How To Fix Onboarding: A Dog Walk, A Baby, And Freshman Year Of College

Wait, what?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that most onboarding programs — the process of bringing a new employee into a company — absolutely suck lead paint. Here are some stats backing that up. It’s always amazing to me that people look at terrible “employee engagement” numbers — 15% globally, son! — and don’t realize how it’s tied to shitty onboarding. If you come into an organization and you have no idea of your role, the mission, your manager’s deliverables, the culture, etc. in the beginning … eventually why would you care anymore? The short answer to that question is “They pay you and can fire you, so you have to care.” True, true. Is that the best answer to that question? No.

It’s actually not that hard to improve onboarding programs, such as changing the tasks a new hire can do on Day 1 or revolving the whole process around stories or making sure there’s a clear revenue tie for the “decision-makers,” but mostly we don’t think about these things. Work is very much task-to-task, KPI-to-KPI, and project-to-project.

In short: should be obvious that bad onboarding eventually leads to disengaged employees and crappier work being turned in. No one has time to care, though. More crappy work needs to get assigned and delivered.