Our approach
There are many reasons for the unsatisfactory performance of new recruits. But the number one cause is dysfunctional operations.
Why traditional onboarding doesn’t work
One of our superpowers is asking questions that surface valuable information i.e., information that can lead to making strategic decisions. Through interviewing new and experienced people and their managers, we have identified the following reasons why new starters don’t perform as hoped:
No “source of truth.” Teams don’t have a single, centralized system for managing information or processes. New starters struggle to find what they need and reference outdated/incorrect information, or worse, no information at all.
Lack of documented workflows. Because there is no centralized location to create, manage, and refer to business processes, everyone does things differently. New recruits might borrow workflows from their colleagues, or create their own, which leads to inconsistent results.
Don’t know what “good” looks like. We often hear the complaint from new starters that it would be helpful to know what top performers are doing day-to-day to achieve results. Because the behaviors of high performers have not been documented and converted into workflows for others to use, no one knows what best practice actually looks like.
Information overwhelm. Training is “one-off” and focuses on “info-dumps,” rather than giving new starters an opportunity to practice the behaviors they are expected to perform within their role. E.g., rather than delivering a product demo, new recruits are expected to watch hours of videos. This leaves them feeling overwhelmed and most of what they “learn” is not remembered or applied.
Subjective performance assessment. Managers have no way of assessing why a new recruit isn’t performing, and so make their assessment subjectively, which leads to inconsistent management and frustration all round.
Overwhelmed management. Because of a lack of documented, consolidated workflows, leaders spend a large amount of time hand-holding new starters. This leaves managers feeling frustrated and new recruits feeling like a burden.
Our solution: “Onboarding Ecosystem”
An “onboarding ecosystem “ consists of many components and are identified through a short phase of discovery.
However, the most critical and common components are listed below:
1. Ad-hoc guided workflows
We typically begin by identifying and developing the most important “ad-hoc” workflows. These are workflows which walk a new recruits through critical business operations, with the guidance and performance support they need to execute to the desired standard.
Each workflow includes:
"just-in-time” performance support, giving users optional guidance throughout each step of the process
checkboxes to ensure new recruits can track their progress, and
workflow “owner” responsible for ensuring the workflow is up to date.
As each workflow is used, where appropriate, it can be customized by the team, increasing efficiencies and creating synergies for everyone.
Note: our approach does not disregard all training—some skills require practice and coaching, such as delivering a product demonstration, or overcoming client objections. This would be addressed separately in more targeted training.
But we intentionally remove routine tasks from introductory training and turn those assets into performance support that appears at the moment within a process where guidance is needed.
Key benefits:
Support provided “just in time” i.e., at the appropriate moment and within the context of the work that needs doing, rather than at a previous, unrelated moment e.g., “Week 1 training”.
Training focuses on outcomes versus consumption e.g., rather than watching videos about the client’s product, we provide new starters with meaningful tasks such as delivering a product demo to a group of peers.
Less “info dump” style training for new starters, and less training development required in total.
New starters add value to the business earlier in their tenure, increasing ROI and job satisfaction.
New starters require less handholding from managers, freeing them up for higher-value work.
Process is learned over time, meaning the person stops relying on the embedded training/support after the process is executed several times.
2. Cyclical guided workflows
We also recommend “cyclical” worklows. These are similar to the workflows outlined in 1. Ad-hoc guided workflows, however rather than being used when needed, they surface on a cyclical cadence (usually via a notification) and prompt new recruits to undertake “housekeeping i.e., follow best practices on an ongoing cadence. This ensures consistent, sustainable results, and addresses the issue of new recruits not knowing what “good” looks like.
E.g., for a new salesperson, a cyclical workflows may look like this:
Each morning, the new recruit is prompted to complete a “Start of day checklist” of responsibilities e.g.,
Schedule the day’s planned sales activities
Reply to any unanswered emails
Each afternoon, the new recruit is prompted to wrap up their day by completing a “End of day checklist” e.g.,
Update the CRM with today’s sales activity
Confirm tomorrow’s sales meetings with an email reminder
Every Friday, the new recruit is prompted to complete a “End of week checklist” which includes a different set of tasks e.g.,
Schedule next week’s sales activities
Review product functionality updates
At the end of each month, the new recruit is prompted to complete a “End of month checklist” which includes a different set of more strategic tasks e.g.,
Schedule monthly check-ins with high-value clients
Share previous month’s results with manager
Share forecast for the upcoming month with manager
While the “consequences” for people not completing these tasks depends on the organization, being provided with visibility into what best practice looks like on a recurring basis reinforces what’s needed to improve performance.
Not to mention, these workflows can be accessed by the manager, so they can review their people’s adherence to completing the workflows. Automatic triggers to alert managers and other relevant people to check output can be built into the salesperson’s workflow (see 3. Performance evaluation and feedback below).
Key benefits:
“Housekeeping” workflows surface on a regular cadence, prompting people to complete tasks regularly.
Over time, these systems become second nature, leveling up the baseline of performance.
“Just-in-time” guidance and links to required resources/tools embedded into workflows, which significantly reduces friction.
Workflows can be customized, increasing efficiencies and creating synergies.
3. Performance evaluation and feedback
To ensure important workflows are followed to the desired standard, we build real-time feedback and evaluation into separate workflows that run parallel to the primary workflows. These can be executed by the leader as a method of quality control e.g.:
Workflow 1 (executed by salesperson): Respond to customer emails
Workflow 2 (executed by sales manager): Evaluate the quality of customer emails
This enables managers to confidently evaluate the performance of their new recruit in a systematic and objective way, leaving the manager feeling confident about giving feedback.
