“Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’ I try to fight that. That’s why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise.”
— Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
Modern Culture
First came Google, then came Zappos, and finally there was a justified uprising of employee fulfillment and happiness in corporate cultures. In a world where information is at our fingertips, and studies reporting that employee happiness is directly related to job performance and productivity are piling up by the thousands, it’s disheartening to see that many companies are still instilling vague onboarding processes alongside stale, cold environments where creativity and happiness go to die. I am fortunate enough to be in the position that my skillset and experience allow me to focus a little more on finding a company whose values and culture suit my particular work ethic, personality and work-life balance when I am looking for a job. Not everyone can afford that luxury, but everyone deserves to work somewhere that encourages their work, life, physical and mental health.
I’ve been at Big Bang for a little over 4 months now and have noticed that when speaking to the 10+ other new arrivals that have been trickling in since December 2016, that everyone has mentioned how surprised and delighted they are with the onboarding process and our company culture which is grounded in success and employee happiness. In reflecting on my experience, I realized that Big Bang is able to do so by answering these important questions.
How does a company ensure a successful integration of their new team members? How do you make it feel seamless? And most importantly, how do you leave your newbies to fend for themselves in their new community?
There are a few key ingredients that Big Bang has determined that you must have in order to make a genuinely positive impact on your new hires:
- C-Level executives and Managers that trust the people they hired to implement new ideas, improve upon processes already in place, and shape training to be representative of the core values. If they see a mistake or update in a presentation, they fix it right away.
- A dedicated HR person/team.
- A weeklong onboarding process that covers all aspects of the company, from Accounting to HR, all products and services offered by the company, operations, branding, and marketing (they even help set up your personal LinkedIn profile and share tips on taking photos).
- Flexible and dedicated senior staff members who will show up for their portion of the training.
- Informative, structured, and to-the-point presentations and employee handbooks that are easily accessible.
- An assigned Mentor for each new staff member who takes them out for lunch on day 1 and then works with them throughout their entire onboarding process.
- The entire team must be looped in and be open to feedback at all times.
Follow the Recipe and Get Cooking!
Now, these ingredients may not guarantee success but they will certainly increase your onboarding ROI and guarantee that the cycle will keep improving. Allowing your employees, new and senior alike, to feel as though the company has offered them everything they need to succeed and diminish the weariness, of even the most introverted of people, to ask questions.
A great onboarding process is key to introducing the company, culture, tools and possibilities that lay within the company to your new hires in such a way that they experience their honeymoon phase free of excess stress. A recent study by analyst firm Aberdeen Group found that 86% of respondents felt that a new hire’s decision to stay with a company long-term is made within the first six months of employment.
When done right, an onboarding process will:
- Reduce time-to-productivity (our hires start their first projects on day 3)
- Reduce employee stress (plus we do Yoga!)
- Reduce job turnover
- Improve job knowledge (we know what is expected of us and have the tools to do it)
In their survey, the Aberdeen Group found that the best of the best have implemented onboarding initiatives that achieve the goals above and as a result, 66 percent report better assimilation of new hires into the company culture, 62 percent report higher time-to-productivity ratios, and 54 percent report higher employee engagement. All of which highly improves your ROI.
Sample Onboarding:
Here is what the first week for a new Big Bang Employee Looks like:
Monday
- Company overview and introduction to Marketing
- Communication Tools
- Job Context and Integration
- Lunch & Scheduled time with the employee’s mentor and company CEOs
Tuesday
- Internal processes
- Big Bang Product and Service offer including The Big Bang Experience™
- Meeting and Shadowing with mentor
- Yoga to finish off the day!
Wednesday & Thursday
- Introduction to solutions, process maps, key vocabulary and coding norms
- Presentations on how to work together and with our customers and partners (hint: we pick up the phone)
- First work assignment with the help of the employee’s mentor
- Badminton game to take a break with your mentor
Friday
- More time to work on assignments
- Advanced presentation topics including accounting basics, Demo preparation, and Quality Control
- Grab a drink at the end of the day at the Big Bang weekly Happy Hour!
An Insider’s Point Of View
In the past, I used to dread my first week of work due to the social and professional anxieties that come with a new job but I must earnestly say that as of day 1 my experience with Big Bang was different. After the interview, I was kept in the loop. Not only was I informed prior to arriving of my personalized onboarding schedule, but the process kept me genuinely interested in each new segment, and I felt wholeheartedly welcome within my new community. Big Bang not only created their onboarding metrics based on their company’s values and mission statement, but they went above and beyond in ensuring that this process benefits their staff’s self-worth, sense of community, career paths, and general health.
My onboarding take away, is that companies like Big Bang will benefit the most from their employee onboarding investments (time and monetary) because they will have a lower turnover rate, better-trained staff that emulates the Big Bang cultures and values, more productive employees and an all-around healthier team which has tremendous benefits of its own. Why would any self-proclaimed innovative, open-minded or cutting-edge company ever ignore such benefits? If Big Bang can manage to “turn the clock counter-clockwise” there is no reason your company or business can’t. Challenge your leaders with the benefits…
