I recently came across this (again) in Tom Stypulkoski's Workforce.com article, Cultivating Knowledge Transfer. He discusses the pending retirement/knowledge transfer crisis, getting new hires to a state of full effectiveness (FEE) and summarizes his thoughts in this graph.
Supervisors and managers wait and hope for this mythical state to appear when they should be trying to maximize their new hire's productivity at EVERY point along the curve. I hear hiring managers frequently say things like "It really takes about 6 to 9 months to be able to do much of anything around here." And saying that makes it so.
Expect nothing. Get nothing.
Every new hire brings valuable assets to the table, for example previous experience, education, hobbies, fresh perspective. Companies should be actively assessing what they are and using them to help their new hires contribute as much as they can as fast as they can.
Change your focus from 'what was lost' i.e., retiring employee 'Bob', to 'what can I accomplish right away' with my new hire 'Kim's' assets. You'll get more done AND Kim will feel like a valuable member of the team, NOT just 'the new Bob.'
My second issue with the FEE concept is that in our crazy, insane, fast-paced world no one EVER gets fully functional in their jobs. Changes comes so frequently and rapidly that any employee worth their salt is continuously learning and adjusting. You were a FEE in Marketing until social media came along. Then, you were a new hire again. You were a FEE in Sales until on-line shopping came along. Then, you were a new hire again. You get my point.
If the FEE state exists at all anymore, it's like one of those weird heavy elements at the end of the Periodic Table with a half-life of less than 25 picoseconds.
Think of onboarding as early learning, to be followed by learning forever. And at any point in our development, we all want to, and need to, contribute to our projects and teams as best we can.
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