Episode: 214

Episode Title: Onboarding is Not a Bootcamp

File Name: onboarding-is-not-a-bootcamp

Too many organizations are treating onboarding like a bootcamp—a short period of intense training. But are new hires really retaining anything from it? Find out, next on The Perna Syndicate.

Ep 214 show:

Welcome! This is The Perna Syndicate and I’m your host, Mark Perna. This week, we’ve been talking about the do’s and don’ts of onboarding new employees. In our newly virtual world, acclimating people to the company culture has become a bigger challenge than ever. 

If you’re a new employee, timing has a lot to do with how you experience onboarding. How much do you really retain if your first two weeks or so are just jam-packed with meetings, emails, employee handbooks, paperwork, and more?

Onboarding should not be an intense bootcamp experience. Instead, it should be a longer and more gradual process so that new employees—especially Gen-Z workers—don’t get overwhelmed with the sheer volume of information. 

Unfortunately, many organizations worry about ‘missing something’ that might be important without realizing that over-communication is creating fatigue. And this fatigue will actually cause the new hire to miss much of what is being communicated.  

Rather than eliminating important information, break up that information up into more manageable pieces and deliver them over a longer period of time. That will allow new hires to consume lots of relevant information at their own pace.

While it may seem like more work for companies to ditch the bootcamp approach and onboard people more gradually, it will benefit the business in the long run. Employees who have a positive onboarding experience will not only stay at the company longer, but they’ll also recommend it to others as a great place to work. 

Tomorrow: how do you know if your company’s onboarding experience is working? We’ll talk about it tomorrow on the show. See you then!