Doing Employee Orientation Right

In an era of rapid turnover and remote working arrangements, developing a structured onboarding process for new staff is more important than ever. David has a checklist to help agencies get their new employees up to speed as quickly as possible.

Transcript

Blair Enns: David, today we are talking about doing employee orientation. Implied in the heading is the idea that most firms are doing this wrong. Is that correct?

David Baker: Yes, it's correct. I know that because we ask every employee of every firm we work with to do a survey. They're not doing it anonymously, so we know their name, but then we aggregate the results so that the leaders see it anonymously. I can't remember the last one we did that did not say something about, "You know what, the employee orientation around here could be a lot better." They're not saying it vindictively at all. They're just saying, "It wasn't very good." Then, sometimes somebody says, "Oh, you know what, I should work on that." It works to ask the question.

Blair: Intuitively, that feels right to me. It's been a long time since I have been an employee, but I've never had any, what I would consider to be proper or even robust or well-organized employee orientation programs when I was an employee. I don't think we're particularly good at it without pitching, my experience through my clients. I can't recall to mind anybody that I know that I would say, "Well, they've got a really strong employee orientation program." There probably are. Not that it doesn't touch the work that we do in those firms, but you do get senses of things. My intuition aligns with what your data says, which is very few firms do this. That's why we're talking about this now, is it?

David: Yes. The really odd thing about it is that the time to think about this is not when you're bringing an employee on because here you finally said, "Okay, I think maybe we can't afford it, but we really need to get somebody. Let's take this seriously." "All right, everybody, send us anybody you think is a candidate your way." It takes longer than you thought, then there's the negotiation.

By the time they start, you are so desperate for help. It's like there's no more pressure on anybody than on this person to perform. It's just odd. It just fights in our heads because we really need this person's help, but we should keep our expectations in check for however long that first period of time is. It's just odd. It's unnatural, but it really ought to be better.

Blair: It should be better. As we talk about it, I can recall. I basically have two crutches on this topic, two reasons to justify why we're not very good at it. A friend of mine used to work in the knowledge transfer space. He said to me, this line that I have used a few too many times, which is, "Knowledge transfer is the responsibility of the apprentice." That just frees the mastery in a master-apprentice relationship from doing anything. I've used that line with new team members, "Knowledge transfer is the responsibility of the apprentice."

David: Food is the responsibility of the children.

Blair: [laughs] As is education.

David: Right.

Blair: The other crutch is Dan Sullivan wrote a great book. It's one of his short books that he writes once a quarter. I think it's called The Entrepreneurial Organization or something like that. It's a bit of a handbook to give to employees, new team members, in entrepreneurial organizations. What it effectively says is, "Hey, listen, it's fucking chaos in here. It's your job to figure out how to deal with the chaos. It's not our goal to get rid of all of the chaos. There's some good in this chaotic nature that is an entrepreneurial organization."

David: Wow.

Blair: Intuitively that frees me. I like it, but it is a bit of a crutch.

David: He takes into account that people are different. Somebody like you, or me maybe, or Dan Sullivan, wouldn't need much orientation. We love figuring stuff out. Imagine some of the people that you're hiring for certain roles. It's like "Whoa."

Blair: Yes. There's a fire, here's the extinguisher.

David: Pull the pen, you idiot.

Blair: Not sure how it works, good luck.

David: Do you think this is more acute of an issue now that we have so many people working remotely?

Blair: Oh, it has to be. I still don't understand how you onboard somebody remotely. How you inculcate them into the culture, how they learn. I still don't understand. I guess we're all remote now, but we haven't brought on a new remote employee for a while, so I don't get how firms are doing it.

David: Taking a team that works together and spreading them in a diaspora, that's one thing. I can see how that works, because you've got all this culture, this history, but bringing somebody on who's never worked with this team, it just seems interesting. It brings up something that I've often found really fascinating about this topic. We're talking about what to do to benefit the new team member, but what about this helps the firm, obviously, better productivity, but also if I'm hiring the right people, I really want to know what they think of this firm.

Now, really, the only part that matters is the part that strikes them as really different or odd or great or weird or stupid, the first, I don't know how long that lasts, maybe it's a month, maybe it's two weeks or something. That's not the time when they have built up the personal, I don't know, what's the right word, confidence or--

Blair: Capital or courage.

