Best Practices: Onboarding New Employees
When ESOPs are established and announced to the company, they are often accompanied by great celebrations. Meetings are held, materials distributed, videos shown, visitors from other employee-owned companies welcomed, and more. But what happens a few years down the road when the initial excitement has worn off? How do new employees learn about being an employee-owner? Several companies have developed ongoing programs to address this issue.
To start, any onboarding program requires reliable materials—handouts, booklets, manuals, training sessions, virtual learning, and a resource to quickly and easily find answers to questions.
Several companies have developed owners’ manuals to give to new employees when they begin working. These can be quite extensive resources, often covering the company’s history, vision and values, goals, employee ownership basics, benefits systems, policies, and established departments and committees. These manuals are often more successful when created by the employees of the company rather than outside consultants, as employees are more accessible and aware of what new employees may want to know.
As with any medium, not everyone connects well with written materials. Videos are fast-growing tools used to reach new employees and give a better glimpse into the company culture and values. Some companies have created videos from the CEO to welcome new employees, while others have introduced the topic of ownership through their ESOP communications committees. The key to effective video communication is to keep the message clear and concise and to find creative ways to let company culture shine through.
Another way to drive home the message of employee ownership is with virtual learning and resource pages. As many companies are seeking opportunities to digitize and streamline processes, intranet sites and learning management systems (LMSs) have become quite prevalent. Often, companies have a dedicated page on their intranets for employee ownership, covering ESOP basics, ownership guides, summary plan documents, and Q&As. LSMs that feature dedicated training (often incorporating videos) on the basics of employee ownership are used to augment other intranet resources.
With the abundance of resources made available to new hires, still one of the best approaches is mentoring. It is difficult to design an onboarding program that fits everyone equally well. Mentoring allows the process to be more individualized; as an unexpected benefit, it also helps existing employees become more well-versed in their company’s plan and ownership culture with each time they explain it to new hires. Mentoring programs offer development opportunities for existing employees and assist new employees with building connections at the company early on. Mentorship ranges from informal programs, in which employees volunteer to participate, to highly systematized programs that involve mentor training, shared languages, defined focus areas such as goal setting, review processes, and even opportunities for mentors to become sponsors for new employees.
Another version of mentoring is a buddy program. Buddy programs are typically short-term programs, usually anywhere from two months to a year of commitment. The goals of a new hire buddy program are to provide connections at the company (potentially in another department), to foster collaboration and understanding, and to offer new employees a dedicated contact for questions. Guidelines can be established for the frequency and topics of buddy meetings, as well as criteria for employees who wish to act as buddies or mentors.
Meetings, of course, are the core of most onboarding programs. Meetings can cover all aspects of the company and its ownership plan and can be spaced out over the course of several months to include more in-depth training and allow for better retention of information. Many companies also set up a meeting for new employees with the plan administrator to go over the plan, discuss the company’s recent stock price performance, and answer questions.
Most companies also have established ESOP communications committees or culture committees, which can be included in the onboarding program. These committees are often tasked with educating employees about the ESOP (and what it means to be an employee-owner) and building connections. Thus, involving committee members in the onboarding process can be a good way to use their expertise and highlight the significance of ownership at the company. Companies have incorporated committee members into the onboarding process through organized activities for new hires and committee members, such as quarterly breakfasts or small group coffee meetings. The committees may also be valuable resources when creating or sourcing feedback on the onboarding materials, such as the owner’s manual or ESOP rights and responsibilities.
New employees usually come in knowing very little about the company, its history, objectives, finances, common acronyms, or operations. While most people have some familiarity with the stock market, it’s safe to assume that many will still need a basic explanation of what stock is, what profit and cash flow are, and how the two relate. While teaching people these topics is challenging, even more challenging is teaching them to unlearn previous assumptions. Many (if not most) employee-owned companies have a different and more participative culture than employees’ previous companies. Relearning expectations in this new environment requires both education and reinforcement. While not all companies have established onboarding programs, the ones that do clearly find the benefits to be worth the effort.