our onboarding's myelination ??

??Intro

I want to share a bunch of onboarding hacks with everyone! Let's have a look at our onboarding's myelination at productboard.

A year ago - the onboarding process did not exist. Neither any more sophisticated checklist. It honestly did not need to. There were only 20 super geekiest people who tried to build and develop a product management tool. They were investing all their energy into it, every new joiner would help and do anything that was just needed. One most senior backend engineer would actually program frontend, pickup support calls, try to draft the architecture and wash the dishes.

Then we started to grow, people were joining on random days with random tasks, and it felt confusing. We realized we need to start with implementing onboarding processes to improve our new starters experience.

I am excited to talk about this process development. About how we make the first days fun. Where we are right now. I may share some post mortem examples. And because we still have a long journey to go, I will be curious about your own hacks - so together we can make our onboarding the best in this world! ?????♀?

??Dictionary:

MYELINATION: development of neural function ?? that begins
in the peripheral nervous system. 

??Scaling like crazy - super hacks to keep up

?? Slack Hacks for #onboarding

A couple of months ago we hosted one cool hackathon with our beloved community, supersmart fellow hackers ?? With them, we focused on implementing a bunch of useful people operations apps, one of them was made by our MicTech. It only took him like 23 minutes ?? ??And yes, when I was talking about this super-senior backend engineer who was washing dishes in the beginning, I was thinking of our GREAT MicTech!

While we scale so fast, like a crazy rollercoaster, sometimes it gets tough to remember all the new faces, especially when you suffer by old-mother dementia ?? (me).

Our Slack application is called Riddler where (not only) every newbie can practice remembering names and faces of all Productboarders. The only thing what they have to do in the app is to write _play_ ??

?????? Our donut sessions

While there are a lot of tactics that can be used to promote trust culture and unite remote employees, there is one cool tool Donut. Donut is a bot for Slack, a collaborative communication tool that includes real-time messaging, archiving and search.

When I added this special app on our Slack, it became very popular. I remember that forgot to turn it on once and people were missing it badly! Now, on every Wednesday morning, Donut randomly pairs people of productboard to spread collaboration across our organization. Once a pairing is made, the duo collaborates on a place to meet for a donut, or our favourite energizer - maté, lunch or coffee. This interaction can happen in person or remotely via Zoom as we have remote colleagues too, and it is massively important to gather together with them also!

Donut can help employees to strengthen culture, build rapport and connect with teams they may not have as much interaction with.

?? More reads about this ????

• https://ideas.ted.com/the-secret-ingredient-that-makes-some-teams-better-than-others/
• https://hbr.org/2013/01/a-new-way-to-network-inside-yo

Our #hello channel on Slack ????

On the first day you start with productboard, we ask you to say hello to every single mate in person. We probably make you sing during our All Hands meeting in front of everyone (just kidding) ?? And you should also say "HI" to everyone who could miss you on your first day or who is working behind the ocean ??

?? Gamification of our onboarding

When working in a world of a big corporation, I remember me repeating this first sentence during all the New Hires Orientations:

Hey guys, welcome on board! So this is your first day.
Let's dive deeply into all boring but necessary administrative things 
we need to do to be all compliant.

Yay. Sounds exciting right?

But now, we are doing everything to change this approach (and still staying compliant ??) to make the first day of our new joiners the best in this world ?? Make them as much excited and fill them with the endless energy for the rest of the thrilling week!

And as proof it works, check what our new joiners say about their first days!

• Maurice and his podcast on Spotify #peopleofproductboard, or the remote interview from Indian taxi or first-month blog post
• Dottie and her first best week in Barcelona ??
• Alex about how all the ways lead to productboard ??

We also use another kind of gamification during our onboarding, for example, on the first day, our newbie gets the first assignment: To complete pb's scavenger hunt!

This helps them to socialise in a real-life. It is a fun and beneficial tool. You can become the best friend of our Ver?a and brewmaster in a week. Two birds, one stone. ????

Your welcome - love ??package

Haha, ???sometimes it just feels like we are a squad of happy hippies ???????♀?

Maybe we are, but everyone @productboard always make sure that you feel warmly welcome and you have all you need on your first day. As a new employee, you will be probably a bit nervous, so we want you to make it as much pleasure as possible. Every newbie receives as much love as she can handle with all the balloons and sweet treats! ??

