Best Practices in Onboarding

Best Practices for Onboarding:

Ensuring Successful Assimilation

TALENT DEVELOPMENT

HCI White Paper

By DBM & HCI April 2011

Best Practices for Onboarding: Ensuring Successful Assimilation

Best Practices for Onboarding:

Ensuring Successful Assimilation

Introduction

The key to any organization’s ability to execute strategy and achieve objectives is an effective workforce. A highly competitive business landscape demands that all employees perform at the highest levels as both individual and team contributors — aligned with and committed to achieving the organization’s goals. This becomes even more critical when making mid career or senior level hires. The expectation for new executives is that they will hit the ground running at their new company and start adding value immediately. In a slow growth economy, companies tend to take a much more pragmatic approach to hiring — filling roles where there is the greatest need. Accelerating the assimilation of new hires so that they are contributing effectively becomes more urgent. Organizations have much at stake when new hires don’t meet expectations and fail to add value. Money, time and resources have been invested in the recruiting and hiring process, making it essential to ensure the success and retention of new hires. Onboarding plays a critical role in helping new hires begin to add value quickly — setting the essential foundation for developing and sustaining an effective workforce. “Onboarding is more than orientation,” states Peyton Daniel, Senior Managing Director of Talent Development and Coaching Practice Leader at DBM. “It is part of an overall talent development strategy and includes a process for providing a range of integrated, well-planned, and highly tailored support for both external new hires and internally promoted employees.” Daniel further explains that the goal of onboarding is to ensure successful assimilation into the organization’s culture, shorten the time to productivity,...