New Hire Acculturation - It’s Personal

When you start planning your acculturation onboarding program, it's important to remember that each new hire has a unique path to productivity. Sure, there are some things that everyone has to do like going through training and orientation. You will obviously require participation in any activities that are essential to achieving your organization's core objectives.

Nudge - Don't Push

However, some of the other steps are more like suggestions. You don't want to force people to get involved on a social level. That's got to happen naturally (with some subtle encouragement). If a new employee just isn't interested in uploading a bunch of additional content to their profile on your intranet portal, continuing to push them in that direction isn't productive.

Instead, your onboarding system should be intelligent enough to generate prompts that nudge new hires in the direction they are already inclined to go. For example, your acculturation onboarding system might "notice" that an employee is participating regularly in commenting on your corporate blogs. Your BPM software could easily be pre-programmed to send that type of individual an email suggesting that they create a new blog as way to participate in the social network.

Everyone Learns Differently

When it comes to stuff your new employees absolutely must do, there are often multiple avenues that can be used to reach the same goal. Suppose you have a series of learning module new hires must complete during their probationary period. A successful acculturation portal might offer several ways to access the required information.

For example, employees who learn best from training manuals might use a login to complete one text based module online each day until they finished the entire course. Workers who want a more interactive environment might choose to participate in a live orientation webinar where they could ask questions. Both groups would be tested in the same way to ensure knowledge retention levels are high.

Providing multiple learning venues also helps highlight shortcomings in each approach. You might find that employees attending the webinar are consistently scoring poorly on a topic the instructor isn't covering in detail. Or, you could discover that your text based learning module needs to use clearer language so new hires aren't confused by terms they don't know.

Keep Score and Ask for Feedback

In addition to objective scoring, you should also seek ongoing subjective input. Ask new hires about their satisfaction with the onboarding experience and if they have suggestions for improvement. After all, these employees have a lot invested in becoming productive quickly. Most people take pride in doing well at a new job - it's personal. So, make it easy for them with a flexible, highly targeted acculturation portal that matches the needs of your diverse work force.