Understanding and Designing an Inclusive Onboarding Experience.
In November 2019, I gave a talk on Inclusive Onboarding at the Onboard.Amsterdam 2019 conference. I’ll share some of the main discussion points of my talk.
What is inclusive onboarding?
Employee onboarding is the process of welcoming new colleagues to the company. This involves sharing the culture and mindset of the organization and providing context to the new colleague to help them understand the specifics of the role. Onboarding also provides practical information, training and tools needed to get the job done. It’s also an important opportunity for the new joiner to ask questions and get to know their new team.
At larger organizations, onboarding is typically a clearly defined process with many touchpoints between the new employee and the organization. A chaotic onboarding experience may have a lasting impact on the perception the employee has of the organization. Starting a new job is already stressful and creates a lot of uncertainty and anxiety. Providing a very clear, chaos-free onboarding experience helps resolve a lot of that stress and uncertainty.
Inclusive onboarding takes onboading to another level. An inclusive onboarding experience accommodates and supports all of your new employees, not just some of them. With inclusion on the forefront, you invite each person to feel seen during their onboarding experience. They receive the support they need to get settled and ultimately are able to contribute more fully.
Why prioritize an inclusive onboarding experience?
Why bother with inclusive onboarding? It’s a lot of extra work, for sure. But it’s an important part of building a diverse and inclusive company because it makes sure that all of your employees have a good start. It also helps build your brand externally because it shows your organization is a welcoming place and where your employees feel safe to be their authentic selves.
Inspiration and Activation
To gather some inspiration, I have talked with friends about the most innovative initiatives that create an inclusive onboarding experience. I’ve avoided initiatives that prioritize one group or identity. Instead I’ve included initiatives that try to create a universal experience of inclusion. It’s important to mention… This is meant as inspiration in designing your own onboarding process. Inclusion should not be approached as a checklist of behaviors or accommodations. It’s about listening to your employees (and future employees), understanding their needs and developing a program that makes sure they are seen and heard. I’ve broken down the onboarding experience into three main stages and provided examples of inclusive initiatives for each part.
Before Day 1
Here’s a detailed list of initiatives to put in place before the first day for a new employee. This is often called the pre-onboarding phase. Some of these initiatives may not feel like onboarding projects, but they lay the foundation for an inclusive company culture. Inclusive onboarding does not exist in a vacuum, it’s part of a holistic approach to build an inclusive company culture (Related: this post on inclusive communication).
D&I Transparency
Even before someone decides to apply to your company, you have an opportunity to make an impression on them. Be proactive and share your company’s D&I goals and progress publicly. This creates a clear signal that D&I is a priority for your company. This will help applicants know whether the company is a good fit with them. Simply put, you are more likely to find candidates who are passionate about a diverse and inclusive workplace if you have bold ambitions and you share them publicly. Make sure your recruiters and hiring managers also understand your goals and are able to talk about them confidently.
Inclusive Hiring
There’s a lot of information already out there about inclusive hiring. I won’t reinvent the wheel here. But I’ll mention a few important things:
- Develop a hiring process that is as unbiased and fair as possible, use techniques such as fair, inclusive language in your job ads, blind CV reviews, and standardized questions and scoring in interviews.
- Invite a diverse hiring team (interviewers, hiring managers) to review candidates (this also sends a message to your candidates that you value diversity).
- Make sure your hiring managers, interviewers and recruiters have been trained to understand and counteract their unconscious and conscious biases.
- Analyze your hiring process to see where bias creeps in. Look at where you see a drop-off of applicants (by gender, for example) to identify problems.
- Make sure your offer committee makes fair and standardized salary offers. This is an important way to avoid creating pay gaps from the start.
Relocation Support
For candidates that are relocating for the job, think about what their particular needs are. Supporting them in obtaining a work permit, finding housing, understanding local bureaucracy and getting settled is a huge help. Consider providing customized support to those who need extra help in relocation, for example:
- Candidates with families
- Candidates with disabilities
- Candidates who care for their family members (for example a parent)
- Candidates with religious observances that require dietary restrictions or specific prayer times
- Candidates who do not speak the local language
Regarding financial support for relocation: relocation can cost somewhere between 2,000 and 10,000 euros. A system for reimbursement that requires the employee to have all their money for relocation ahead of time can be very exclusionary. Consider a way to provide relocation support in advance.
Guide to New City
Speaking specifically about Berlin, there are a lot of layers of bureaucracy that can make relocation really frustrating. Make this process as easy as possible to alleviate that mental burden for the new employee. This can include instructions to “register” (if needed) with the local government office, obtain a bank account, get tax identification information, find an official rental contract and more.
Beyond bureaucracy, providing additional information about the new city really helps make settlement easier. This includes sharing information about:
- Religious spaces for prayer
- Instructions on how to enroll children in kindergarten or school
- Location of cultural institutions
- How to get in touch with police or other emergency services
- How to find general practitioners or specialty doctors (especially in an emergency)
- Health community spaces including those that offer special healthcare such as HIV+ support, PrEP, STD testing and other counseling
- Queer and LGBTQI+ community spaces
- Spaces that offer mental health support (finding a therapist is a particular challenge in Berlin and can take months to sort out)
This isn’t an exhaustive list. Ask your employees what they had to sort out on their own when they relocated and use that for inspiration to create support documents for new employees.
