Who Are You Again? – Pitfalls of Onboarding to Avoid

Let’s suppose you’ve avoided enough interview process errors that your candidate accepted the offer. (For more thoughts on that see the preceding article.) You’re home and dry. You’ve nailed it. You got this hiring manager stuff down; time to kick back and await success.

Only, it’s not quite that simple. ?First stage done well – tick – but you’ve barely started. Would you want to turn up day one and no one knows who you are? And nothing is ready?

If their second impression, their first few weeks, of you is poor, why would they stay long term? You need to get the onboarding right; the ninety days that sets them up for success.

As before, I’m not attempting a definitive playbook, a ‘here’s how to always have successful onboarding’. You’d think me arrogant, highlight what wouldn’t work for you then ignore the rest.

Also, if I was that good at convincing people I’m right about everything, I’d be in the snake-oil business. I hear there’s a quick buck to be made there.

My intention is to highlight wrong steps, ones I’ve seen personally, or heard recanted, and hope we can learn.

Before They Start

Not Having a Plan

You know how you want new hire to fit into the team and what you need them to do. ?So how do you equip them for success?

You need a welcome pack – and I don’t just mean a pretty box with some sweets, logo’d coaster and mug, and headed notepaper. What you need is a schedule of onboarding activities. You need a plan.

If you don’t have one yet, make one. Think back to your own onboarding experiences. What did they do for you? And get building.

Talk to HR, admin, legal and regulatory tasks are needed. Some will be reasonable pre-day one – mostly ensuring they’ll get paid actions. I’d give up free time to complete necessary security checks or confirm bank details for my wages; 12-hour GDPR training course not so much. You can pay me for that.

If you can, hand over personnel and compliance requirements to HR. You have enough to do; delegating is a good thing. But don’t assume they have capacity and, if they do, don’t then just ignore their needs. We’ll revisit in Coordination below.

Now the plan, review the JD and notes from the interviews – I’m hoping you took notes. Do you need to arrange technical upskilling or other training exercises, system walkthroughs, pair programming exercises, intros with stakeholders in other departments?

Write these down and figure out how to deliver them.

A bad plan is almost worse than none at all

You have a plan. Yay, but will it work? The first ninety days must give a professional impression. Having booked activities clash with others booked by HR, etc., won’t give that.

Likewise wall-to-wall intros, pair-programming exercises etc., with no downtime will be overwhelming. Space is needed for reflection.

Be realistic. Your new team member has a long journey ahead of them. Don’t try to rush things. Onboarding is not a race.

Also just pulling out the last onboarding plan and thinking, ‘that’ll do’, can be problematic. One size won’t fit all. Some activities, yes; the whole plan, no.

For onboarding multiple mid-level developers a single plan can work. But apprentice QAs, senior architects, and Angular devs, have different needs. Customise your plan for each.

Go back to the JD, look at the objectives – what you want your colleague to deliver. Change your plan to help them succeed.

Who’s their Buddy?

Everyone needs a friend. Who’s going to mentor your new hire? If you’re not going to have time to, make sure someone is available. And be prepared to mentor that person if they’ve never been a mentor before.

Communications

Interviewing went well. Your new hire’s excited to join. Then they go back to reality, working out their notice.

Human beings, and even developers qualify as human…barely, can be sentimental. Even with strong push factors behind their decision to leave, they’ll likely start to realise what they’ll miss.

Some employers even try to leverage such good feeling in a counter-offer. So how do you keep their enthusiasm up? Good communications! And by good, I don’t mean excessive.

Through a notice period, regular communications can maintain their enthusiasm.

In addition to the regular comms, e.g., HR activities mentioned above, is there a company newsletter you can subscribe them too before they start? Connect with them on LinkedIn. Share their profile with your colleagues. Engage with them.

And stagger such comms across their notice period. Upfront data-dump then weeks of silence won’t maintain excitement.

Time Management

There’s much to do ahead of day one. But a candidate’s notice period means you have all the time in the world, right? You can just get back to your regular day job for a while. Sorry, but that’s just not true. Even lengthy notice periods pass quickly. You need to get on it.

New equipment has lead time. If it needs to be configured, add more time. If shipping it to a remote starter, even more. Factor in time for these actions.

One of my LinkedIn network, no names, was hired as Head of Architecture, fairly important role. Only on day one, no computer. No computer of day two either, or day ten for that matter.

After two weeks, someone finally shipped out a laptop, three years-old, barely capable of running half the stuff he needed. Within the year, he’d left.

