Productivity Habits to 2x Onboarding Experience
Surfing different websites and blogs, you may find out various tips, instructions, or even strategies on how to create a perfect onboarding time. If you are not familiar with the concept, don’t miss the boat by reading: Onboard and Retain NEW EMPLOYEES
The strong relationship between onboarding, turnover, and retention rate was corroborated by many studies. For example, poor onboarding programs may lead to a higher rate of staff turnover occurring within the first 45 days of employment (Internet Source). Well, in theory, it is, however, in practice I don’t entirely agree with this statement. What I really see is that new employees can already decide whether they will stay with the job or not after 7–14 days, the more experienced they are the quicker they can make a decision. Even if a new employee experienced a poor onboarding process, one will still stay with the company till the end of the probationary period, depending on the employer’s brand (big company) or salary and compensation/ benefits (startup or SME). This is especially true in the context of a fast pace working environment like Vietnam.
From the employers’ perspective, they are eager to leverage the onboarding experience by preparing everything in advance and designing comprehensive orientation, induction training, and socialization programs. However, I think that these things are insufficient if they are only the showcases of the organizational culture, and immersing yourself into one’s culture takes time.
When I ask some successful candidates to rate which they prioritize to know in the first day/week, the most common answers are real “job duties/ structures”. This answer revealed that the ‘sense of job security’ comes very early, even before the need of understanding organizational culture because everyone wants to be able to work confidently and independently in his or her position as soon as possible.
However, most people said that they were thrown into the workplace in the first day with a poor introduction of the position and related tasks. In the worst cases, predecessors didn’t have a proper workflow and they only gave new hires a general description of tasks that newbies needed to do which was similar to the given JD so new staffs needed to figure out how to solve every task — a classical example of the startup’s environment. In a better case of a bigger corporation, predecessors gave new employees a list of tasks in a handover Excel file that they need to take care of and show them how to do each task with possible cautions. In this case, new employees needed to take lots of notes without being shown a big picture — a panoramic view of the position and tasks in a relationship. Therefore everything seemed to flush away at the end of the day because (1) lots of things to remember so they could easily miss some points; (2) not knowing how to possible fix errors; (3) not able to absorb everything because some teachings were conducted in the last hours of the working day when newbies felt too tired; ect. Some people said that they normally spent more than 8 hours, typically 9–12 hours at the beginning of a new job.
I have a pleasure to talk with a lot of candidates who already passed their job interviews and got their “dreaming” job offers, some of them were interviewed and shortlisted by me. Although they already got the job that they desired and had several years of work experience in the same field and position (majority: 3–5 years, minority: 1–2 years), they are still nervous about what to do in order to outperform during the probation period?
My advice is a right “methodology”
(1) Get yourself familiar with the overall view of your workflow (WF):
Every position always has its own workflow so getting familiar with the WF of your position as soon as possible. This should be the top priority within the first week. The faster you can learn the WF of your position, the better you can do the job independently and confidently. If there is no existing WF, you must create one for your own. If there is already, remind your predecessor to conduct important knowledge sharing sessions or teach you any job duties knowledge at the beginning of the morning (or) afternoon because your absorption ability and work speed will be reduced later in the day. Remember to take notes carefully (even ask for demos) so that this information can be transferred into the workflow diagram later.
Week 1 (Knowledge Sharing)
- Understand the position’s core duties
- Ask your predecessor to give some demo
- Create a first drafted WF diagram
Week 2 (Practice)
- Practice all duties based in your WF thoroughly
- Update any variations
- Possible to jot down daily workload in your work diary
Week 3 (Knowledge Integration)
- Practice all duties based on your diagram
- Update any variations
- Possible to make any minor changes in your WF
Week 4 (Knowledge Integration)
Polish the workflow
(2) Draw a detailed workflow:
It’s time to transfer your notes into a detailed diagram so that you can refer to it much faster and easier than reading raw handwritten notes (Force both parts of your brain to work!). A good WF illustration should include:
- Categories of core duties (Among core duties, there will be several top duties that you need to do very often. If it is so, you need to figure out the techniques to master these tasks.)
- The workflow of each core duties (including necessary actions, file locations, email communication forms, key work contact for each task, special notes)
- Expected output
When reviewing the diagram, you should understand thoroughly the relationship between core duties, the reason and consequence of any actions that you do — not just automatically doing something because someone requires you to do it — so that if any problems happen you know where you are wrong to fix the error. Once you are already familiar with the WF of your position, you can start making some adjustments to work better.
Why do I say that you need to learn the WF as soon as possible, preferably during the first week?
(1) Because it is the core thing that you must do every day. Be kind to your brain’s memory storage capacity
(2) To avoid overloading when you encounter lots of task’s interruptions/ overlapping or you need to take full-day training but you are not yet familiar with the ways of doing tasks in a new company.
(3) It is time-saving when you can take full control of the whole WF, you know what you need to do and why you do it. Besides, it is also a good document for tracking and fixing errors as well as finding weak points that need further developments.
From the knowledge sharing to the knowledge integration***
***Examples of 3 workflows that I created. You can also create one for your own by using Word Visio, Draw or any similar online tools.
→ Work Smarter than Harder! Use your time well so that you can be the most productive within 8 hours at work because the rest time is for yourself interest and your family. Have a new, pleasant, and healthy career start!
Written by Alice & Hung Nguyen
