Team of one: Onboarding
Each month, a squad of Enablers meet up to discuss the specific challenges that they face in their roles. The unique thing about this monthly squad meeting: the attendees are all a Team of One. This means that they are the one and only person in an Enablement function at their organizations.
In an effort to spread knowledge in the Enablement space, we wanted to distribute this group’s insights, best practices, struggles, etc. with the community. We hope that these resonate for others and that the learnings can be applied to their roles.
Interviewing and onboarding new members of a sales and/or revenue organization is exciting. Your team is growing and you’re about to be responsible for ramping up a new hire in their role. Sometimes, the process goes off without a hitch and the new hires begin producing results in their first few weeks. Other times, the process doesn’t go as smoothly as it could have and things fall through the cracks
To help new hires get off on the right foot from Day 1, our Team of One Enablement group got together to talk about some of their best practices and thoughts on interviewing and onboarding. This month’s group consisted of Annie Johnson, Dave Sweeney, Fiona Simpson, Neman Syed, and Shannon Sellis.
You can review their notes below:
The Interview Process
Our Team of One Enablement group shared the sentiment that they’re normally not involved in the hiring process. Even though it’s typically Enablement’s responsibility to ramp new hires effectively and efficiently, the Enablement function typically has little input in the hiring process.
The group agreed that Enablement should absolutely be involved in the process. If coachability is such an important trait in new hires, then who better to identify it than Enablement. Having worked in onboarding, developing, coaching, training, etc., Enablement has a unique perspective that can add tremendous value before offering the job.
Preparation before Day 1
To make people feel included from the start, contact new hires before they start. You can collect basic demographic information to ensure we’re addressing people correctly and foresee potential errors/mistakes in the onboarding process - name pronunciation, preferred name, pronouns, etc. Don’t leave it all to HR. A large part of our job in preboarding/ onboarding is ensuring new hires feel included and welcome.
Sometimes there may be tech issues, items not getting delivered, or problems with timing given the short notice periods. To avoid these issues, work with internal stakeholders to ensure that there is plenty of time to prepare for the new hire.
Scheduling New Hire Cohorts
Inconsistent onboarding schedules can strain internal teams and create an unorganized experience for the new hire. If you can, work with internal stakeholders to define a schedule for new hires. You can ask new hires to only start on the first and third Mondays of the month. Or maybe there’s only one new hire cohort each month and they all start on the same day.
Taking this approach might cause alignment issues. Hiring managers likely want the seat to be filled ASAP and the new hire wants to start sooner rather than later. We understand these viewpoints; however, scheduling cohorts will create uniformity in the process, allow the new hires to build bonds with the other new team members, and it won’t overburden the hiring managers.
Conclusion & Comments
The interview and onboarding processes are crucial steps for new team members. When these processes are polished and well-managed, then you’re setting up new hires and their managers up for success. When these processes are lacking, then there will likely be some bumps in the road. It’s an opportunity for Enablement to collaborate with internal stakeholders to create a standard operating procedure so that everyone - hiring managers, HR/PeopleOps, team members, new hires, etc - is on the same page.
Interviewing and onboarding is a vast topic and our group wasn’t able to discuss everything there is around the subject so we’d like to open it up to you! Let us know what your thoughts are by heading to The Enablement Squad’s slack group and drop your comments about the subject.
We’d like to hear what you think about:
How can Enablement ensure a better interviewing and/or onboarding process?
Have you recently tried something new that produced impactful results?
What are your tips, tricks, and best practices for onboarding?
