Onboarding with Web 2.0

Onboarding  2.0

”Everything” 2.0…..

Concept of interactivity; not static one way flow of information, emergent properties as a result of user created content – iterative processes

Defining Onboarding –

An experience that engenders feelings of wanting to be associated with and recognized as a valued and contributing member of the organizational community. 

Its about building relationships for the long term.  It begins at the time of offer, (pre-boarding) and ends with achievement of full productivity. 

Offer of employment —————————————————————àFull productivity

                Orientation to the job/organization to being a contributing member of the community

So many variables….

Orientation	Individual Perspective	Organizational Perspective
Task	To the job roles and responsibilities To the tools  - common desktop/communication tools	Completion of forms/documents “Set-up” in the formal systems
Social	Establishing networks Giving context to role within organizational community	Sharing the values and norms of behavior Awareness of capabilities and talent pool

 

We must create standards for smooth and efficient processing of the paperwork, explicit tasks for bringing someone onboard, while enabling interactive communication welcoming the individual to the organizational community and introducing the community to the individual  

Customize the process – targeted to particular roles/responsibilities – one size doesn’t fit all

Use multiple modalities – good adult learning principles

Establish measures of success –  not just turn-over rates….mix of quantitative and qualitative measures

Adult learning principles

Start where “learner” is – recognize and value past experience – adjust for demographics of recruits

Enable discovery and self-directed learning – not just “telling”;

creating new nodes and connections..

The first three months of an employment relationship is critical. The time and cost to recruit is high – there is a talent shortage in many fields. So there is a renewed interest in how to welcome new recruits, present a positive first impression, share info, create a buddy system and get them “hooked” on the job and organization so they will stay….this thinking needs to be a 2-way communication feedback loop and not just 1-way of organization pushing info to the new recruit. Let’s leverage web 2.0 to allow easier access of both “1 to many” and “many to 1″ in informal learning.

Some initial thoughts -

that printed employee handbook – lets make it into a wiki – so the organizational community can contribute to keep it updated…

let employees introduce themselves directly to their new community through wiki and/or blog – (provide a template and guidelines of course..) – these individual spaces can grow to become their personal profiles and with some common conventions on tags and categories makes it searchable to find people in the organization network

a podcast or two…..

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