Wednesday 26 January 2011

Welcome Onboard

Well please treat this as a welcome note even if you are a regular reader of the blog.. for unfortunate reasons I never had chance to incubate you into the blog, nor I took time ever to introduce you and welcome you to the blog properly...

As much it is important for one to get welcomed, as much it is important to get incubated.. if someone is joining a force be it sales, development project, product or management it is very important the person gets a right way of hand holding before he is completely incubated in the Team.. now since this blog is more relevant to Management... I think with some hard mistakes and some very good processes seen floating around (Read on Quora) , I realise that the on boarding should not just be a few step task or process... it needs to be a phenomenon... way to detailed in the steps of team building that I always mentioned on this blog...
Forming - Get a person on board, form a team.
Norming - Normalizing him to the culture
Storming - Brainstorming his and your views and ideas and generating better processes and ideas
and Performing...

So.. like mentioned on the Quora answer to which I strongly agree... and the experience with the last 2 new hires we had in our team leaves no doubt in my mind.... Introductory lunch and a Team introduction in a casual mode.. is just going to stay for hours....so there has to be definitely something more... at the moment we do the following:

1. Introductory chat with the director on day 1
2. A quick lunch usually in the first week
3. A team introduction - usually in the first week
4. A 2 week long training plan with details around domain and personal training
5. pairing with one team member and incubation to project.
6. KRA setting in the 3-4 week

Of course in detail they are more clearer... but I feel that this is not enough..there has to be more time and consideration given to the process, culture part so the team member coming on board starts understanding and adapting to it... More significance given to values of the team, company and project so the member gets to know them well.. A lot more should be done... How to do it... I guess maybe I dont have it in black and white now... But I think it surely is needed....

So while I work on this.. I am sure I am going to need your help...so how do you get your new team members boarded?

Joining buddy? Lunches? ice breaking sessions? Detailed training plans? Cultural tourism? Technology tours? Throw in your suggestions... so we can use some help to share and apply a better one...

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