How well does your company’s onboarding support inclusive culture?

I am currently Head of Engineering at Prospa, where I am responsible for the day to day running of our ever-expanding Engineering team. Part of that responsibility is the recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding of new developers.

I have been interested in new hire onboarding for a number of years now and the significant contribution it makes to the engineering culture of an organisation.

So what do I mean by “onboarding?” I am not referring to the HR process of filling out paperwork, signing contracts, and other administrivia. Rather, I am referring to Organisational Socialisation — getting new hires integrated into the company.

Talya Bauer, PhD, in her paper “Onboarding of New Employees: Maximizing Success” defines four levels of onboarding programs, each more comprehensive than the previous. The first is Compliance, which is simply just the legal minimum of paperwork. The second is Clarification, making sure the new hire understands his or her role and responsibilities. The third is Culture so that the new hire understands the organisation’s personality and values. Finally, a truly great onboarding program will establish Connection, building a true connection between new hires and existing staff, supervisors, and mentors.

Building an effective new hire onboarding program benefits both the new hires and the organisation. Hiring is expensive and competitive, it can be hard to find and attract new engineering talent in Australia, and they can leave early if they have a bad initial experience. Additionally, a good program can help developers get up to speed quickly, become productive sooner, and deliver value fast. Studies by HR firm ClickBoarding found that 69 percent of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experienced great onboarding. Also, new employees who went through a structured onboarding program were 58 percent more likely to be with the organisation after three years. Happy, engaged employees are just simply more productive.

I have either started or significantly modified the onboarding program at my last four employers, dating back almost a decade. I started focusing on onboarding when I was at Atlassian, which offered the Atlassian Bootcamp induction program. When I moved companies, I realised there is no one-size-fits-all approach to culture and processes, and the same goes for the way companies on board. Each company, culture, and engineering team is different and a copy and paste approach never works. So I began thinking, what were the principles that made the best onboarding programs effective? Inspired by the style of Joel Spolsky’s ‘The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code,’ I came up with ‘The Ted Test’ — 11 questions you should ask yourself about your onboarding program to ensure it is effective, efficient and inclusive.

1. Do developers have access to all necessary systems and accounts created before they start?

Onboarding should start before your developer’s first day. You’ve spent time and money recruiting the best person for the job, and your new employee is excited to be joining the team. Having that person come in just to create their accounts is a tedious experience for both of you.

2. Does your company have a specific list of goals to accomplish for the onboarding?

You want your new developer to have a series of goals that underpin the tasks you set them. The first few days at a new company can feel like an endless array of random tasks or documents to read. Clearly, communicating goals helps developers immediately understand the value of what they’re doing.

3. Do the goals explain and re-enforce company values and mission?

It’s essential the goals you set reflect the company values. Onboarding is the perfect opportunity to stress-test your values. At Prospa, we ‘obsess about customers’ so our new developers sit with the team and listen in to customer calls. This has nothing to do with coding, but it’s important that they understand who our customers are and how we support them. You can’t develop solutions for a customer or problem that you don’t ‘get’.

4. Are the people involved in onboarding active members of the team and trained on how to deliver information?

Train the trainers. Someone on your team may be an engineering superstar but that doesn’t mean they have developed the skills or attitude to train someone else. Your HR/Talent/People team typically won’t have the specific expertise to train engineers in technical tasks so invest in training members of the engineering team to deliver that information. It benefits both the trainees, and also the trainers.

5. Do developers have a fully functioning development environment before lunch?

If you’re not able to build a developer environment on your new employee’s first day, you likely have a whole list of other problems you should be looking to fix. This question helps to reflect on the efficiency of your developer environment and gives you the chance to make necessary changes.

6. Do developers write and commit non-trivial code for production systems on the first day?

This isn’t about testing your new developer. Rather, it’s about testing your engineering environment and culture. Another Prospa value is ‘deliver value fast’. We ask every new developer to write code and deploy a fix for an issue on their first day. Not only does this task show we’re serious, but having someone fix a problem for the team on Day 1 can create an amazing sense of accomplishment and belonging. It also goes a long way to counteract the “she is not technical enough” female developers can encounter at some organisations.

7. Are Developers instructed in hidden/institutional knowledge early on?

Make sure new team members have access to key knowledge, whether that’s a glossary of acronyms or a guide on how to apply for a conference or an education course. Giving people this information before they need to ask for it can take unnecessary stress off the onboarding process. This is especially true for people whose requests might fall outside the standard first-day questions. For instance, be proactive about providing information on policies like parental leave or flexible working, as some people may feel hesitant to ask early on.

8. Do developers have a designated person they can go to for help?

New hires need to know it is ok to ask questions and interrupt someone, as they will naturally be a little uncertain about things. It’s important the designated person understands their responsibility — don’t surprise them on the day with the role, and adjust their workload accordingly. You will need someone to be a human answer board for the next month, so communicate this expectation from the start.

9. Is the program mostly uniform between locations, teams, and seniority levels?

It might not be possible to completely replicate the onboarding program across locations, but make an effort to make it as uniform as possible, particularly when scaling. If the first week of onboarding at HQ means Friday drinks, socialising and lunch with the executive team, then a packet of chips and a welcome card won’t cut it at the satellite office. Try to provide a similar experience, whether that involves technology or travel. Being inclusive also means paying as much attention to your distributed / remote teams as your local HQ.

10. Is the onboarding program deliberately inclusive?

In order to build an inclusive culture, you need an onboarding experience that reinforces your company’s commitment to diversity. Be clear about company initiatives and strategies in place. Share real examples, whether it’s how you celebrate different cultural events or the introduction of a new leadership program. You want new employees to feel welcome and part of the community from day one.

11. Is the onboarding program regularly improved with input from new hires and participants?

Ask each person who comes through the onboarding experience how they would improve it. Encourage them to identify at least one thing that they would change. New hires have a fresh pair of eyes and their insights are invaluable.

Your onboarding program should evolve over time, which is why The Ted Test has been devised with questions rather than statements. These 11 questions are an opportunity to reflect on your current program so that you can adapt it as you scale. If you can answer yes to these eleven questions, you’re giving new developers a strong environment in which to succeed.

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