As soon as the candidate signs their contract, start their onboarding. You’ll thank yourself later.

Coordination

Yours is not the only team in the company. You'll likely need to introduce your new hire to project managers, product owners, QAs, commercial team, compliance officers, etc., and they're busy people. If you repeatedly make requests of busy people, they’ll quickly stop cooperating.

Be considerate of the impact on them. If you’re onboarding several people within a short time frame, schedule one single call. Or maybe record the first session to share with all subsequent starters.

And remember, they’ll also have new starters periodically. If you need their cooperation, make sure they have yours when positions are reversed.

Understanding Team Impact

Your team is busy. If they had slack you wouldn’t have been hiring. So you need to be aware of the impact it will have on their output through the onboarding period.

Pair-programming exercises increase the time to completion. So when refining tickets, factor this into complexity estimates. Also run through sessions take time. Factor it in or add a specific task to their board. Don’t expect them to absorb the effort. You’ll cause delays.

Accounts / Team Communications

A lot of people work remotely or at least hybridly (is that a word? It should be). Communication is crucial to success. So you need to ensure your new hire is included in all ongoing team comms.

If you use Teams, Slack, etc., make sure you add them before day one. Likewise email groups, your project management platform(s) and so on.

If you use any proprietary systems, tools, or platforms they’ll need to have access to, get it set up.

And don’t worry if you miss any this time. No one’s perfect. Just add to your list for next time.

The First 90-Days

Your new starter is here. There’s a waiting schedule of onboarding exercises ready. So you’re a good manager, is now’s the time to kick back?

Of course it isn’t. Would I raise it if so? Now is time to move onto the next phase, driving success for your onboarding plan – and no, that doesn’t mean micromanage it. You’re not here to chase everyone one minute after the end of their session to ensure it went well.

Just keep on top of things. The vagaries of life will care not one jot about your perfect plan. Something will happen to blow it up. One of the people you’ve lined will be ill, or called away on an urgent task. A system will be down. There are many possible hiccoughs your plan will face. Be prepared to rearrange.

Reviews/Feedback

Not everyone is the same, even within the same role. What suits one, may be at best patchy for the second, a complete disaster for the third. You need to understand what works for each employee.

Some people are academically minded, happy absorbing large amounts of information in school-like settings. Others much more hands-on, they learn by doing. Yet more are somewhere in the middle.

But how can you know? If all of your feedback comes from a simple tick-list – your mid-level developer has completed eight out of the ten onboarding exercises this week – do you have a true understanding of success? (And do I need to explicitly state the answer to that?)

So ask. Your onboarding should include touch points. Get honest feedback straight from the horse’s mouth. They shouldn’t be long, no more than half an hour and can be fifteen minutes if you have achieved all goals in that time.

Feedback also must be two-way. Don’t forget that. You’re not just here to find out if your new hire’s having a nice time.

It’s crucial they’re completing the required elements, especially those requirements that are compliance related. If access is restricted until they pass all regulatory training courses, you have your priority one.

You coordinate onboarding, but it’s the new hire’s to own. They must commit to it. You should encourage this, and highlight when you feel it’s not happening.

Reviews don’t have to be every week, at least not after the first couple. Book the first two reviews, end of week one, end of week two. You can decide the frequency ongoing between you but continue reviewing for at least ninety days.

Team Effect

In addition to your new employee’s feedback, your team’s views are critical. The goal is an additional, contributing team member. ?You all want this to work. They’ll support the plan as long as they see the positives.

How do you do this? As before the key is good comms.

If they have concerns, listen. If they feel something isn’t working as well as it could, ask your team what they think the change should be. They’re part of the change, let them contribute.

And if the impact on their delivery is more severe than anticipated, help them re-address it when planning the next sprint cycle.

Other Departments

How do the other departments feel about your onboarding? Does it work for them or is it disproportionate effort? Be aware of their issues else you might find in future they are less willing to comply.

Also, in their role your new hire will likely interact with more people than just those they meet during onboarding. During week one there’s something I recommend you do – a Shout Out. Let the people a step or two away know there’s someone new.

A circular email, posting to company-wide notice boards, announcements at the weekly meeting – however your company communicates, make sure you do it.

And finally

You’re not perfect. Your plan will not be perfect. But if you are seen to be considering the needs of everyone concerned they’ll forgive the odd mistake, as long as you don’t make the same mistake again. If something didn’t work, change it for next time.