Onboard New Hires Using Lean Principles

Too often new hires are subjected to a fire hose of information. I talked to one new hire at a bank in Denver and learned that she spent her first 3 days at the company in a conference room watching video tapes about banking. A waste of time and that, quite frankly, should be illegal under some international convention.

It's too much too soon. I asked her how much she remembered. "Well, the beginning. And I definitely remember when it ended. The middle's, well, fuzzy." So, how'd she learn to do her job? "I asked the coworker next to me."

There's a lot for new hires to learn to become effective and productive employees. But, you can't teach it all at once! Learning needs to be just in time or on demand. As close to the moment of need as possible. Our new teller above learned one task at a time and as they came up.

New technologies, especially social media and mobile learning, are a great way to let new hires tap into knowledge that they need. Properly structured they allow new hires to "pull" info they know they need and "push" info to them that might be important at the time.

Check out our web site, OnBoard Yourself!, to see what I mean. We created important content for new hires structured around, for example, when they might need it. In my experience, most new hires need to build skills in an order. You know, by the end of 3 months they should know these things and be able to do these things. And, by the end of 6 months, know and do these things. Etc, etc. 

This helps new hires understand what's expected today, tomorrow and 6 months from now. They can plan their learning and access content accordingly.

Now, every new hire's experience is slightly different and they need to build different skills at different times depending on their situation and assignments. So, content is also structured by topic. Been thrown into a dysfunctional team? Check out what advice experts have to offer on that.

Because we can't anticipate what new hires might need, we try to give it them ALL AT ONCE. Total waste of time. They don't remember it. And then, when they really need the information, it's not available.

Provide easy access on a variety of relevant topics in interesting formats.

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