Customer Reviews

Onboarding: How to Get Your New Employees Up to Speed in Half the Time

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

How many times have we dropped the ball in onboarding new employees? Too many times to count.
This step-by-step guide will ensure that it never happens again. The book is a must read for every HR professional, no matter where you work.
I recommend it to all my colleagues.

Businesses have known for years that the skills and talents that make you successful in one job do not necessarily make you successful in your next job. Until now, however, the responsibility for adapting to the new role has been in the hands of the individual. Bradt & Vonnegut provide a concise, practical process and set of tools that enable the organization to maximize success with new employees. Like his previous work, Bradt starts before the beginning, making sure the organization is clear about what they need and want, and making sure that the new employee fits with those expectations. Then attention turns to helping the new employee get the right tools, meet the right people, and takes the right steps to win in the company. I recommend this book to all of my talent management and HR clients, and use it to help them plan for their own success through the success of their new recruits. A top-line resource for any size company!

As a recruitment professional, I feel I should supply a copy of this book with every C level or senior appointment I manage.
It is essential reading for CEO's and HR Professionals in every organisation, large or small.
Simple, practical tips from a seasoned pro, get it right first time and enjoy the success you expected.

Onboarding new employees is a popular topic and this book does an effective job of summarizing how to get the new hire off on the right foot. The authors focus on the individual employee and so do not look to this book as how to manual for a corporate onboarding program. Nevertheless, the individual focus informs the programmatic elements of an effective enterprise wide program.
In my experience as an HR Director, oftentimes new hires are derailed by a lack of fit with the organization's culture. That lack of fit begins with little or no job preview, an unstructured selection process and extends through the critical months in the new position.
All too often the new employee ends up in a sink or swim situation with a lack of supportive structure. This book does a great job at the micro level of taking the reader through the onboarding process from qualifying and checking out the new hire to building networks of key relationships. The authors offer forms and tools that they allow the reader to use in limited quantities to address key issues that surface in the new employment relationship. This reviewer liked the practical nature of the text.
For those looking to create an onboarding program from scratch, this book is helpful but limited given the emphasis on the individual new hire. This reviewer is most interested in alignment of all aspects of talent acquisition, performance management and retention with the brand and direction of the organization. For additional resources on strategic alignment of onboarding efforts, the reader is encouraged to go to the Human Capital Institute website.

For anyone who is involved in the hiring of senior management, this is required reading. It well written, well organised and absolutely to the point about all the issues that you need to consider to ensure the success of the new manager's entry into the organisation.

George Bradt and Mary Vonnegut give practical advice and action-oriented plans for ensuring your new employee's success. The news for me was in learning that onboarding starts even before the recruiting process begins. This book gives you not only new ways to think about onboarding, but a step-by-step guide to help you through the entire process, from recruiting through integrating your new employee into the organization and gaining those important early wins on the job. I'm a fan!

Occasionally someone writes a book which successfully sensitizes us to long-overlooked problems while offering practical solutions. "Onboarding: How to Get Your New Employees Up to Speed in Half the Time" does exactly this. Building upon George Bradt's earlier onboarding books, authors George Bradt and Mary Vonnegut deliver an inspired "How To" manual aimed at both keeping and accelerating the impact of new hires. This book walks hiring managers through what the authors define as a "Total Onboarding" process step-by-step. From aligning people around what to look for in recruiting, to accelerating new employees adding value to the organization, this book describes compelling and practical improvements to any company's hiring process.

While a great deal has been written aimed at helping new hires, relatively little attention has been given to the challenges employers face at successfully integrating talent into their organizations --- and keeping them there. I'm sure you'll find this book easy to read, easy to follow, and, essential to implement.

So many business books are long on theory but short on practice. This book hits directly those critical things that organizations and the managers themselves need to do to start being productive and deliver results right away in a new job. How many of us have started jobs where somebody points to the desk (assuming there even is one ready when you arrive) and says "let me know if you have any questions." Companies can and desperately need to do better, and this book is the place to start.

"George Bradt and Mary Vonnegut's Onboarding: How to Get Your New Employees Up to Speed in Half the Time" is one of the most helpful, how-to books that I have read in years. Absent are the catchy platitudes that characterize so many books written by consultants. This book is chock full of information in the form of a clear road map that will help you understand that a Total Onboarding Program (TOP) is a mission-critical program for every organization.

"I am recommending it as a must-read manual for healthcare executives who want to succeed in an increasingly challenging climate.

"If you are an executive recruiter, and you are not up to speed on TOP, you are missing an important opportunity to take your performance to the next level."

Onboarding: How to Get Your New Employees Up to Speed in Half the Time by George Bradt and Mary Vonnegut (Wiley, 2009). Reviewed by Steve Gladis, Ph.D.

"We've found that 40% of executives hired at the senior level are pushed out, fail or quit within 18 months....," says Kevin Kelly CEO of Heidrick and Struggles, an executive search firm. Also, "...as many as 50% of new employees fail to deliver on what their organizations expect (Topgrading by Brad Smart quoted in Onboarding, p. 5). Now, if those aren't attention getters, I'm not sure what is. Having watched this phenomenon up close from within organizations and from the outside as an executive coach, this cultural phenomenon might be one of the biggest issues facing executive leadership in organizations today, including the federal government. In fact, the authors note that such costly executive exits are caused by four key failures:

--A role failure (people are unclear about their new role);
--a personal failure (lack of ability or fit by the new person);
--a relationship failure (early missteps with critical colleagues);
--an engagement failure (missed opportunities in the early days).

The authors have pulled together a very readable guide for any organization wanting to recruit and retain top talent. Their simple overview instructions:
1. Align (agreement on need for the position);
2. Acquire (recruit the best person for the job);
3. Accommodate (give new recruit the tools for success); Assimilate (help them get to know others quickly);
4. Accelerate (assist them to deliver results quicker).

So many careers are made, and unfortunately broken, in the very early days, often before the employee even steps into the building because of critical onboarding oversights. The corporate landscape is FULL of such unfortunate failures. And the cost is huge. Research out of Harvard shows the cost to be staggering for companies, and the destruction it does to improperly onboarded employees is devastating.

Get this book and use it before you bring another employee on board.