How to Integrate New Employees

This week, I'm completing the last session of several months of training I've been offering to the team leaders and potential team leaders at a client company. I've really learned from the points of view of employees who are not in management roles currently. They could be someday, but the training was also offered to strong individual contributors who may choose that role indefinitely.

Not everyone wants to be in management, nor is everyone suited to management. Additionally, there are a limited number of managerial roles within each company. And, with my philosophy of employee empowerment within a framework of clear direction, this is good.

This week, we are finishing with the topic of employee mentoring and onboarding because the company has been hiring employees at a rapid pace for several years. One of the important points I've learned (don't you always learn and teach at the same time?) is that we have a lot of work to do in the onboarding arena.

We have employees who have been with the company just a short time trying to teach the culture and the company ways to new employees - new employees who may, in fact, know none of the rationale for why things are done the way they are or how components of the culture originated. Additionally, the employees know and may have read the company's mission and vision, but we really need to turn that into a discussion so the meaning, the direction, and the values become clear to them and owned by them.

So, we're forming a team to take a look at the whole process of bringing employees into the company. Not just a 4-8 hour boring discussion with Human Resources staff about benefits and policies and paperwork, in a true employee onboarding process, you have the opportunity with new employees to teach your culture and expectations. The new employees will feel warmly welcomed and appreciated. This is your first step with new employees within the new challenges of employee retention.

Shared with me by Paul Middlin of the TechSmith Corporation, this is an interesting article at the Construx Conversations: Software Best Practices blog about scaling up quickly if your company is rapidly growing.

If you've read this far, perhaps you can answer my question. I have traditionally called this integration process new employee orientation, but somewhere along the way, the name onboarding seems to have caught on. Which term do you use and why?

More About Employee Onboarding and Integration

• New Employee Orientation - Employee Onboarding.
• Orientation Vs. Integration.
• Employee Orientation: Keeping New Employees on Board.
• Creating a Mentoring Culture.

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