, who her target is, and what we do and say to win.

2.    They welcomed her to the tribe. 

They wanted her to know who she was working for; the culture, heritage and vision of the company. In doing so, she’d really get what makes the company special and help her feel that she is now a part of something important.

3.    We used lots of videos. 

To communicate the tone as well as the information we wanted to relate, we used video. Simple, but highly effective videos of the VP of Sales warmly welcoming her, explaining the role to her and walking through the importance of her contribution not only felt special to her, it’s also DONE now and so can be used for the next hire.

4.    We gave her the assets.

We loaded up examples and tools in a resources library. In addition to “how to” videos, we created a little library of example proposals, emails, case studies, and sales presentations. Instead of emailing her, we have it all in one safe and secure location.

5.    We measured her use.  

We used PlaybookBuilder’s reporting function to track her progress. Not only did we send everything (the pitch) but we know she’s watched everything (the catch). Now we can rule out a concern that she was never told something important and if we discover there are gaps in her knowledge, we can add to the Playbook for another hire later on.

6.    We got it done in one day.

Working with a growing company and a busy VP on the second week of the year means running at a breakneck pace. But with all of the urgency we were still able to create a powerful, robust, onboarding Playbook in just ONE DAY. 

Companies, like this client, have reduced their reluctance to hire because they have “de-risked” the investment. Consider nailing the onboarding portion to the ground so you can reduce your variables and you may find that saying yes to new people gives you excitement and confidence, not hives.

Jon LoDuca is founder of The Wisdom Link and creator of the PlaybookBuilder software. www.thewisdomlink.com