There are many steps that can be missed by both new employee and the staff who are onboarding new employees.  We developed a two-prong attack to onboarding new team members since its always a costly situation for a business to endure…   Especially if that person doesn’t work out.  ☹

On-Boarding Woes

Let’s start by stating that this is not a perfect process.  It always needs tweaking but the moment you realize this ONE major tidbit of information; the better the process of on-boarding becomes…

“People Don’t Read”

Yes, we are all guilty of it.  “Yeah, yeah, yeah…  sign, sign, sign…” whether it’s the Apple EULA or that car rental agreement.  However, you think your employment, your livelihood… would require some extra time and attention before signing your life away.  You think…

Everything that a new employee is not acutely aware of becomes a liability for that business going forward.  Please follow the steps below to get your creative juices for making on-boarding issues less of a head-ache for you, your team, and that new person who you like all so much but you have just scratched your head at…  Curiously wondering, why did they just do that?!?!?

Step 1 – Legal Agreement

This is pretty standard.  Send the new employee an employee contract.  For our team, this legal agreement also does doubles as a statement of work.  They know exactly what their role is in the company from day one.

Step 2 – Make the process of on-boarding an employee, a project.

Seriously, why not?  We do this for controlling costs, organizing thoughts, and keeping our clients in the loop.  We send emails to their personal email account to set the boundaries before fully incorporating them into our organization’s Eco-system.   These emails are sent every step of the way through the on-boarding process to ensure everything is done correctly.  This also gives our staff a general idea of…

• how organized the new member is
• how they are able communicate
• how timely they are in that communication.

However, we found that just placing these task specific emails on blast can be a bit chaotic.  Thus, we introduce them to the client portal and they catch a glance of the overall project.  See illustration below.

About Project Management Systems

They are many project management systems out there.  Some are pretty generic, one size fits all approach.  These systems include Asana, Basecamp, etc.  Our project system includes three major components:

• The project itself
  • The project phases.
    • The tasks in the phases.

Key Aspects to Making the Project Management System Work

• Organize your thoughts into specific tasks.
• Reign in the conversation if it bleeds out into other tasks and phases.

What does a project management system with phase and tasks look like?

See below…

 

 

Onboarding new employees summary

Avoid steps missed by both new employee and employer who are onboarding new employees with a project management system.

 

Autotask Onboarding Intro

 

• 80% fail.  Better training and better qualifying NA talent will create more successful outcomes
• Trying to prepare the person being onboarded to be very process oriented.  Spare us all if you do not think you are very process oriented.  ie Frequent and thorough replies.
• Expose the person being onboarded to the PSA.  A NetworkAntics employee AKA ” resource ” will manage the onboarding project with the person being onboarded
• You will receive a firm fixed payment for completing 80% or more of the onboarding project.
• Termination of the person being onboarded onboarding project before 80% of the project is completed will amount in no payment.
• The goal is to onboard if the person being onboarded meets our expectations as a viable candidate to be working inside the PSA

Project Task Communication

 

 

• Explains how tasks within a project is a series of checklist items
• Accomplish tasks are hard to make sense of for someone that was not trained to work in a PSA and be process oriented.   ie Frequent and thorough replies.
• An example of a thorough reply is taking communication like this video and summarizing but breaking it a part into talking points or bullet points like illustrated here.
• The first onboarding email and all project related task emails going forward WILL CONTAIN ALL CONTENT FOR ALL FUTURE RELATED TASK ITEMS for you to accomplish with the NA resource you are working with.   ie you will already know what items will be expected but you must focus on all communication above the  “thank you ” signature.
• There an expectation if you work in the MSP already that you already know how to communicate thoroughly and frequently
• Always respond to the support@ email for only that related content or  checklists items.
• These bullet points are created for you to summarize items currently being discussed talking point format
• Do not jump ahead. Focus all the email message being sent to you at this very moment.

Timely Communication

 

 

• Most people fail to process the message right in front of them with its series of talking points
• Frequent and thorough replies
• Receive a PSA ticket notification before 3p, it’s expected you respond to that message in the ticket that day
• Receive a PSA ticket notification after 3p, it’s ok to respond the next morning if you are busy.
• You are labeled not a good fit if you repeated miss email notifications during the onboarding process. Juggling many balls at once is part of the job prerequisite.

 

Managing Email Notifications

 

• Welcome task email notification
• NA resources are assigned to make sure the person being onboarded are able to get through the project within a reasonable amount of time.
• Task and tickets status help ensure that item is accomplished or pushed along.
• “Waiting for client” status reminds the company contact to respond
• The inability for the person being onboarded to respond timely, properly, or at all is a red flag for the team analyzing weather they are a good fit for future employment.