How Can One Create An Effective Onboarding Program For Managers?
Hiring a regular employee is one thing, but hiring someone for a managerial post is a completely different thing – a new manager can impact everything from engagement to employee retention, from turnover to better profits. When you hire someone new to a managerial post, you need to make sure, that as an employer, you enable them with every tool that is required for success. Just because someone is smart and dedicated, does not necessary make him or her a competent manager – you will have to ensure that they are aware of what needs to be done and how they need to go about doing the same. It is important that there is a proper onboarding program for managers, which will help them become effective and efficient. In the future, they will be able to recognise new talent and hire them, train them to be successful pillars of the company and also ensure proper retention.
Here are the things that you as an employer, need to keep in mind, while structuring an onboarding program, specifically for managers:
- While managers need to take care of the team they are managing, they also need to have chances for their own growth. They should have the tools they need to help the team progress and make their own progress at the same time. It is, however, important to remember that this program is not meant as a management development program; rather it is meant to give the manager the skills, he or she will need the minute they start work.
- Even though you might have taken a lot of care while hiring this manager and they might be extremely talented, it is still a good idea to have an assessment step in your on boarding process, which is in keeping with your company’s policies. This assessment will tell you all that you need to do – does the new manager have a clear understanding of what is needed and what are the fill in the blanks that you will have to do. The onboarding program will need to include all the aspects that the new manager will need to know, from the first day of work.
- Enabled with the information that the assessment provides you, your HR team should be able to design a proper onboarding guide for managers. The guide needs to clearly outline the goals for the manager and these goals should be a combination of relevant and real. The design should also be a mixture of styles – no new manager will want to spend hours poring over a written manual. The guide should be a combination of written and online material, and in today’s context social media will also have a big role to play.
- The actual development of the onboarding guide will have to be dynamic, because each person has a different way of learning. While some learn better through extensive learning sessions, there are some who prefer short structural learning programs. As an employer, you need to slightly tweak the program as per the assessment of your managerial hire.
- Before you can implement your guide, you need to make sure that everything is organised, because more times than not, organisation is the key to success. You need to ensure that all the information that you want your managers to have is in place and there are examples to demonstrate concepts and skill sets.
- Finally, when everything is in place, you can implement your onboarding guide for managers and do remember to conduct regular evaluations to gauge whether things are on the right track or not. Many a times, a proper evaluation will also tell you whether there are any changes that need to be made your onboarding guide.
Reference: https://shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/5-steps-create-onboarding-program-managers.aspx