This also gives people clarity into how they were assessed and where they can improve. When people feel that their performance is measured objectively and there is good rationale behind the feedback, their motivation goes up and results improve.
Key benefits:
Managers can evaluate the performance of key business processes against documented best practices, rather than basing their evaluations purely on more subjective measures.
Objective feedback is provided in real-time. The feedback can be implemented immediately for quick growth. Manager and worker objectivity is not hampered by fading memories.
People have a clear understanding of shortcomings and how to improve.
4. Centralized knowledge* hub
*For the purpose of this article, the term “knowledge” refers to any information or content that someone needs to perform their responsibilities, including the workflows mentioned in 1. Ad-hoc guided workflows and 2. Cyclical guided workflows.
This also includes (but is not limited to):
processes, procedures, how-to guides, playbooks, product specifications, customer data, competitor analysis, pricing guides, training videos, territory plans, case studies, white papers, marketing collateral, customer feedback, industry reports, podcasts, blog posts and business intelligence.
Most companies are already using a combination of different tools and websites to store documentation and other information. So, our first recommendation is to create a single “source of truth”.
It’s important to clarify this is not a single platform in which all knowledge is saved. Migrating all content into one platform is not only an inefficient use of time, it is also impractical—much of the info is hosted and maintained on third-party websites e.g., Salesforce manages their own user guides, so we just link to their content.
However, a single database that stores or indexes the knowledge needed by new starters to do their job provides that central “source of truth” new starters are crying out for. Once that’s available, knowledge can be added on an ongoing basis—there’s no need to spend weeks making sure everything is added at the beginning. The knowledge hub slowly becomes more valuable as it’s used.
Each artifact within the knowledge hub can be optionally tagged with data that can be used within filters to quickly see what is needed (see section 5. Onboarding Dashboards below).
Tags can include:
Type (specifying type of content i.e., “workflow”, “user guide”, “product video.” etc.)
Owner (person responsible for ensuring it’s updated and relevant)
Geography (if the content is only relevant locally)
Team (the knowledge hub will eventually be valuable division- and company-wide, but only certain teams would need access to certain info e.g., “New Business” or “Retention”)
Anything else that would help your team quickly find what they need
While we don’t recommend all existing content be immediately added to the system, one essential benefit of a knowledge hub is that it can be used to consolidate all workflows into one platform. These workflows provide the backbone of the onboarding ecosystem and ensure new recruits are able to perform (see 1. Ad-hoc guided workflows and 2. Cyclical guided workflows).
Key benefits:
Single “source of truth”
Users quickly find what they need via dashboards, automatic-surfacing, search or filtering by document type, owner, content topic, etc.
Information stored and maintained by third-party websites indexed via dynamic links
5. Onboarding dashboard
Using the knowledge hub, we create customized onboarding dashboards for each employee. This ensures only the information a new recruit needs within their first week, or month, or quarter, etc., is visible, rather than overwhelming them with access to everything.
Using the content tagging described in 4. Centralized knowledge hub, the dashboards automatically filter content needed by each new starter. In the first instance, this can be customized by the manager, but then once the new recruit is confident using the system, they can adjust what’s visible themselves, leading to a highly efficient working environment.
As you can see in the example below, only information relevant to the onboarding stage of the new starter is visible (although they can also quickly access anything else that might be needed).
Key benefits:
Customized dashboard templates can be created by leaders to curate onboarding experience i.e., only information relevant to their role is visible to new recruits. For example, the “Retention team” sees different information to the “New business” team.
The new recruit is not overwhelmed with everything and can focus on what they need to hit the ground running.
The dashboard arrangement can be customized by the new recruits to give them autonomy over what they see and how they work.
Outcomes from using this approach
The following gives you an idea of a few of the outcomes you can expect when you implement an onboarding ecosystem using the solutions outlined above:
Immediate results. Because this approach re-engineers existing operations, and often leverages tools your people are already using, you will experience immediate ROI. It’s a bit like getting your car serviced—it’s much quicker than replacing the engine or buying a new car. Creating an effective onboarding ecosystem is like giving your business a well overdue service.
Deciding what not to do. We're great at helping our clients sort out their strategy and set priorities. This means we help you do less but better. The results will speak for themselves, and in the meantime, everyone will be less overwhelmed and able to focus on creating value.
Retained expertise. Loss of or not sharing in-house expertise is a huge risk to businesses. Capturing the explicit, implicit, and tacit expertise of your experts is inherent within the system. This expertise is then fed back into your workflows so that those who need it have access to it now and in the future.
High-performance culture. We help you identify the best practices from in-house and external sources and build them into your workflows so that everyone can acquire and improve on them with minimal mentoring from management and experts. High-performance becomes the way of working, rather than an irregular highlight.
Powerful synergies. Nothing operates in a vacuum. Every task or process is affected by, and affects, everything else going on around it. Our approach applies systems thinking methodology to remove barriers and improve productivity globally (i.e., not just for the individual or team within which they’re working). Improvement begets improvement.
Seamless change. The best-laid plans will fail without good change management. This approach is grounded in solid change management, meaning your people will be ready and able to hit the road running when their part of the solution goes live.
Continuous improvement. This approach benefits from the philosophy of "Always in Beta.’ That means that by embracing continuous improvement, we ensure that lessons learned are captured and incorporated and the solution remains relevant.