Employee Onboarding (#208)
/In this podcast episode, we discuss best practices for the new employee onboarding process. Key points made are noted below.
The Onboarding Concept
Onboarding is the induction and assimilation of an employee into an organization. Without the onboarding process, a new hire is more likely to make mistakes, since they don’t know how the company’s processes work, and their skill level may be lower than you think. In the accounting field, errors can be really expensive – and when they result in incorrect financial statements, the reputation of the whole department suffers.
A follow-on to the last problem is that new employees may not last very long. They make mistakes, which makes them look bad, and then either they leave, or the controller fires them because they’re “not working out.” In reality, the departure of a new employee might be the fault of the controller, because there was no onboarding process.
So what can be done? In short, a lot of hand holding. When a new hire walks in the door, there needs to be a more experienced person waiting for him. That person is matched up with the new hire on a full-time basis. Though that “full-time” statement requires some explanation.
The Rapid Feedback Approach
Consider using a rapid feedback form of onboarding. This means the trainer sits down with a new hire and walks him through a task, explaining every possible aspect of how to do it. Such as where certain files are located, who you have to talk to, which spreadsheets need to be updated, which approvals are needed, and so on. And then immediately have the person do a live transaction, while watching him like a hawk.
By taking this approach, the new hire gets a comprehensive feel for each task that he’s involved with, right from the start. In addition, the trainer watches how the new hire performs the task, and so can judge his knowledge and confidence level right away.
If the person is clearly stellar, then a few repetitions will be enough, and the trainer moves on to the next training item. If not, then the trainer goes back over the material as many times as it takes. At the end of the day, the trainer discusses the new hire with the controller. The discussion is about rate of progress, existing knowledge, and error rates. This gives management an immediate and solid understanding of the new recruit.
The next day, do it again with new tasks, but also mixing in some of the items that were learned the day before. This gives the trainer information about the retention level of the new hire.
Periodic Updates
Once the person has been trained in all possible areas, the trainer’s work is not done. Instead, the trainer lets the new hire conduct all aspects of the job, but also blocks out time with the person at the end of each day to talk about how the work went, and review actual transactions that the person dealt with, to look for errors or maybe whether the person is frustrated with how the process works, or possibly to see if there’re any interpersonal issues getting in the way.
After a few weeks of this, the trainer backs off to meeting once a week, with some spot checking of the person’s actual work product. After about three months, the new hire is considered to be reasonably well assimilated into the business.
Feedback About the New Hire
By going through this labor-intensive approach, you get new hires who are informed immediately if they do something wrong. This corrects bad habits on the spot, so they have fewer frustrations in meshing with their new jobs.
In addition, the trainer and the controller will know exactly what they have within a few days of the person starting work. Including the weak spots of a person, which can be counteracted with more training. This beats a more laid back system, where a person might start work and no one knows if he’s doing the work correctly until an error is found or someone complains – which might be weeks or even a few months later.
How to Find the Training Time
The only way to really have the necessary amount of spare training time is to have a slight level of overcapacity in the department. If there’re a few more people on hand than is absolutely necessary, it doesn’t take an overwhelming amount of schedule reshuffling to find the time. In addition, you can make it a requirement for senior staff to be involved in training for a certain part of each year, and include it in their annual reviews.
Another possibility is to figure out the busiest times in the annual work schedule of the accounting department, and only bring in new hires during other parts of the year. In fact, hiring during the busiest part of the year should be actively avoided, since new hires are almost certain to be under a lot of pressure to perform well.
The Need for Introductions
An additional concern is that the person does not interact with the rest of the department or develop contacts in other departments, except with those people he met during the initial training. Some companies like to have informal get-togethers, so that employees can mix; but the outcome is too mixed. A new hire might bond with one or two people, and that’s it. They miss out on a much broader range of contacts.
A possibility is for the senior staff to consider grabbing a new hire and having them come along for meetings with other departments, or other parts of the accounting department. The intent is to force them into meeting as many people as possible. And at the same time, they can learn about the subject of each meeting, so they gain a broader understanding of the issues that the accounting department is facing.
The controller can maintain a listing of which employees have been involved in which meetings around the company, and target anyone who’s not been involved much to participate more. That level of involvement by the controller might seem like an excessive amount of personnel administration, but it helps to remember that the controller job is a management position, and training up your staff is actually more important than the accounting aspects of the job.