Onboarding: 3 Tips to Keep Knowledge in the Team
It is natural that even within a stable team, the team members join & leave. When a person leaves the group, some unique experience and knowledge go as well. Always.
Therefore, we aim to keep the most of the knowledge within the team and limit the amount of “lost knowledge”. If the amount of lost knowledge is too high, it may represent a significant setback for the team and its ability to perform and compete with others.
Anticipate, do not just react
All the tips mentioned below are part of a framework that anticipates.
If we expect that the knowledge holders may not be around forever and that in time, knowledge tends to fade away, it is genuinely easier to continuously preserve everyone’s consciousness within the team’s knowledge foundation. Sustainably.
Below I have outlined a few tips on how you may concept the work with knowledge and experience within your teams throughout time.
Context — onboarding of a new team member
Imagine a situation when a new team member joins the team as the other person is about to leave. You want to ensure that the new team member will be able to pick-up and take over while the team loses the least knowledge as possible.
Tip #1
Set the ultimate goal
Always set and communicate what the intention of the onboarding is. Make sure everyone understands the purpose. It may seem like an obvious thing — yet still, it is the prime-directive you set that drives and motivates people towards reaching a goal (Do not mistake with the Prime Directive ethical principle from Star Trek🖖).
You can use a similar format:
—
The ultimate goal of the onboarding is for < Paulo > to:
- Become 100% autonomous member of the team
- Be able to contribute to the success of the team in any situation
- Be capable of the full support of the team
—
Be aware that if you fail to articulate the purpose, you will never get a buy-in from the team and involved individuals.
Tip #2
Make the TEAM responsible
Highlight that it is in the best interest of the whole team itself to continuously support and inspect the onboarding.
If the onboarding is not successful, the whole team will suffer the consequences in the future. Use simple examples as a technique to harmonize everyone’s perspectives on this subject and to help understand the impact of unsuccessful onboarding:
If Paulo doesn’t understand how to set X, eventually, the team could be blocked, and together we will have to figure it out.
This approach represents an alternative to a situation when Team Leaders or Managers of all kinds are held responsible for “proper onboarding” of the new team member.
Tip #3
Inspect the progress = visualize it
The goals are set and acknowledged. The team understands the importance and accepts the responsibility for successful onboarding.
Now, the team should ensure to inspect the onboarding daily to help identify if any additional support is needed or if any issues prevent the onboarding from being completed successfully.
Other effects of daily inspection are that:
- It creates a need to visualize the onboarding so that it can be inspected in a “measurable” way.
- The goals of the onboarding are harder to be compromised as they are often repeated and reminded.
How to visualize the onboarding?
The onboarding may be represented by a set of guidelines, items, and tasks divided into multiple areas according to the primary focus.
Identify the areas of onboarding. Those should be large chunks of items of similar nature.
Identify the items/guidelines within each area, which are needed to be understood to reach the ultimate goal of the onboarding.
- It is an excellent practice to add links to documentation and resources per each item to provide a compact set of guidelines in one place for a person to absorb.
Define and describe practical tasks. Only the practical tasks verify whether the theoretical knowledge received is sufficient towards meeting the ultimate goal of the onboarding.
- The practical tasks ensure the tacit knowledge goes hand in hand with explicit knowledge. If anything is missing within the onboarding that could prevent fulfilling a real-life assignment, the practical tasks help us to identify it.
By having the onboarding visualized, you enable the team to inspect it. You avoid updates like “Today, I will continue with onboarding.” as it is not enough anymore. From now on, the team can focus on the exact parts of onboarding and track progress against them.
⚠️ LOS IMPORTANTES ⚠️
Only the person who receives knowledge is allowed to check the items/tasks as completed. By any circumstances, no one else can do it.
Once a person checks a particular part as completed, the person accepts the full responsibility for its scope. This approach increases the motivation of an individual who is being on-boarded to have a 100% clear understanding of every item/task listed and to demand the knowledge to be received with no compromises actively.
Update the onboarding, continuously
Once you have the onboarding visualized, make it a “living document”, visible and accessible to all at any time.
If your team establishes a new process, tool, or new technology, extend the scope of onboarding by this new knowledge and incorporate it. Make it the team’s hygiene to keep the onboarding up-to-date.
The benefits of this concept are:
- The team and the whole organization are more resilient towards changes in the group.
- In time, the team spends significantly less time on the onboarding of the new team members, allowing the team to keep the focus on their regular assignments.
- By maintaining the knowledge foundation in one place and updating it continuously, we mitigate the risk of losing a particular knowledge. The amount of “lost knowledge” is decreased.
Key takeaways
Define the ultimate goal of the onboarding (best if done together with the team) and make sure everyone understands it.
Shift the responsibility for the successful onboarding to the team itself, as it is their best interest to have teammates they can rely on.
Visualize the onboarding and have the team inspect the progress daily.
Institutionalize a common practice to keep the onboarding up-to-date to limit the loss of knowledge throughout time.
We are ACTUM Digital and this piece was written by Martin Dušek, Director of Apollo Division. Feel free to get in touch.
