Welcome back to the Every Tuesday Club. 

A lot of the tips we usually talk about are when someone is actually settled into the job.  But there are challenges when someone is new to a team as well.  I often talk to managers that an opportunity is missed by people having an orientation rather than an induction.  An orientation being “here’s the coffee machine”, “here’s your desk”, “the toilets down there”.    Induction is a bit more.

Another term for induction is “on-boarding”.  Think about when you are boarding a plane or a train, you have to do a lot more than just get to know where your seat is.  So in an on-boarding situation you want to know more about the culture.  What are the rules of engagement on the team?  What are the expectations?   Are you able to speak up in a meeting?  Or not speak up in a meeting?  Some of these things can be real career stallers if you don’t get that right. 

A lot of the time managers say, “all of that stuff could take a lot of time”.  So there are some clever ways that you can go about doing it.  Such as:

·           Involving members of that team doing tasks in the induction.

·           Have a team meeting when you have got the new person there and ask each person to share one unwritten rule of the road.  You can have some humour involved or it can be a very serious thing.  Make sure that new person knows how they should communicate and play ball.

·           We also recommend that maybe at the 3 month or 6 week mark, there is a half hour catch up with somebody who is external to the team and not the manager.  So that the employee has an opportunity to check in with somebody else in the organisation and let them know how things are going

In the long run that’s really time well spent.  A little more time invested early on saves heaps of time later in terms of the team getting along and being productive right away.

It pays off, so it’s worth spending the time when a new employee joins the team.

Think about it, or maybe share it with another leader in your organisation to help get a new team member in place.

Good luck with that and let us know how you get on.

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