ONBOARDING WHITE PAPER SERIES

Onboarding: The Critical Role of Hiring Managers Talya N. Bauer Cameron Professor of Management Portland State University & Founder Management Analytics, LLC

SUCCESSFACTORS / WHITE PAPER ONBOARDING: THE CRITICAL ROLE OF HIRING MANAGERS

Onboarding: The critical role of hiring managers Executive summary Onboarding matters. Organizations hire employees to get a job done. Those organizations which are able to harness the power of new employee knowledge, skills, and abilities quickly are more effective than those who do not. Understanding what new employee onboarding is, how to do it well, and how to facilitate the integration between the new employee and hiring manager is a major key to success. Organizations considered in the top 20% in terms of onboarding had 91% first year retention and 62% of new employees reaching first year goals compared to the bottom 30% of organizations who reported only 30% retention and 17% goal completion for the same time frame. The person within your organization who has the power to make or break a new employee’s success is the hiring manager. This white paper describes best practices and shows the importance of managers employing these best practices for onboarding new employees. This is the third of three papers in the SuccessFactors onboarding best practices series. The first white paper focused on the role of connection within onboarding. The second focused on best practices for enhancing new employee clarity and confidence during onboarding. This white paper focuses on the critical role of hiring managers during new employee onboarding, including evidencebased descriptions of how hiring managers are critical to the success of new employees as well as best practices for helping them maximize their impact. Before that, however, a quick overview of onboarding is warranted.

Onboarding defined Onboarding is a system of processes for integrating new employees into an organization and making them productive as quickly as possible. When asked, 66% of organizations report having some aspects of formal onboarding programs beyond simple orientations and 53% invest in onboarding across a new employee’s first year.1 The business case for effective onboarding is strong. A Boston Consulting Group study found that onboarding was related to 2.5 times the profit growth and 1.9 times the profit margin as compared to organizations leaving onboarding to chance.2

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SUCCESSFACTORS / WHITE PAPER ONBOARDING: THE CRITICAL ROLE OF HIRING MANAGERS

The 4 C’s for onboarding success The 4 C’s of onboarding include: • • • •

clarification, compliance, culture, and connection.3

Clarification refers to the details and context of one’s job including understanding the job requirements, the norms for getting things done, and how things are described internally and externally such as acronyms, etc. The sooner a new employee understands his or her job, the sooner they become more productive. Compliance refers to the on-the-job basics such as tax forms, employment paperwork, badges, email accounts, computers, and workstations as needed for a given job. Organizations doing well on compliance have been able to take these unpleasant and routine aspects of new employee onboarding and make them less onerous. Culture refers to learning the unique organizational culture of a new organization. Much like individuals have different personalities, patterns, and expectations, so do organizations. The more quickly and accurately a new employee can interpret and understand the overall culture and the subcultures within an organization, the better their chances for long-term success. Connection refers to the key interpersonal relationships, support mechanisms, and information networks that new employees need to establish upon entering a new organization in order to be effective.

Focus on the hiring manager All of the 4 C’s are critical pieces of the onboarding puzzle and the hiring manager is the key linking pin for all of them. While onboarding is ultimately a system-wide process, of all the stakeholders involved, hiring managers are the ones most likely to help or hinder a new employee’s success within the organizations.4 It is critical to understand best practices for hiring managers because these functions include direct impacts on important organizational outcomes such as new employee job performance, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, employee referrals, intentions to remain, and turnover.5 Managers may be thought of as key to “setting the stage” for new employees where they play the multiple roles of producer, director, and stage manager.6 As much as other organizational stakeholders can help new employees to succeed, the more integrated that the hiring manager is in the linking pin role, the better.

