Leaders want candidates to choose their organization as a premier place to work, and they want them to stay once they become new hires. Creating a world-class onboarding program is an important step in accomplishing those goals. Building a successful onboarding program is neither easy nor impossible; it does require understanding the difference between the elements of an onboarding program that make it merely adequate and those that make it truly great.
In his provocative Harvard Business Review article “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?” Frederick Herzberg outlined his motivator-hygiene theory of motivation. The theory includes two elements that impact an employee’s motivation: hygiene factors and motivators. The former includes workplace ingredients like sufficient pay, job security, acceptable working conditions and status. These are vital not because they increase motivation but because lacking them diminishes it. On the other hand, motivators like challenging work, recognition and responsibility do increase an employee’s motivation.
When considering effective onboarding programs, especially those designed to increase a net promoter score (NPS) for the organization, Herzberg’s framework is incredibly insightful and useful for learning and development (L&D) professionals. There are certain features of an onboarding program, such as system access and functioning hardware, that don’t increase the NPS if they’re present; however, if they’re not present, then the NPS will most certainly take a hit. They are, to use Herzberg’s language, “hygiene factors.” To boost the NPS, L&D professionals need to consider the motivators within an onboarding context, such as pre-boarding activities, team integration and mentorship, and personalization.
Let’s consider both areas.
Onboarding Hygiene Factors
Having a good plan in place will keep your NPS from falling, but hygiene factors alone won’t push you into a world-class category. Let’s examine these factors in more detail:
Understand the workflow: To build a great onboarding program, start with creating a detailed swim lane workflow that clearly shows the many touchpoints between teams: talent acquisition, informational technology, human resources information systems, learning and development, and the operational leaders. These swim lanes will help you easily identify pain points, especially where automation should be implemented, and allow you to plan for adjustments.
Get technology right the first time: Few things will frustrate a new hire more than receiving hardware that doesn’t work or being unable to access appropriate systems. This is one of the most basic hygiene factors in onboarding. Your new hires will expect this area to be flawless. Falling short in this area will almost certainly cause a declining NPS.
Where to go, what to do: Having a clear agenda from the start date is a basic expectation for all involved. Operational leaders need to know where their new hires will be, who they’re with, and what they’re learning. Uncertainty in onboarding procedures causes anxiety for operational leaders since they have responsibility for their new hires from the start. Your L&D team should communicate early and clearly to new hires and their leaders on what to expect and when.
Onboarding Motivation Factors
To boost your NPS, you need to move beyond the aforementioned hygiene factors and start thinking about motivation factors. The following elements can help make your onboarding program world-class:
Onboarding begins before a new hire starts: Joining a new organization is nerve-wracking and overwhelming. The perception of belonging begins during the interview process and continues through day one and beyond. Once a candidate becomes a new hire, they need to feel welcome and energized. A congratulatory email or even phone call from the hiring leader immediately after the candidate accepts the offer will start to pull the new hire into the culture of the organization. Sending a “swag bag” to the new hire (especially if you work in a remote organization) prior to their first day shows commitment and investment and is likely to nudge your NPS in the right direction.
Don’t wait to integrate: New hires want to know who they’ll be working with and on what as soon as possible. Make sure the hiring leader meets with their new team member on the first day if possible and with their teams the same day or shortly thereafter. Empower the hiring leader with relevant training on how to welcome a new team member. This can include formalized training but also onboarding toolkits, email templates and talking points. Assigning a mentor within the team can also be a great integration strategy.
An experience as unique as the new hire: Every new team member needs to be brought into the general culture of the organization. They need to be provided with a baseline knowledge of critical systems and the products the company sells and manages. But once the general knowledge has been given, a world-class onboarding program will tailor the experience according to the specific role of the new hire. This is one of the most difficult elements of a great onboarding program because it requires so much variety. There are a lot of roles within an organization. Yet, L&D professionals can partner with operational and support service teams to fine-tune the onboarding experience for every new hire. By detailing relevant curriculum and creating learning paths in learning management systems, L&D teams can deploy personalized experiences that will energize their onboarding programs and positively impact NPS.
Conclusion
Like motivating employees, improving the NPS for an onboarding program requires much more than elementary features like correct system access or functioning hardware. Those qualities won’t hurt your NPS, but they also won’t do much to help it. To truly impress your new hires, L&D professionals need to move beyond hygiene factors and into the realm of true engagement with day one integration and personalized experiences. Those factors can and will move the needle on your NPS and set you apart from all the rest.
