Adam Robinson's Blog, page 14

The Ultimate Onboarding Checklist

I spend a lot of time talking with leadership teams about best practices for new employee onboarding. Most of the time, we’re talking about the strategies and tactics available to their organization to ensure that every new hire is onboarded consistently.  Prior blog posts reference many of these ways to improve your company’s onboarding process:

Read:

Teach core values during new hire onboarding

Employee onboarding: Three critical components of success

Let’s come at this from a different angle.  If you’re thinking about your current new hire onboarding process and you’re worried that you’re piloting a leaky boat, check this list to find out the cause.

A Check List for Success

Job Offers

You initiate a phone call with the finalist and walk them through the job offer verbally to trial-close the candidate, and to confirm their onboarding timeline
You have a legally-compliant, standard offer template that you send to each potential new hire
Once the offer is accepted, you send the candidate a “Red Carpet” email welcoming them to the team, and laying out expectations for their first 90 days

New hire paperwork

You send pre-hire employment documents (tax forms, employment eligibility, new hire manual, licensing, etc) electronically, and the new hires have… Click Here to Get the Full List!

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Intentional Culture: An Interview with Alyse Makarewicz, AIA

Alyse Makarewicz, AIA, and some of the AMB Architects team

Alyse Makarewicz, AIA, is President of AMB Architects, a bootstrapped Commercial Interior Architecture consulting and design firm with nine employees. She is also a contributing author to the book Phenomenal Success Stories, released earlier this year. Alyse’s company has been named the Best Small Business to Work for in Houston, Texas, for the last four years and in this episode, it’s easy to see why. Keep scrolling to find show notes and more about Alyse and AMB Architects.

 



 

Listen to this episode on:

               

iTunes           Google Play         SoundCloud            Stitcher

Show notes:

1:07 – All about AMB Architects and the top accolades they’ve received in Houston

2:49 – What is “intentional culture,” what does it mean to Alyse?

4:43 – Flexibility in the workplace, how to maintain it and make it work for both employee and employer

5:50 – An example of what is possible in reconfiguring an employee’s role to help make their career work for them and their personal life

9:05 – Alyse’s history of hiring and management before she started her company and how her hiring process has changed since she started her business

10:40 – An example of how a bad hire can affect a team

11:18 – Alyse’s three-step hiring process

13:13 – What is a DiSC Assessment?

15:05 – Core values and mission at AMB Architects and how they are made real in the office and for clients

18:56 – What to do when you have an employee that you need to get out of the business as soon as possible

19:56 – When someone is struggling at work, how do you manage them?

22:04 – Alyse’s “Layer Cake” approach to hiring and management

23:06 – The biggest challenge Alyse is facing on the people side of the business

23:52 – Alyse is reading Intentional Living: Choosing a Life that Matters by John C. Maxwell and she recommends it

24:50 -What will AMB Architects look like in a year from now?

Connect with our guest:

AMB Architects: Twitter | Facebook

Alyse: Twitter | Linkedin

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Teach your Core Values During New Employee Onboarding

The creation and documentation of company core values is a prerequisite to building a strong workplace culture. Core values are the rule book, the set of standards by which an organization makes its decisions.  Without core values, the culture is rudderless.  It’s how companies end up with “culture by default” instead of a “culture be design.”

Management cannot assume that core values by themselves are enough. Like any critical message, your core values must be taught and reinforced multiple times each year.  To harness the power of core values, leaders must ensure that new hires are exposed to them during the onboarding process.

It’s one thing to hand someone a glossy 8 1/2 x 11 with the company’s core values listed, and wish them luck.  It’s another thing to really teach them.  Do your new hires truly understand each value?  Do they know why they’re a core value in the first place?

The very first thing the founding team did at Hireology was define our company’s core values. It happened before any discussion of product, or market, or pricing, or strategy.  It’s the most important exercise our leadership team has ever undertaken.  But, for the first three years, we didn’t do anything formal to drive these values into the organization as the company started to scale.  We counted on the founders and early employees being able to maintain the culture as we grew.

We were leaving a lot of opportunities on the table. Most importantly, we failed to take advantage of a new hire’s first few days with us to indoctrinate them into the value system of the company.  We assumed that they’d acquire the values system via osmosis and daily company life.  In most cases, they did.  But as with any business outcome you’re trying to achieve – in this case, company core values that are known, understood and followed by all – hoping for the outcome isn’t a plan.  The process of teaching core values to new hires has to be owned and actively managed.