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SUCCESSFACTORS / WHITE PAPER ONBOARDING: THE CRITICAL ROLE OF HIRING MANAGERS

Hiring manager best practices What specifically can organizations do to help best facilitate managers helping new employees into the organization such that they have high levels of connection, clarity, confidence, understand the culture, and comply with important rules and regulations? There are several best practices which effective onboarding organizations employ. These include providing managers with the right information at the right time, leveraging technology, making onboarding a valuable part of their job, measuring how well hiring managers onboard new employees, and training managers how to support new employees while never undermining them. For example, at Google, managers were sent a list of five things they could do to help new employees be successful. These included the following behaviors: 1. Have a “role & responsibilities” discussion. 2. Match the new employee with a peer. 3. Help the new employee build a social network. 4. Set up onboarding check-ins once a month for the first six months. 5. Create open communication. This simple change was so effective that Google has subsequently incorporated this into their onboarding process around the world. Additional best practices are summarized below. Best practices: Helping hiring managers onboard new employees Best practice

Rationale and research support

Company examples

It is better for hiring managers to make investments of time in new employees up front in order to secure long term success.

Managers at the best-in-class onboarding organizations had 20% year-over-year improvement in satisfaction.7 This is a critical point. In dozens of conversations with organizations within the past year, this has come up repeatedly. It is clear that hiring managers matter the most but how to get their attention and partner effectively with them is not yet smoothly orchestrated within most organizations.

This is currently done rarely. This is a huge opportunity. Most companies have not made this transition so as the need to be more proactive with onboarding has become more apparent, many have tended to engage in the “pile on” rather than reconfiguring managers jobs to allow them to engage in the critical behaviors which lead to long term success.

But, effective organizations make onboarding new employees a valuable part of a hiring managers job- they don’t just pile it on top of everything else.

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SUCCESSFACTORS / WHITE PAPER ONBOARDING: THE CRITICAL ROLE OF HIRING MANAGERS

Best practices: Helping hiring managers onboard new employees Tools can help busy hiring managers integrate time and effort into helping new employees be successful. It isn’t that they don’t care but rather that they need support along the way to do this well. Provide managers with the right information at the right time.

Leverage technology.

Google conducted an experiment where some hiring managers were “nudged,” or reminded to help new employees by being given information on what they could do to help them succeed and then compared to those not getting this information. Those managers receiving this information were 14% more proactive in helping new employees from day 1, 10% faster onboarding, and managers reported being happier as indicated by comments such as “We really appreciate how easy you make this for us.”8 CH2M Hill helps hiring managers support new employees through their quick-start guide (QSC) which outlines the desired outcomes, emphasizes starting the onboarding process as soon as a candidate has accepted an offer of employment, providing a “to do” list for before new employee entry including creating an onboarding integration plan and assigning a “buddy,” the employee’s first day, their first week, 30 days, and 90 days.

Google Inc.

From information sharing, reminder emails, and social networking technology, organizations have a number of important ways to help managers leverage technology to facilitate new employee success. Companies like Kellogg’s and Tupperware Corporate use employee portals to allow new employees access to information any time and anywhere. SuccessFactors has an onboarding solution specifically designed to guide the hiring managers through onboarding best practices and monitor progress, plus an integrated suite of talent management software designed to help jump start new employee productivity. Research shows that many organizations do a poor job of following up with new hires and integrated software helps to facilitate this process.

Kellogg’s

CH2M Hill

SuccessFactors Tupperware Corporation

Measure how well hiring managers are doing at onboarding new employees.

One important aspect of supporting managers in their role to support new employees is to identify which managers are effective and which need additional resources and attention to help new employees onboard well. By gathering data from new employees about their experiences during onboarding, feedback to hiring managers can help them see where they are doing well and which areas need additional attention.

CH2M Hill

Train hiring managers on how to support new employees (and not undermine them).

A research study of new employees at a University found that manager support and undermining were related to whether or not the new employee stayed with the organization.9 Examples of concrete social support include providing a new employee with encouragement or helping them to understand and sort things out. Undermining can be thought of the flip side of social support but goes beyond this into negative interactions.

This is a new opportunity for organizations to be on the cutting edge of onboarding best practices.

