During the recruitment process, you gain knowledge and insights about your next employee that can help ensure that he or she quickly adjusts to the new job. But in a busy working environment, it can be difficult to find the time to analyse that knowledge and pass it on to the manager and the team – especially if you have never done it before.
In this newsletter, we provide inspiration for designing an onboarding template that uses the most important insights from People Test Logic and People Test Person to actively contribute to a successful integration of new employees.
Even if during the recruitment process you, perhaps even with the person’s manager, have had a close-up look at the future employee’s personality, revisiting this knowledge with a new perspective can provide valuable insights on how the candidate is best onboarded.
During the selection process, the candidate is constantly assessed based on the job requirements, and the question is whether the candidate has the skills and personality to take on the challenges that come with the job. But once the candidate has been selected, we know that the prerequisites and competences are in place, and the focus must therefore change – a new question must be answered. Now, it’s about what it will take for your future employee to perform and thrive in your workplace. To answer that question, you can use the onboarding template below.
Onboarding template – Five steps
1. Person analysis
Make a summary of the information you received about the new employee that is relevant to the onboarding, based on the test results, the management report and the personal feedback. Pay attention to the length and set a maximum length of e.g. 1 A4 page. Focus on the following 3 areas:
a. How does the person learn?
b. What motivates the person?
c. How should the person be led?
2. Meeting with the manager and presentation of person analysis
Present the new employee’s analysis results and onboarding summary to the new employee’s immediate manager. The purpose of this meeting is to prepare the manager for how he or she can best lead the new employee and, at the same time, start a dialogue with the manager about how the future employee can be a success. Together with the manager, decide what the new employee’s team should be briefed on.
3. Make an open onboarding plan for the first month
Make an onboarding plan that accounts for:
a. Practical information: Access cards, entry in IT system, etc.
b. The professional aspect: Introduction to tasks, training, knowledge transfer, etc.
c. The social aspect: Introductions to colleagues and stakeholders as well as integration of the new employee.
d. Insights from the onboarding summary: In order to create a personalised onboarding plan, use insights from the hiring process to design both b and c. If, for example, the candidate scores high on learning capability, you should expect a steep learning curve and be able to present the candidate with more complex and challenging work tasks early on. If the PTP shows that the candidate scores high in social contact, it is important that the person quickly has a chance to get to know their colleagues.
4. 1st working day – Involve candidate, manager and align expectations of the onboarding plan together
As human beings, we perceive the unknown as dangerous and the familiar as safe. It is therefore a good idea for the new employee to meet with the manager and the recruiter to talk about the onboarding plan as one of the very first steps. The purpose is to create security and certainty about the process and to coordinate and align expectations for the plan. It makes good sense to also include the employee’s own experiences. Perhaps the newly hired employee thinks the plan is perfect, perhaps they would like to meet colleagues earlier and be introduced to their tasks later – then the plan can be adjusted accordingly.
5. Follow-up on the plan and integration of the new employee
Onboarding is one thing, integration and management of the new employee are something else entirely. After an appropriate period – e.g. at a three-month interview – it is important to revisit the onboarding plan and look further ahead. It is therefore a good idea to meet with the manager and the new employee once again and, based on the person analysis, look closer at the management and motivational aspects and, at the same time, evaluate the plan you prepared together in the previous session. It is said that we accept a job because of the tasks, but leave it because of the boss. If we are to counteract this, it is important that managers are well-equipped to lead every single employee.
Too many new employees do not thrive in their new positions. Not because they do not have the competences or personality to succeed, but because they are not received in the right way. And while it may appear as if the recruiter made a wrong hire, in reality the cause was an onboarding plan that was not appropriate for the new hire.
You can increase the success rate of your recruitments by focusing on getting the new employee off to a good start and using the insights from the person analysis to tailor their onboarding process.
Below are some of the questions that a good person analysis gives you answers to:
What type of training will be best? (alone, peer training, learning by doing etc.).
How steep a learning curve can one expect based on the cognitive level?
How should the person be led?
Is this an independent person or someone who needs a lot of feedback?
Does the person want a lot of social contact?
What motivates the candidate? Is the candidate able to motivate themselves, or is there a need for frequent support and recognition?
Does the candidate have a high or low level of perception, and does the candidate therefore need more or less explanation to understand a task?
Does the candidate have a low or high understanding of complexity? This provides insight into whether the candidate can handle only a few pieces of information at a time, or whether the candidate needs to be challenged in order to maintain interest.
How ambitious is the candidate, and when should the candidate be introduced to the perspectives and opportunities the position offers?