Welcome from the Team
Ask the colleague’s new team to reach out before day one. This creates a bit of a psychological safety net before that intimidating first day at a new company. If any team building events happen before day one, make sure the team extends the invitation to their new employee. Make sure they feel like their new team is ready and excited for them to join.
During Week One
The first week at a new job can be especially stressful. It’s a time of uncertainty where everything is unfamiliar. This list of initiatives aims to make that first week as easy and welcoming as possible.
Site maps
Some office campuses can be confusing even a year after working there. For a new employee, everything is new and unfamiliar. Getting around can be particularly stressful. Provide all new hires with site maps to show them the layout of the buildings, meeting rooms and important social places like the cafeteria or lounge. Be sure to add important inclusive spaces such as: accessible entrances, meeting rooms and bathrooms, prayer rooms, parent-child rooms, quiet spaces, relaxation rooms, first aid rooms, and more. So often, I talk to colleagues who I’ve worked with for years and they say: “I didn’t know we had a gym/showers/quiet room/prayer rooms/etc”. Even if the employee never uses those spaces, they will know about them and can share information with others.
Employee Resource Groups
If your organization has Employee Resource Groups / Affinity Groups / Diversity Groups, make sure these are visible from day one. This is a great way to help new employees build their communities from the beginning of their time with your organization. Also make sure the steps to create a new ERG are clear and accessible.
Names & Pronouns
Consider the need for employees to use a name different than what’s on their legal documents. To understand this more, learn about deadnaming and what this can mean for the trans community. If you enable a flexible names policy, it is not simply an administrative process to put in place, but a way to acknowledge and recognize trans identity. Folks who are not trans also benefit from having a flexible names policy as many people do not use their legal names for a variety of reasons. Also, proactively sharing and recognizing pronouns is another way to welcome people to feel seen. This blog discusses this in depth.
Buddy System
Putting a buddy system in place provides more psychological safety for a new employee because they always have someone they can go to with questions. If you extend this relationship to also cover general questions regarding adjusting to the new city, it can be the start of a powerful support network. It’s also important to recognize the efforts the buddies put in. Make sure you have a way to acknowledges this type of organizational support work.
Showcase Diversity
At Welcome Day, make sure you showcase the diversity of your organization. This is a great way to show the importance of diversity within your organization. In your presentations to new joiners, make sure to have visible, authentic (not token) diversity from day one. This sets an important first impression. Make sure your presenters can speak confidently and answer questions on the D&I goals of the organization as well.
The First 3 Months
For a new employee, onboarding does not stop after the first week. They are still in the process of learning and adjusting. This is an opportunity to continue to acknowledge your new joiners and find ways to improve your processes.
Feedback
Your new employees have just spent a few weeks getting settled with your company. They have a lot of firsthand experience with the onboarding process. Take the opportunity to ask them how the experience was and how it can be improved. This is so important. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming to get a lot of feedback and figure out how to act on it. But this is a very valuable moment to learn and improve.
Ambassador Program
If you have people coming from all over the world to work at your organization, you have a huge wealth of cultural diversity. This presents a great opportunity for everyone to learn. A cultural exchange program (or ambassador program) is a great way to connect people and let them share their cultural traditions. This interview discusses how this can be put into practice.
Training & Tools
Learning, of course, does not stop after the first week of onboarding. If inclusion is a real priority within your organization, you must also give tools to your employees to be champions of inclusion. This could include:
- Inclusive language resources and guides
- Experts to answer difficult questions that arise
- Unconscious bias, allyship, intersectionality (and other D&I) trainings
Leaders need extra support. They are role models by default, and they likely need some help to understand and be confident on the topic of D&I. Provide them with D&I basic training, inclusive leadership training and opportunities to recognize their own privilege and use it to lift up others in their team.
Discrimination Reporting
Make sure your discrimination reporting process is clear, transparent and accessible. If someone is experiencing discrimination, you want to make the process of getting support as easy as possible. Make sure any complaints are taken seriously. This is an important step in making a safe and inclusive workplace.
Partner & Family Inclusion
When a new employee relocates with their family, the success of that transfer is also dependent on the happiness of their family members. And it can be lonely to relocate as the partner, with no social network in the new city. Organized networking and community events help those family members establish themselves socially. Consider offering them language lessons or other assimilation support.
Final Thoughts
I hope the above list of initiatives was inspiring. Again, you do not have to recreate them like a checklist of to-dos. It’s more important to find what’s right for your organization. I’ll add a few final thoughts to get you started on the journey.
- Learn. Challenge yourself to widen your own views. Empathize and connect with the experiences of others.
- Recognize progress. Inclusion is an ongoing journey with no clear finish line. This can make it difficult to see the progress you make. Be sure to recognize and celebrate the incremental progress you make.
- Start a conversation. Ask for feedback on your onboarding. Listen and take the feedback to heart to make improvements in your processes.
A sincere thank you to the friends that shared their own projects, ideas and inspirations. This greatly helped me learn about the onboarding experience and put together the ideas for this talk.