David: Yes, exactly, capital. They haven't built up the capital to step into your office and say, "Hey, man, this is shit. You really need to get your act together here." They have those opinions, but they don't have the capital to say them. One of the ideas that I've had lots of clients do, and every one of them has loved it, that's to ask the new employee to write stuff down-- It could be digital, I guess. I like to use a real notebook because I don't want people to think about privacy online. Write this stuff down, and then a year later, six months later, if they want to tell you this stuff, if they feel safe doing that, then invite them to do it. That way, you get the best of both worlds.

Blair: I really like this idea, the employee orientation as a feedback mechanism for yourself, for the firm. As you hand over the notebook, you might say something like, "Hey, you have this really valuable but rapidly perishing asset." That is a fresh perspective on our business. As you go through the onboarding process, you're going to be hit by these initial thoughts, "Oh, you do it that way. Why is it this way? You miss something here." Please take notes. Then at any point in the future, immediately afterwards or down the road you feel like it would be valuable to the organization to share those notes with me, I would appreciate it.

David: That's exactly the sentiment. Because we have a lot at stake here, is there any advantage in letting somebody sink or swim? I guess you can figure out if they swim or not. It just seems like there isn't much advantage in not treating this well. It also just doesn't seem all that respectful sometimes.

Blair: I can see how there might be some roles where it would be a really interesting test, throw them into the deep end and see if they can swim. Then the flip side of that would be there are some people it would be disrespectful, it would be completely inappropriate to have them figure it. Who wins there? You're absolved of the responsibility of bringing somebody up to speed, but you're probably more likely to lose that person. Is there any data that supports that?

David: There is, yes. Rebecca Gosselin-- I'm not sure if I pronounce that correctly. When I was researching this years ago, I ran across this statement that I found pretty fascinating. She says, "Structured orientations mean that employees are 60% more likely to be productive for at least three years. Those employees would reach full production level two months earlier than they otherwise would." There is some science. I haven't looked at the data behind that, but apparently, there's some science around it too.

Back to your point about throwing people into the pool, I could see doing that with a salesperson or an account person, or a new chief of staff, where that's part of how they gain credibility is their ability to master a situation quickly on their own. Where they're not enabled by somebody else. I could see that argument.

Blair: Yes. Here's your desk or whatever the modern-day equivalent of a desk is. Here's your place in the Zoom window. These are your team members. Figure it out.

David: All right. I'm going to turn this around and ask you a question. I have done this so many times, and every time it's been fun, people have laughed. Where you have multiple partners at a firm, and I describe a person they're hiring, what role they're going to have, rough pay scale, how experienced they are. I say, "Okay, how long will it take this person to be fully productive, basically fully productive?" They write down their answers, and then we compare them.

We'll do this together. I'll have a number, and you have a number and you promise not to cheat, unlike your normal method. This is somebody who is doing the same role at another firm. You're hiring them because of their expertise. You're expecting them to teach you as a firm. How long do you think it'll take before they are largely fully productive in your system?

Blair: Depending on the role, three to four months.

David: Really.

Blair: If they're coming from another firm where they're doing the same thing.

David: I said a month in my head.

Blair: Wow.

David: That's why it's so important to have that conversation. If you and I are running this firm, my expectations are a lot more impatient than yours for this new person. I think we ought to have this conversation with the person too.

Blair: It's a great point, but what do you do if the gap is as large as it was in the little role-play we just did? I always think putting myself in the employer role. Let's say I'm the employee and I think three to four months, and you think, no, it's going to take you a month, we need to reconcile that gap or there's trouble ahead, isn't there?

David: There is. In fact, it seems to me like that ought to be part of the conversation before somebody accepts a job. That ought to be part of the interview process.

Blair: If I am the employee in that situation, I might say, "Okay, if your expectation is that I'm going to be up to speed in one month and largely fully productive, the assumptions would be that A, the role is quite similar to the role that I was performing elsewhere, and the way it's being done isn't dramatically different, and B, you have a lot of stuff documented and you have a formalized onboarding process."

David: That last little thing, yes.

Blair: Yes. If that's all in place, I can work to that one-month goal. Let's say we miss it by 50%, we're six weeks, maybe, if all of that's in place. You're right. It does inspire a conversation, doesn't it?

David: Yes. If nothing else. Your expectations are standing up like the hair on your arms. When somebody starts, you're paying a lot more attention to this person because they're new on the scene so let's have informed expectations. I just laughed to myself when you were just describing that like they have all these written processes. What firm has that? They should, but they often don't.