Now, we do three things to ensure that our new hires are immersed in the culture and core values of our business from day one:

Senior leadership involvement.  Culture starts with the CEO and the senior leadership team. If the leadership team feels like training core values is a waste of their time, the culture will never be what it could or should be.  While our People Team (we much prefer that term to “HR”) is more than capable of delivering the message, there is just no substitute for the message being delivered by a founder or a member of the senior leadership team. With involvement from the top, the message is not only delivered, it’s also punctuated with an exclamation point. The point is made: We take this stuff very seriously. These values are more than words.

Tell Core Values stories.  While core values are critical, they’re also just…words. They’re words on a page until someone tells the story about why that particular core value exists.  For each of Hireology’s core values, we’ve created a corresponding description of that value, along with a “from the trenches” story that brings that particular core value to life. New hires learn about the core value, why it exists, and what it looks like to put that core value into practice in their day-to-day at Hireology.

I’ve made Hireology’s Core Values One-Pager available to newsletter subscribers for free! Click here to download a copy, which I hope can serve as a template for you to get started.

Treat Core Values training like a customer presentation.  Imagine that you’re about to pitch your product or service to the most important prospect in the history of the company, and you’ll be in the mental zone required to deliver Core Values training. Your new hires are the lifeblood of your company. Through them, you’ll either scale up and flourish, or you’ll churn them out and flounder. This training quite literally sets the stage for their entire tenure with your company, and they’ll touch millions (maybe hundreds of millions, even billions) of dollars worth of customer interactions. In the meantime, you’ll be paying them hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars of company money to work for you.  How important to you is maximizing the chance for a positive outcome?

Make core values training a component of your new hire onboarding process.

 

The post Teach your Core Values During New Employee Onboarding appeared first on The Best Team Wins.

Hiring and Managing Nonprofit Teams with Blair Brettschneider, Founder and Executive Director of GirlForward

Blair Brettschneider and some of the team at GirlForward.

Blair Brettschneider has been named a CNN Hero and a Forbes 30 Under 30, among other accolades, for the work done through her nonprofit, GirlForward. GirlForward is dedicated to creating opportunities for girls who’ve been displaced by conflict and persecution and have been resettled in the US. GirlForward was founded in 2011, has seven employees, operates in Austin and Chicago, and is looking to open a third location in 2019. Blair discusses hiring, managing, and leading her team with me on this episode of The Best Team Wins Podcast. Find show notes and more below.

Listen to this episode on:

                

iTunes              Google Play         SoundCloud            Stitcher

 

Show Notes:

1:12 – Blair was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list

1:57 – About GirlForward

4:07 – The origin story of the staff at GirlForward

6:28 – Recruiting, interviewing, and hiring process at GirlForward

9:23 – Blair’s vision for the culture at GirlForward

11:27 – Intentional applications vs. copy and paste

13:32 – Nonprofits and how GirlForward takes a different approach to pay and compensation

15:28 – How Blair structures the environment at GirlForward to ensure open and honest conversations

16:40 – Strengths-based approach to teams and how it scales

19:10 – What could GirlForward be better at on the people side of their organization?

20:17 – “If you’re not the person who’s going to measure the wall, you need someone who is going to do that or, at least, it occurs to them to do that”

21:35 – The greatest lesson Blair has learned as it relates to team building, leadership, and management

22:40 – Blair recommends You Can’t Touch My Hair and Hillbilly Elegy for your next road trip or commute

23:25 – The greatest challenge in the next year at GirlForward

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Episode 35: Nitin Chhoda, Founder and CEO of Total Activation

Listen to this episode on:

                 

Nitin Chhoda is featured on the podcast this week discussing remote work, managing a remote team, leadership and more.  Nitin’s company is the world’s first line of skincare and nutrition that work in synergy. Find podcast show notes and more about Nitin and Total Activation below.

About Nitin and Total Activation:

What’s your name?

Nitin Chhoda




What’s your title?

CEO and Founder




What is the name of your company?

Total Activation




In 100 words or less, describe what your company does.

