AGILE ONBOARDING
New Joiner Onboarding — How To Efficiently Ramp Up New Employees
Create a checklist and set the expectations
How do you onboard a team member, a team lead or a Product Manager? In my last article I wrote about the company onboarding, now let’s see how to get more into the technical details and create a system to efficiently onboard new employees.
Today we are going to move on and start working on a more detailed checklist so that the onboarding is tailor made for our company and a given role. We will learn about what should be on the list, how to make a system out of it and how to set expectations and goals for the new joiner. The goal for us is not to get overwhelmed, create a system that is easily repeatable and efficient and on top of it, the new joiner might actually enjoy it.
Meet the Manager
OK, so we are on the first day on the new job. Apart from all the People department, IT and process meetings I described further in this video, we are looking forward to meeting our manager. That is a reasonable expectation and most likely, however not always, we have met them already during the recruitment process.
What can we expect? We would expect a plan and some guidance — clear expectations about our role and the performance are manager's shoes — what are their expectations?
As a manager, I want the new employee to ramp up quickly and efficiently, so that they start providing value for the company in a few weeks.
In fact, we want them onboarded and ready yesterday because all is on fire and the recruitment process took forever. Yeah… but let’s try and be realistic.
Get a System
Simple solutions work best. Get a blank page and start working on a checklist for the onboarding. It can be created collaboratively with your employees, or a new employee who has some great ideas, etc. Involve people, in the end, all of them have been onboarded and have thoughts about it.
Jira, or any other ticket tracking tool
For team members using JIRA daily, I highly recommend moving the checklist there and having an epic with some stories linked and some of them with sub-tasks — can’t imagine a better way to onboard anyone in JIRA. Also, it is so easy to follow up, update and clone!
Confluence, or any other wiki tool
My brother, a Team Lead uses a Confluence page where he created a long checklist for new Backend Developers. It is very well structured and clear. Confluence has those checkboxes you can tick off when done, a perfect solution to easily keep track of the progress.
What to put there? If you are onboarding a team member you need to make sure they have access to all the necessary tools quickly. We can’t afford not having a good IT onboarding and waiting weeks for a developer to get access to the code. Or for a Product Manager to get access to company strategy in Product Board. As a manager of people, who has a great interest in having them operative quickly, you can influence those processes and help IT streamline them with your checklist.
A high-level checklist for a backend developer goes like this:
- Mailbox (if GSuite then also Drive and Docs, if Microsoft then Office and Teams)
- VPN — if needed, depending on the role
- Jira, Confluence, Slack— you can set expectations on how to fill in the profile there, that the photo should show the face, etc. In Slack it is handy to write the position, team if applies, and the location. I liked that my brother also listed which #channels and people @handles the person should belong to on Slack, for sure it is similar in Teams. What’s more, it is a great practice to add the link to Slack Etiquette for new joiners, so they learn how to use threads, emojis and basically decrease the noise on Slack. No hello is another great site explaining what not to do in chat and what to do instead, please spread the word! (Btw, have you seen how fancy the website became?)
- GitHub, Sentry, Jenkins, Kibana, etc. — whatever the company or the particular developers use
- Team agreements, release processes, software development practices, etc. — documenting all the existing processes helps everybody, and linking them in the checklist helps the new joiner understand the team and company culture
- Calendar — make sure they're added to distribution lists of the company-all, backend-devs, team, etc. so that they get the invitations to company and team meetings. If the team rotates meetings moderators, add them to the end of meetings moderators queue
An interesting option is to get a “buddy” for the new joiner. Who is a “buddy” I’ll explain better in the next video. Briefly, it is a person, from the same team or domain, using our example above, it’s a backend developer who will show the new joiner the ropes. This way, the manager delegates part of the onboarding to someone else, and the new joiner gets a guide from one of their peers.
Spreadsheet, or any Excel-like tool
When I started, my manager shared a spreadsheet with me. It had four tabs and it was one of the best onboarding tools, along with the Enboarder I ever got:
- Groups, resources and docs — important email groups, apps and tools, and links to recordings and slides of product training. All this with a brief explanation of what we use it for.
- People to meet — a list consisting of name, title, priority, and topics to cover on the 1:1 meeting I am to schedule with them. This was great, I got to know all of them in my first two weeks. I found out what they do, understood how we can collaborate, and also got to ask my favorite question: “What challenges do see with the current processes?”
This is a great idea to replicate, especially for new team members. The expectation is that the new joiner sets up a short 15–30min 1:1 meeting with all team members in the first 2 weeks. They could do that with or without the buddy. That’s on them to decide. I’d add it to the company policy, so it is not awkward, people should expect to get a meeting in their calendar.
Goals and expectations
The last two tabs of the spreadsheet were about setting goals and expectations for my new role. This is great stuff. There you go, you have a guide on what to do to succeed in your first days in the company. As a manager, you are happy because you want the person to convert the enthusiasm they have for the new job into high-performance and focus on what’s important. And for the new joiner, it is great because they are focused and also they know what to expect. The last two tabs go like this:
- 30/60/90 — something so simple yet so powerful. You get a goal and a few sentences of expectation for 30, 60, and 90 days. With all the stress involved in starting a new job, this helps the new hire get some confidence in what they are meant to do and know by when. You read through it, ask questions and then you check and see for yourself before the check-in meeting: “Phew, looks I am meeting the expectations.” And the feeling of relief.
- Onboarding — day, description, and related documents. This is a different way of compiling the same knowledge as above in the Backend dev checklist. Here, given it is a spreadsheet, you can add days in columns, like what would be a good way of going step by step through the documentation sent.
Onboarding is a special time for the new joiners and can be a great experience. Try not to overwhelm the new employees, it is hard to remember any details during the first week at a new job. Focus on general topics and start adding details after the introduction to the topics has been made. Let me know in the comments what are your biggest takeaways!