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SUCCESSFACTORS / WHITE PAPER ONBOARDING: THE POWER OF CONNECTION

An additional resource that I have created is an evidence-based Hiring Manager Best Practices Checklist which is a tool that can be used to help managers tie together the 4 C’s with best practices.

Manager best practices checklist for onboarding new employees New employees have a big task in front of them. They need to learn about their new job in terms of compliance issues as well as needing to gain a sense of clarity around their roles, connectedness with those around them, and how they fit in with your culture. These are called the 4 C’s. Research shows that the trajectory of success for new employees starts from Day 1. You can help them maximize success by engaging in Onboarding Best Practices for new employees by:  Compliance. New employees need to learn specific rules and procedures. The most effective way to do this is to get them comfortable with the other C’s below so they are receptive and able to focus on learning.  Clarification. Be consistent with onboarding practices for new employees. Have an onboarding plan in place and enact it every time.  Clarification. Check in with new employees to make sure they have what they need on Day 1 as well as a week later when new questions may have arisen.  Culture. Make sure our values and culture are projected in how you treat and greet new employees. Stories tell who you are.  Connection. Remember new employees are anxious to make a good impression. Tell them how happy you are to have them join your team. Doing this early on has a much bigger positive impact than waiting until later.  Connection. Make the first day special for new employees. Meet with them, make sure someone takes them to lunch, and that the atmosphere is welcoming. Research shows this simple connection matters for success over the long run.

Conclusion In conclusion, onboarding is the key to getting new employees up and running both quickly and smoothly. Organizations able to ramp up new employee knowledge, comfort, and performance during onboarding by specifically identifying answers to the who, what, when, and where for getting things done, enjoy new employee performance, higher job attitudes such as satisfaction and commitment, and decreased turnover. Hiring managers are what matters most for new employees. The use of technology to accomplish onboarding success is critical in today’s competitive landscape and helps hiring managers to facilitate new employees hitting the ground running.

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SUCCESSFACTORS / WHITE PAPER ONBOARDING: THE CRITICAL ROLE OF HIRING MANAGERS

Author Bio Talya N. Bauer (Ph.D., Purdue University) is the Cameron Professor of Management at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon as well as the Program Director for The Conference Board’s Onboarding Talent Council. She is an award-winning teacher who conducts research about relationships at work in general and onboarding in specific. She has published in the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, and Personnel Psychology, works with organizations, and has been a Visiting Scholar in France, Spain, and at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA. She is the former Editor of the Journal of Management and incoming Associate Editor at the Journal of Applied Psychology. She serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Management and Personnel Psychology. Her work has been discussed by numerous media outlets such as New York Times, BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review.

Endnotes 1

Laurano, M. (2012). Onboarding: The missing link to productivity. Aberdeen Group.

2 The Boston Consulting Group & World Federation of People Management Associations (2012). From capability to profitability: Realizing the value of people management. BCG. 3

Bauer, T. N. (2011). Onboarding new employees: Maximizing success. SHRM Foundation’s Effective Practice Guidelines Series.

Sluss, D. M., & Thompson, B. S. (2012). Socializing the newcomer: The mediating role of leader-member exchange. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 119, 114-125.

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5 Bauer, T. N., Bodner, T., Erdogan, B., Truxillo, D. M., & Tucker, J. S. (2007). Newcomer adjustment during organizational socialization: A meta-analytic review of antecedents, outcomes, and methods. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 707-721. 6 Klein, H. J., & Polin, B. (2012). Are organizations on board with best practice onboarding? Oxford Handbook of Onboarding. Oxford, UK: Oxford Publishing.

7

Laurano (2012). See above.

8

Google (2012). Conference presentation.

9 Kammeyer-Mueller, J., Wanberg, C., Rubenstein, A., & Song, Z. (2013). Support, undermining, and newcomer socialization: Fitting in during the first 90 days. Academy of Management Journal, 56, 1104-1124.

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