David: Another interesting quote I found was by Pope Ward who said, "Most people move on in a service organization if they are not exposed properly to experienced veterans." I thought that was pretty interesting too because when you hire somebody, you're very, very busy. Usually, not always. That's especially true of your very experienced veterans. How important do you think this is? Do you think it's important enough that you want to assign less productivity to one of your senior people? Let's just be honest about how important it is to bring these people on board. Hopefully, it's important enough that we're willing to assign the time of a senior person.

One of the reasons why that's the case is because this senior person they have the capital and they can say, "Hey, listen, don't park right there."

[laughter]

"That is her spot. She's not going to tell you that, but don't park there. Okay, the last three people that left parked there."

[laughter]

Blair: Or went missing.

David: Right.

Blair: Okay. That's interesting. I'm trying this on, do you want to be that senior person in an organization where it's like, "Oh, hey, David, for the next month so-and-so is going to be shadowing you."

David: No.

Blair: Yes. No. "Okay, everybody, we're going remote."

[laughter]

Okay. I think you've got a checklist here of things that people should consider when putting together an employee orientation program, is that right?

David: Yes. Some of these are a lot simpler than others. The first one is it doesn't take any effort at all, but it's a really interesting idea that works really well, is send a gift home to the person. Welcome them with something. You address it to this employee, but in your head, think of it as a gift for the family unit because they're the ones that are having to put up with emergencies that this person is having to serve or late hours or travel or whatever. It's not just the employee, it's the family unit. Whatever you want to do there.

Blair: That's a stroke of genius, because you want that person in that moment to say, "No, you shut your mouth. You are not quitting this great job. You get back there because they send me this thing every year. I want the thing."

[laughter]

David: Right. Very likely, yes.

Blair: All right. Send a gift home for the partner, yes?

David: Yes. If they have one, or just whatever, something that they both enjoy. Maybe it's a nice dinner out, something like that. Then of course there's the HR transactional stuff. We all know about that.

Blair: All the forms.

David: Yes, all the forms. A lot of people are using a professional outsourced employer sort of an arrangement. Some PEO and so on. Job description. Now, I've included salary ranges in here because you should have already talked about these before you hired somebody, but this is a good time-- if you haven't, it's an important time to bring it up or to remind them. Like, "Doing this job, this is a salary range. When you bump up at the top of that range, there's two ways we can pay you more. One is if you change jobs, take on more responsibility, or if the firm grows. Then of course the salary range will grow with it, if that happens."

Then just performance review procedures. That assumes you have performance review procedures. I really favor a written yearly summary, but I like monthly 15-minute walks with everybody. Of course, if you're not with them physically, then just a Zoom call or something.

Blair: Do you think salary reviews should be tied to performance review or they should be scheduled as well?

David: I think I'm the only person that believes this because most everybody, what they do is they do them once a year and they do them in conjunction with the performance review. I don't think that makes sense. I think you ought to do it on somebody's anniversary and not just try to make it easy on yourself by doing them all on January 1 or something. I would rather leave the performance reviews a little bit separate from the finance, but I'm not necessarily an expert on management. I wrote a book on it, but it wasn't one of my better books.

Blair: [laughs] Don't bother buying Managing (Right) for the First Time.

David: Thank you for mentioning the title.

Blair: I really like that idea of separating the two. I don't know where the idea came from for me but I've long separated the two. I like that language, that a performance review does not constitute a salary review. I also think salary reviews should be formalized like, "Here's when we do talk about it. "I think anniversary is a good time to look at that.

David: Yes.

Blair: We've got send a gift home, all the forms stuff and all the usual stuff, job description, salary range, outline their performance and salary review procedures. What else?

David: Especially if people are working remotely, I think you ought to ask, "Hey, do you have a good computer? If not, we'll buy one for you." "What's your internet access like? Do we need to supplement that? Do you need a standing desk?" The kind of stuff that you would do if you had a traditional office.

I'm seeing the most enlightened firms not having a physical office as not a way to save money. It's like, "No, it's going to cost us just as much. We're just not going to spend it on monthly rent. We're going to spend it to help people in their work environments. Mainly though, most of the cost is going to be redirected to bringing the team together at least twice a year, and everybody, except for serious personal emergencies, family emergencies, everybody needs to be there. We're not trying to save money here with remote working. We just have different priorities. One of those is somebody's work environment."

Blair: What the firm used to spend on facilities, and you probably have a benchmark for which that should be a percentage.

David: 6%.

Blair: 6% of revenue.

David: 6%. A fee revenue. That's all in, so triple net insurance, taxes, utilities, and so on.

