For the first part of my weekly assignment, I worked on onboarding at a company. The onboarding process helps a company develop a happy contributor and coworker who will work well with the rest of their team. Onboarding conveys your organization’s values, explains your people and professional culture, aligns institutional expectations and performance and provides the tools for the employee to successfully assimilate into their position. A good onboarding process spans 1-2 years and includes constant communication and feedback. Onboarding follows the employee lifecycle for mentoring and development. Seamlessly transitioning the person through the onboarding experience, ensures success and creates a long term employee.

On Monday my mentor Ana took me through the basics of the onboarding process. She explained to me that is a very sensitive time for new people coming into a company. They are usually very excited about their new job and they want it to be a great experience. If something goes wrong in their first few weeks it is very easy for them to get discouraged and get into a negative mindset.

For the first part of my assignment, I looked at the different checklists each team has for their onboarding (the general idea stays the same but there are a couple of things that have to differ based on what the team is responsible for). They spread their onboarding system over 3 months, with regular monthly check-ins after that. Each new hire is given a buddy that helps them. In the first part of my project, I focused on looking at the onboarding checklists my mentor gave me that they use at the Five Agency. After going over the checklists, I had to come up with ways that every goal of onboarding will be accomplished.