In the first two parts of this series, we looked at the overall concept of the tailored workplace and what’s causing the trend (Part 1), as well as how a tailored workplace will change recruitment and hiring (Part 2). Now we turn to the tailored workplace’s impact on on-boarding, in other words, the launching pad for new employees. The key question here is: how can a tailored workplace help you better equip your new employees to succeed – and of course, how fast?
On-boarding
On-boarding gets defined differently at just about everything organization, but that shouldn’t get in the way of our discussion here. Essentially, we’re talking about the ways in which organizations prepare new hires to succeed at their role in the organization. Some of the key elements which could be most impacted by a tailored work environment include employee orientation and training, introductions to the team, and periodic follow-up/check-in from a manager or someone in HR during the first few weeks or months of employment.
Orientation/Training
Most large organizations have well-defined orientation and training programs. Traditionally, both employee orientation and training was something every employee had to go through in the same way. Whether you liked it or not, you were forced to sit through the same video, maybe you had to fill out a work packet or spend a specific amount of hours in various group training sessions. But in a tailored workplace, you can cut out the drag of bureaucracy and protocol and get right to the important stuff. If a new hire wants to get their training online, they can. All the better in many circumstances, since it’s an opportunity for the organization to cut costs. If they want to go through orientation on the weekend they can. Heck they can even do it at home in pajama pants. If they prefer in-person orientation to video, they can do that, too. Sure some preferences could cost a little more up front, but at least they’re going to get something out of it. Isn’t it more wasteful to make people sit in a classroom and get nothing out of it other than a lesson in your organization’s inflexibility?
The big conceptual change that this brings up is the idea of going from the organization telling the employee what they need to learn, to the employee reaching out whenever there’s something they need to know. This will be of extreme importance as leaders from the Baby Boomer generation move toward retirement, creating an exodus of knowledge. How do you get that knowledge passed down to the Generation Xers taking over?
As training and development expert Alan Landers (President, First Step Talent Management Consulting) puts it, we’re in the middle of a shift from E-learning (the idea of computer and network-enabled transfer of skills and knowledge) to M-learning (which allows for mobile, anywhere, anytime access to skill and knowledge transfers) and now beyond that to informal on-demand learning.
I grew up with facilitated workshops. Everybody went to a training seminar. The next thing you know they started putting out e-learning programs so everybody can go online and fill it out online. And then they got to webinars and they’re still going very strong right now. But still what are they doing with webinars? They’re recording them. Now we’re getting to “Send me the basics.” I don’t want to have to go through a training program, I don’t want to watch a PowerPoint, just give me the specifics I need right now.
There’s a guy by the name of Claude Lévi-Strauss that came up with this term “bricolage” which is, learning from experience; people learning. And now we’ve got social learning and informal learning, but what’s happening I think is that organizations are not only going to have the m-learning and e-learning and the workshops and all of that, but they’re going to have to put together different kinds of social structures within an organization so they can learn in a more organized informal way.
While organized informal learning seems somewhat confusing, it taps into an important contradiction particularly present in the millennial generation: Millennials, frequently raised by highly involved parents, crave structure, yet they also want independence. Organizations need to find a way to balance these desires to give high potential/high performers of all generations both the structure to feel confident and the independence to feel important.
Introductions
Every new hire needs to be introduced to the team. The question is: how? Should your new hires Facebook friend every name they know at your office before they even start? They do need to know the people around them, and Facebook is a quick and easy way to gather some personal intel, but will it help them get off on the right foot?
In a tailored workplace, each person can get introduced in a way that best fits their preferences. Would you prefer to meet everyone at once, or on a person by person basis? Would you rather meet everyone the first day or over the course of the first couple of weeks? Would you rather connect via email first? What works best for you? These are the kinds of questions that a tailored workplace is prepared to respond to.
If your organization isn’t able to accommodate an individual’s preferences, you may end up feeding into that dreaded arch enemy of teamwork, social awkwardness. If the standard practice is the same for everyone, what happens when an enterprising Millennial reaches out in the way they’re comfortable with. It’s tough to promote teamwork and social camaraderie when the first thing you hear about an employee is: “You know that new guy, Ken? I’ve never even met him and he tried to join my LinkedIn Network. That’s just weird.”
Follow-up/Check in
One of the most fundamental elements of effective on-boarding is the follow-up or check-in during the “honeymoon phase,” the length of time (Michael Watkins focuses on the First 90 Days, while others like George Bradt peg it at 100) in which a new hire is still getting accustomed to the ins and outs of their new home. Regardless of the timeframe your organization hones in on, it’s critical that your organization figures out how to do the checking-in. That’s where the individual preferences of employees come into play. In a tailored workplace, not only can a new employee help set the preferences for how often they circle back with their manager or HR, but they can determine how, whether it’s in-person, by video conference, email, or even, gulp, texting.
http://www.modernsurvey.com/blog