Blair: Okay. 6%. That used to be the number. Then you go remote, you think, "Hey, I can save this 6%," or some of that 6%, but really you're saying, I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but should you still be at roughly 6% when you consider the things that you're buying for people at their home office and the cost of bringing people together a couple of times a year maybe?

David: Yes. Absolutely. It shouldn't be saving you any money.

Blair: Got you. All right. What's next on the checklist?

David: All the SaaS systems you use. If you still do timekeeping-- Did that trigger you?

Blair: No.

David: Are you okay if I mention that word?

Blair: No. I'm good.

David: [laughs] Okay.

Blair: Hey, I just came off a week's holiday. You can talk about timekeeping all you want. I'm just more convinced than ever that time isn't real, so keep all of it that you want.

David: [laughs] Okay. Yes, the SaaS systems.

Blair: Hey, can I ask you a technical question about all the SaaS systems, because there's so much that people have to log into, right? Maybe this is a distraction from the topic at hand.

David: Are we going to do this episode or are you going to keep taking us--

Blair: Do you have any guidance on password management with all these SaaS systems and remote employees?

David: Oh, I love 1Password.

Blair: I hate 1Password. I use it, I despise it.

David: Oh, I love it. You know it's a Canadian company. You want to take that back?

Blair: [laughs] No.

David: I'm just waiting for everybody to realize that passwords are a stupid security measure. 10 years from now, we're not going to be using passwords.

Blair: It's all going to be biometric, do you think?

David: It's going to be my eyes and my fingers and whatever.

Blair: There's a word for that, biometrics.

David: Okay.

[laughter]

Blair: A little punchy after a week off.

David: Yes.

Blair: All the SaaS systems, get them all the logins, et cetera, and then?

David: PR, are you going to do PR? It's flattering to the employee. Nobody is going to read it but go ahead. Listing on the website, you need to have a picture. You need to get a copy of their baby picture. [laughs]

Blair: Oh yes.

David: Oh, I can't help but just laugh about that.

Blair: David is referencing a spoof episode we did, Secrets Behind the Killer Website. Go ahead and look that web listener.

David: It's got a lot of really great advice.

Blair: Yes.

David: Now a serious one though-- We've talked about client orientation. We did a fun episode on that of 2Bobs. I don't know when, but the idea is you need, not just a client orientation notebook that you give to a prospect about what it's going to be like to work with you, but I think internally, you need to have digital folders of everything about this client, like here's their personality profile, here's how frequently they want updated. This is the means they want. Here's a summary of a real tense thing that happened 16 months ago, yada yada, right?

I think you want to sit the new employee down and have them review this stuff for a half a day. It helps them from stepping on something down the road. It's a good idea to do.

Blair: You're saying the client orientation files, some history of the firm, but also the personality profiles of all of the team members, co-workers.

David: Right?

Blair: Yes, that's a good idea.

David: Yes. Then just have a weekly check-in meeting, at least for the first month, maybe even longer. Especially if it takes three months for them to get fully up to speed like you thought, then they need to have a meeting every week for three months. Just stay in touch. There's so much effort and money associated with bringing somebody on board. Plus, I just think there's just a human obligation. It's like, "This is so disruptive to somebody anyway. Let's just smooth the path as much as we can."

Blair: Let's go back to the time frame. Let's say you agree with the new employee that, "Okay, it's 60 days you're going to be fully up to speed," I assume there's a check-in at that 60-day point or maybe even halfway through or three-quarters too. Is that correct?

David: Yes. Right. In the old days, it would be a provisional. I don't think that works anymore. It's a bad idea. They're fully on board. It's not like their status changes, but there's a check-in that just-- This is maybe if they built up enough capital at this point, maybe they can share some of it with a grim. I don't know, probably not quite. Yes, absolutely.

Blair: Have you seen any really interesting employee onboarding tools or techniques that you haven't covered here so far?

David: I have not personally because I haven't been closely enough aligned with this, but I think there are some pretty good SaaS tools that do this, actually. I'm not aware of the specific ones, but I think there are some out there.

Blair: Yes. If the listener is aware of some, maybe send them to us and we can tweet out some links for that.

David: Yes.

Blair: Okay. Any final words of advice for somebody who wants to go from onboarding employees the wrong way to the right way?

David: Yes. Come and work for me and not for Blair because you'll be up to speed a lot faster.

Blair: [laughs] I've got Colette. We actually have a lot of systems and processes. I don't know what they are or where they are.

David: You don't follow them either. [laughs] It's a little late for that.

[laughter]

Blair: Okay. Thanks for this, David. This has been enlightening.

David: Thank you, Blair.