Nitin Chhoda is the author of “Total Activation: The 5 Step Fitness Mantra”. It is a dynamic new approach to weight loss and personal wellness. It is a system modeled in three stages of change: Identity, Compare, Integrate (ICI) which has 5 components: Emotional, Physical, Social, Spiritual and Intellectual (EPSSI).In connection, Nitin has created a skincare and nutrition line – products that work in synergy to activate the best version of you.Since its launch in April 2014, our team has grown and our nutrition and skincare products have been purchased by thousands of customers largely by word of mouth. We have bootstrapped the entire way. We’re now happily providing nutrition and skincare products to customers in 7 countries.




Where is the company based?

Denville, NJ




When was the company founded?

2004




How many employees do you have?

34




How can we find you and your company on social media?

Twitter | Facebook 




Is your company bootstrapped, or have you raised equity financing (VCs, angels, etc.)?

Bootstrapped.




What company accomplishment or milestone in the past 12 months are you most proud of?

Going from zero to sales to customers in over 7 countries by word of mouth.




What’s the #1 company issue or area of focus for you right now?

Customer satisfaction and client empowerment

 

Show Notes:

1:06 – About Nitin and his business ventures

1:47 – Nitin’s background and entrepreneurial journey

3:51 – The first employee Nitin ever hired

4:52 -Nitin’s workforce and where they are

6:30 – How Nitin manages his unique hiring process

8:10 – The future of remote work and work from home policies, accountability, and managing remote employees

11:32 – The qualities of employees that make them successful as remote workers

13:08 – Core Values at Total Activation

13:58 – What makes a great leader?

16:11 – What was the turning point of your business? How did you know that you couldn’t do everything? How did you scale?

18:05 – The largest priority in the next year for Nitin

19:30 – Nitin discusses his book and has a special offer for The Best Team Wins listeners.

 

 

 

 

 

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Employee Onboarding: Three Critical Components for Success

You’ve just moved mountains to get that critical position filled. Months spent posting to job boards, soliciting employee and network referrals, interviewing the highest-potential fits and – finally – finding someone about whom you’re truly excited. You’ve made an offer, and they’ve accepted it.

The hard work is just beginning.

Your hiring process doesn’t end with the acceptance of a job offer, or even the new employee’s first day on the job. In fact, you’re only about fifty percent there; your job now is to get your new hire ramped and integrated as soon as possible.  Is your company’s onboarding process up to the challenge?

Employee onboarding, also known as organizational socialization, refers to the mechanism through which new employees acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become effective members of your organization.  To optimize this process for your company, ask yourself whether or not you’re covering these three critical components of a new employee onboarding program.

Are you providing organizational clarity? Many new hires are thrown into the deep end of the pool, without a full understanding of how their role fits into the larger mission of the organization.  Missed here is the opportunity to connect the dots for your new team member: what’s the big picture, and how do they play a role in the achievement of the company’s long-term strategy.

To provide organizational clarity for your new hire, make sure they can answer the following questions:

What is management’s long-term vision for this company, stated in 30 seconds or less?
What is management’s financial strategy to ensure the company is resourced properly to achieve its long-term vision? (VC financing, debt, reinvesting profits, etc.)
What’s working in the business right now?
What’s not working in the business as well as it could or should be?
What is the high-level organization chart of the company? (by function/department, by role)
What will the next three years look like if we are successful?
What are management’s top priorities for this year, and for this current quarter?

Are you providing role clarity?  Too often, managers at high-growth companies take for granted that their new hire truly understands the role for which they are hired.  Furthermore, the job that’s described to the candidate during the recruiting process is often different in meaningful ways from the actual day-to-day of the job once the person is hired.  Making sure your new team member “gets it” with respect to their role is the second critical component of your new employee onboarding program.

To provide role clarity for your new hire, make sure they can answer the following questions:

Why does my role exist in this company?
What part do I play in helping the company achieve its mission? Its operating targets?
What part do I play in helping the company achieve its operating targets?
Which other team members will I need to rely on to achieve my goals?
What are the “known obstacles” that management acknowledges will present a challenge for me, and what’s the plan to remove them? (lack of documented process, antiquated systems, understaffing, etc.)
What is my career path here at the company?
What specific, measurable outcomes am I accountable for?

