How to Fast-Track Productivity for New Hires

Dr. Ben Baran is an Associate Professor at Cleveland State University and co-founder of Elevating What Works.

No matter how great your new hires are, it takes time to get them up to speed. But every moment they’re on your payroll and not fully adding value, you’re losing money.

One way to shorten this “time to productivity” gap is to have an excellent onboarding process. Don’t confuse this with orientation, which typically centers around the immediate paperwork and other routine matters.

Onboarding is a longer-term process that helps new employees become part of the team and fully transition from outsiders to insiders. It involves ensuring they learn how to be successful and add value to the organization. This could take up to a full year to complete, but doing it right will get them up to speed quickly, increasing their satisfaction and reducing the probability they’ll quit.

Most organizations struggle to do this well. But that presents an opportunity for you — here are steps to build or improve your onboarding process:

• Ask your current employees what they wish they would have done or learned during their first few weeks or months on the job. You could do this through a survey, or you could ask people individually or in groups.
• Look for themes in what people said and use them to prioritize next steps.
• Include managers. Direct supervisors should be closely involved in the onboarding of their new hires. In addition to making new hires feel welcomed, they should work with them to develop a specific plan for success. Consider starting with a 90-day plan.
• Schedule and conduct regular check-ins between direct supervisors and new hires. These will likely be very frequent to start, but then can taper off to a less-frequent schedule as the new hire makes progress.

Investing this time early on pays off. It can reduce mistakes, accelerate the path to peak performance, and help new hires feel like a valued part of the team.

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