For her first [...]]]> Today you’ve got someone new joining your organization. It’s an important day. Every time someone joins your team is an important day. You don’t bring someone at the heart of your group without motives. Your team grows, you have plans, you’ve got expectations. As a result of this new hire, things will improve.

For her first day you may bring your new recruit around, present her to all your guys, just to say hello. A courtesy introduction, a quick, pleasant, sometimes “uneasy” discussion… then another one, with lots of replay of the same questions. Quite boring obligation really, but you don’t mind, it’s a one-shot and it has to done by someone.

This exercise though, is somewhat all loosing a bit of its initial intention. You “fail to convince” in making your team comfortable with this new “unknown element”. It may worth saying it, everyone seem a bit nervous about this new recruit starting in your organization. It quickly become obvious that it’s not only your new employee that you aim to put “at ease”; it’s also the most established members of your team.

And let’s face it, you’re a bit anxious yourself. It is very unlikely that your new recruit will “fit” in your organization without disturbing the chemistry of your place. On the other side of the coin there’s nothing wrong with that… it’s a challenge, you’re a middle manager; you like it. Your team is about to become more than the sum of its parts, things will soon get exciting.

You ideally presume that this person will find her feet and enjoy working for you from day-one. If so, you may take some time reconsidering this assumption.

As middle managers, we too often have this over-optimistic “welcoming” view of our organization. Unfortunately, what often occur is a month-long period of time where your new employee is literally left on her own, with the small consolation of having a pile of printed documents or a few pages from your intranet to read. And that’s the “best case” scenario… The worse case is being thrown to the deep ends first-day on, struggling to find your way, and re-surfacing with as much information about your place than the 1st day you came-in: in other words, not a lot.

But you’re thinking that your organization is too well structured to let this happen right? In the doubt, next time you’ve got a new hire starting, keep on eye on things. You may get surprised. That said, here’s a simple way to bring your new recruits up-to-speed when they come-in the door. Formalizing a training for each new recruit would be far too costly and hardly justifiable. You may be tempted to bring your new People under your wing, but such an approach is exhausting and Akof loves to think of your middle-manager time being too precious for that . So drop the “coaching” thing… let it go, and consider a week-long “induction” to get your new People to get up-to-speed in a week time. Your goal is double: (1.) to provide an accurate picture and authentic view of your organization and (2.) to mix-up your people.

To this effect, get your new recruit to meet for 45 minutes or more with everyone of your guys, every hour, 8 hours a day. Set a quick agenda for the week, pick-up the People you feel comfortable explaining what they’re doing and get them to talk about their past achievements. The situations in which your People have the occasion to describe, value and sell your organization are seldom, but they exist. Organizing inductions for your new recruits is one of these. Don’t only select the “orators” of your team to speak with your new recruits. Let any of your guys giving the overview of what they do and how they do it. Let them tell their story and let your new People ask their own questions. Let the chemistry work between your People. Let your new recruits make their own opinion of your organization. You’ve got nothing to hide.

When you’ll see your People talking about their job and organization in front of new recruits, you’ll discover that they explain and present what they’re doing with a certain “pride“. Something magic happens… they try to sell your organization and do their best to show how they contribute to its success. It’s a form of internal marketing. It forces your guys to understand the organization they’re working-in before explaining its mechanisms to others. This requires an intellectual effort rarely expected from employees and this is too bad. You would not believe how much “informal” information they’ve got to communicate. None of it is written down, it’s all in the minds and brains of your People.

A new recruits’ induction may not be a thorough, structured and flawless description of your organization by any mean, but there’s a lot to take-on and believe me, your new guys’ heads will be about to explode after a week. They’ll be forced to make the distinction of what’s important from what’s not. They’ll criticize and filter the information they receive and ask “to-the-point” questions.

In other words, they’ll engage. And in return, your team will engage. If this happens, your “induction” is a success and your recruitment job is now complete.