Are you providing social clarity?  New hires should be educated as to the cultural and social norms of the company. In this third critical component of your new employee onboarding program, you’ll teach and reinforce the tenets of your company’s culture, and you’ll also ensure that the company and management build trust quickly.

To provide social clarity for your new hire, make sure they can answer the following questions:

What are the company’s core values?
How are these core values reflected in the real day-to-day in my role and team? (Examples of your core values in action)
What time and attendance expectations does the company have of me? (What does a typical work day look like?  When do most employees get to the office? Can I work from home? How do I take time off? Etc)
What regularly scheduled meetings exist within the company and my team? (Town halls, all-hands meetings, team huddles, etc.)
How does this company reward results?
Who is someone other than my manager that I can turn to with basic questions as I get up to speed? (A buddy, a mentor, etc.)

By focusing on these three critical components of your new employee onboarding program, you’ll increase your time-to-productivity and decrease your six-month attrition rates.

The post Employee Onboarding: Three Critical Components for Success appeared first on The Best Team Wins.

Episode 34: Sarah Neukom, Founder and Partner of ESP Presents

 

Listen to this episode on the following networks:

                

 

 Sarah Neukom is Founder and Partner at ESP Presents and on this episode, she’s discussing everything about the people side of her business.

Show notes:

0:59 – About ESP Presents (Follow them on Instagram | Twitter | Facebook )

1:59 – Hiring the first employee and the decision to hire interns

“We decided we needed to hire someone. I’m a firm believer in always remembering people that stand out and make a list of their names. It might sound a little creepy, but when you need people, and you can reference a list of people that you’ve met and say, ‘I wonder what so-and-so is up to these days,’ it’s a great resource.”

4:45 – Where Sarah learned how to hire and the rare training she received

6:19 – How has ESP built their team?

8:08 – What kind employee are you looking for at ESP Presents?

“With ESP, as an event producer and planner and company that’s catering to other organizations, you can never be stressed out or appear stressed out to a client. You never give the answer no, and you always figure out how to make things work. We look for people who are aware of situations, aware of how they’re communicating, aware of how they can improve someone’s business or project or event.”

9:43 – “Where do you see yourself two years from now?” and other things to watch out for in an interview.

10:55 – ESP Core Values

13:00 – “Our team is an extension of the organization that we’re working with”  and Sarah’s people philosophy.

15:20 – Sarah’s approach to feedback and coaching

“We don’t give negative feedback. We just have open conversations and honest conversations and really try to help everyone grow.”

16:50 – The biggest lesson Sarah has learned since launching ESP Presents

“They’re watching everything you do if they’re truly invested in the company. I want to make sure that we are setting the best example for our team, and making sure that we’re presenting ourselves as something they want to work to become.”

19:01 – Delegation, managing expectations, and keeping clients top of mind

19:43 – An honest answer to “What book are you reading right now?”

20:55 – What does the next year look like for ESP Presents?

“Well, I think in the next year, if we keep up the trajectory that we’re currently on, we’ll need to find a new office space and we have an office dog, so we have to make sure that remains the same…”

 

 

 

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eSports: The Next Lucrative Job Market

If you enjoy playing games on your phone, then you could be a prime candidate for a job in the eSports industry. A few years ago, a Google search for “lol” would have given results explaining that “lol” is an acronym for “laughing out loud,” but now “lol” is all about League of Legends, one of the most popular games of today.

eSports isn’t just about gamers and gaming fans, the industry has attracted a considerable amount of money, and as the industry grows, new job opportunities are popping up.  The events that occur under the umbrella of eSports require intricate planning, PR,  promotion, and project management, as the viewership of these games is now into the millions.

The popularity of eSports is on the rise, and many companies are trying to establish themselves in this domain. Social media giants like Facebook and Twitch vie for streaming rights and the chance to host live tournaments around the world.

eSports is now a budding industry that is growing at a steady rate, and there are many viable career options to choose from. If you’re interested in learning more, check out the infographic below by Computer Planet that lists the possible job opportunities.

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Build Trust and Reduce Employee Attrition

With the U.S. unemployment rate at a sixteen year low, two important labor dynamics have emerged. First, wages are rising; businesses need to pay more to get the same job done. Second, employees are increasingly tempted to leave their current job for the prospect of a better one.