??First weeks

??First days agenda

Be ready. This is crucial! Book your time and every other stakeholder in the calendar. Make sure your pre-boarding checklist is completed ? Chase the responsible team lead/buddy to be prepared too! They should not be on their vacation during this most crucial week!

We created the onboarding agenda for the first weeks in Notion, and we share it with a newbie a day before the first day, so they know what to expect, what topics we are about to cover in the next days. This is very helpful for both sides!

??Tips

What is truly important is making sure the new starter and her team lead are on the same page. What can help them - is to have regular communication together. As much it sounds like a cliché, lack of communication always leads to friction in the onboarding process, unclarity and uncertainty of every new starter.

• set up the regular one on ones ??
• be clear in the newbie's 30-60-90 days' goals, the expectation between the manager and the new starter must be VERY clear ??
• find out more about how does the new starter wish to receive feedback - introverts usually hates public praising ??
• find out more about what does make her grumpy ?? so you both know how to work with together once it happens, and it does not feel uncomfortable or even better - how to prevent it
• help her to get to know everyone! let her schedule some lunches with everyone who is going to be her partner in crime from other departments in her role in the following weeks, we also schedule a session and cup of tea/dinner with our founders ??
• let her shadow your sales team's calls - they're experts on your product, and they answer loads of questions every call, every new starter should better know what you are really doing! ??
• invite her to attend your internal but also other community meetups and team buildings ??
• let her organize her own yoga session or initiate beers with other new starters ??

There are plenty of even cooler ideas! You are welcome to share yours in the comments below! ????

??4 weeks check

This is a little retrospective we do with our new starters. I usually take them to grab a coffee somewhere near our office and write down the notes to be always able to come back and reflect on what they provide feedback with.

I find this awesome as it helps us to look back on what went well, what went wrong, how did they feel during the first weeks, what made them confused, how can we help them to be more confident in what they are doing.

I always got valuable feedback that I am trying to work with and implement tips to improve the current processes.

????Topics to discuss on the 4weeks check

• ?? Mood temperature I often start with asking to rate the prevailing mood on the scale 1 - 10. It helps me to get the overall quantitative mood temperature, and if the rating is below 10, I always ask WHY, what can we do to be on 10. This feedback helps us to improve the mood of the employee and our onboarding processes!
• ?????Team Leader, overall team support Is the one on one with her team leader scheduled? How does it work? Tell me about your first one and the last one? How did you feel, what did you discussed? Do you have your 30-60-90 days goals set up? Do you know about your goals? How can you be sure you are doing a good job and meeting pb's expectation in your fist, second month?
• ??Do you feel there are any blockers that are making your job more difficult?
• ??Tell me about how your expectations from the interviewing process till now have been changed.
• ????What is the biggest challenge of your first month? What is the most challenging thing in these 4 weeks?
• ??Culture, do you feel uncomfortable with anything? What do you like the most about our culture? Have you met everyone? Is there any friction in communication anywhere? Can we improve anything? Would you help us with improving it?
• ?????♀?Self-development, What do you desire to learn in your first month? Have you set up your own personal dev-growth plan?
• ??Do you have any other ideas for us to improve the onboarding process? Or any other feedback to share?
• ??Benefits, are you aware of all the benefits we have here? Do you have any tips for any new ones? Do you miss any benefit from the previous company?

??What is next?

There are plenty of things we still need to work on and implement! We are building everything from scratch and as we all are perfectionists, we still do retrospectives, post mortem that is helping us to look back, collect very useful feedback, learn from failures and develop further.

?????Onboarding buddy

During our 4weeks checks with new joiners, I realized that we need to start working on this. There is a need to have a soulmate whom you can always ask about anything (now we have these channels "ask me anything" on slack), but you need this person in person. Many times in a startup you feel your team lead is super busy and it would just feel so silly to ask, or you started as a manager, and everyone expects you to know everything since the beginning. Buddy would be a dedicated, experienced Productboarder who would always be there. Help you to adapt smoothly. More tips here in this HBR.

The end. I never know how to say goodbye in the last paragraph, so I usually just disappear ????