Many managers believe that the solution to employee turnover is to pay above-market wages or to throw money at people when they resign in the hopes that they decide to stay. In my experience, these approaches rarely work over the long run.  The main reason that money doesn’t solve your turnover problem is that money isn’t the primary reason people leave their current job.

It’s a lack of trust.

Much of the research regarding employee turnover suggests that high performers leave their current jobs due primarily to a poor relationship with their direct supervisor.  Closely behind is what I’ll refer to as a lack of clarity around future job opportunities.  Both of these issues boil down to a lack of trust between the employee and the manager or the company.  Here are three trust-building actions you can take right now to improve trust within your organization.

Manage with consistency.  Ad hoc management styles can work well in small organizations, but once your team starts to scale beyond six or seven employees, it’s just not as effective as a structured management process.  Managing with consistency includes the following components:

Company goals are defined by management and understood by all.
Progress against company goals is communicated regularly.
Individual goals have been set and they tie clearly to company goals.
Individual goal attainment is actively monitored and managed.

The opposite of managing with consistency:

Company goals aren’t defined, and/or they’re not understood by the team.
Nobody knows how the company is doing because data is not shared freely.
Individuals don’t have goals that tie to the bigger picture.
Managers are not checking in with their team members regularly to check progress against plan.

Set simple, clear compensation plans.  Do your people truly understand how they get paid or have you created a Byzantine pay structure where every month it’s anyone’s guess what will be in your employee’s paychecks?  Based on years of observation, I can confidently tell you that most companies dramatically over-complicate their pay plans – to their great detriment.

I get that management wants to protect the company against paying out commissions or bonuses that they shouldn’t or that lead to an unprofitable business. Understand, however, that the more rules and regulations you put in place around your compensation plans, the greater the feelings of mistrust that can fester and grow.  Worse yet, if your payroll accounting processes aren’t tight, you can make mistakes with commission checks.  Once you accidentally underpay someone, they’ll never trust you again; they’ll triple-check every paycheck forever.

A quick pay plan checklist to gauge for simplicity:

Can I consistently run commissions in an accurate and timely fashion?
Can I give my team members an accurate commission report?
Can my team members read and understand their compensation plan without needing a Ph.D. in mathematics?

If you dread the payroll cycle when commissions are paid because it takes three of you an entire week to calculate them accurately, you’re doing it wrong. Step one on the path to simplicity: read this two-part series to determine your compensation philosophy.

Acknowledge weakness and admit mistakes.  No business is immune from the ups and downs of the business cycle. The key to trust-building is to acknowledge when things aren’t going well and to admit when management has made a mistake that has harmed the business.

Ask yourself the following questions to see if you pass the management fallibility test:

When something bad happens, do we share this information with the larger organization?
When numbers slide, do we admit that things are off-track, and publicly acknowledge that fact?
When management makes a call that turns out to be the wrong one, do you circle back with the team to explain what happened, and why, and what you’re going to do differently next time?

Employees want to know that management is self-aware and self-confident.  The greater the transparency and the freer the flow of information, the higher the level of trust that will exist.

There are enough challenges that exist in your business without committing unforced management errors.  If trust is lacking in your organization, it’s due to inconsistent management, goofy pay plans, and compensation policies, or a lack of transparency when the going gets tough.  All of these issues are completely and proactively addressable and when you solve them, you’ll your best people will stay with you longer.

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Embracing Skinned Knees: an Interview with Desiree Vargas Wrigley

Desiree Vargas Wrigley learned a lot from her eight years as Founder and CEO of the successful crowdfunding platform GiveForward, and she’s bringing that experience to her latest venture, Pearachute. On this episode of The Best Team Wins Podcast, Desiree talks about her growth as a leader, building and maintaining a great company culture, embracing failure, and more.

Listen to this episode on iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, and Stitcher.

Show Notes:

0:27 – All about Desiree

1:09 – All about Pearachute

3:11 – On hiring employee #1 at Pearachute:

“I think I learned from some other founders to bring great talent with me. My first hire at Pearachute was actually my first hire after Ethan, my co-founder, at GiveForward was a woman named Erica who worked for us as a free intern at GiveForward for a year, waiting tables at night so that she could come in and work at GiveForward. That dedication took her to the top; she ended up leading a team of about 16 customer service reps at GiveForward. I knew that building Pearachute we were going to have to be really focused on both sides of this network. We have the providers who are these business owners who are trying to build a local business, and then we have all these moms who are trying to get their two-year-old into fun dance classes. If something goes wrong, it’s going to be disappointing three people in this system. I wanted someone who I could really depend on, who I knew could build a stellar team that would focus on both sides of that network. Erica was perfect, so she came with me.”

4:04 – The first hire at a startup:

“I think it’s a combination of willingness; no job is too small, no job is too big. Those first hires need to be able to rise to the challenge but also get into the details.”

4:40 – Desiree’s management style and leadership growth over time.

“I think the lesson of learning how to give up control is one that some people are naturally good at and some people it takes a little bit longer to get good at. As a type A person, GiveForward was my baby, it came out of my brain. I just wanted it to be successful. Every mistake that we made I felt like it was an indictment on my ability to succeed personally. It took a while, and it took some pretty dramatic moments at GiveForward for me to step back and realize that I wasn’t being the leader I wanted to be, I wasn’t being the founder I wanted to be.”

7:41 – All about Desiree’s first startup, GiveForward

7:57 – Embracing failure in a way that is productive:

“We talked about failure at GiveForward, but we didn’t do the best job of rewarding experiments, we really just rewarded successful experiments. This time around [at Pearachute], I’m being a lot more intentional about how I encourage the team.”

9:36 – What is “Coffee Monday”?

10:49 – Core Values at Pearachute:

“We also have ‘Be Each Other’s Village,’ which is this idea that everyone in the village has a role to play. There’s the baker, and the trash-man, and whatever, but there are days when that person is sick or can’t do their job, and we need to be there for each other and be willing to jump in. At the same time, we’re building this network of providers. We work with 400 women-owned businesses in all the cities that we work with. Our goal is to really help lift them up too, and there are going to be days where they need help, where they have to cancel a class because they have a flat tire or they can’t find an instructor. We need to be able to step in and be there for them as their village too.”

13:28 – Desiree’s core values process:

“I really think you can’t create these values until you have customers. You have to be at least six months into the business because you need to know what those interactions look like and feel like.”

15:04 -Do you share values with your subscriber base, with your vendors? And, how do you make core values real at Pearachute as you consider new staff members?

“One of my favorite questions is about failure, ‘Walk me through a recent failure. It doesn’t have to have ended well; I want to know how you felt about it.’ Because how you deal with it along the way is as indicating I think as whatever the outcome was. I like to see people’s processes.”

16:40 – The one bad hire at Pearachute, what told Desiree it was time, and what the conversation looked like when it was time to let them go.

“You could feel the energy being sucked out of the room every time they participated in the discussion. Not that you need everyone to be alike or always on the same page, but when you have someone holding back the rest of the team, I think you just know from a culture perspective.”

18:46 – Management learnings from Desiree’s hyper-growth experience at GiveForward that she’s bringing to Pearachute.

“When one person comes in and starts to poison the well, it really does spread, and you end up with complainers on your team, and sometimes they can be coached back into the right culture and sometimes they have to be coached out of the business. I learned the importance of moving quickly on bad hires but also that I have more control than I thought I did.”

20:27 – Desiree’s compensation philosophy at Pearachute:

“My team is almost entirely women, and it’s really important to me that they are market, even though we are a startup and not hugely funded. I think it makes a statement about the importance of their work and recognizes that often women and often moms, not to over generalize, but because we have so many demands on our time, we are often very efficient and good at time boxing. Some of my team gets more done in a seven and a half hour day than they would in a 14 hour day because of effective they are. I want that to be recognized and, to me, it’s not so much about butt-in-the-seat time as it is about output, and so I try to recognize that.”

22:52 – If you were to pick one greatest lesson or biggest thing you’re going to take with you on this career you have in front of you of building businesses, what would it be?

“I don’t know if my board would like hearing this, but I realize that no one is put on this Earth to make my company more successful. They’re put on this Earth to have this journey, and hopefully, we get them for 40 to 60 hours a week of their best and most productive time. I feel like my job as a leader is to make sure that they find as much value in that time as possible.”

24:51 – Desiree is currently reading The Hard Thing About Hard Things.

25:44 – What is the greatest challenge for Desiree over the next year?

 

 

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