Strategic Onboarding

But when onboarding goes well, it’s just as obvious. New hires feel confident, engaged, and eager to make a positive contribution. They gain traction faster, ask better questions, and build stronger connections with their peers. Their energy spreads to others, creating a positive outcome for everyone.

The benefits extend beyond the employee and the team. Effective onboarding helps managers build culture, retain talent, and improve performance. To realize those benefits, managers must invest in the structure and support that reflects the long-term value of a successful hire. That requires a framework that provides structure, guides progress, and adapts as the organization grows.

A Roadmap for Strategic Onboarding

Onboarding is often defined as the initial process of getting a new employee set up and oriented to their role and the organization. That works for getting someone started, but to be a strategic advantage for the organization, onboarding must be a longer-term process that helps new employees become confident, connected, and productive contributors.

To get there, the new hire needs a roadmap they can follow. In my management methodology, I use the acronym RISERS to outline four areas that must be covered during onboarding. Those four areas are

• Relationships and Influence
• Skills and Experience
• Results
• Systems

Following is a description of each domain with generic examples. A manager can use this structure or develop their own to provide a guide for the new hire to follow.

It isn’t necessary to create a completed document ready for a welcome pack. Starting with a rough outline using the RISERS model will help guide development. As more new hires go through onboarding and use the roadmap, it will become more robust and comprehensive.

Relationships and Influence

This refers to the people and departments the new hire must build relationships with, along with what those relationships look like. It also includes areas where the new hire will need to exert influence without authority.

• Supervisor: Regular communication, candid feedback loops.
• Peers: Supportive, collaborative, proactive outreach.
• Other staff: Identify three project managers to meet with and learn how they assign work.
• Influence: Advocate to project managers for a desired role. Make a case to the project team to change task priorities.

Skills and Experience

These are the skills the new hire needs to build over the next six to twelve months and the experiences that will help them gain confidence in their role.

• Time management: Learn to self-manage and prioritize effectively.
• Communication: Proactive communication with team members. Provide clear, concise status updates during team meetings.
• Experience: Join a client intake call or shadow a peer during a client delivery.

Results

Specify how success will be measured during this period.

• Activity-based: Complete weekly timesheets, attend all check-ins, log onboarding milestones.
• Behavior-based: Follow established procedures, accept feedback, contribute in meetings.
• Outcome-based: Meet early project deadlines, complete a deliverable with minimal corrections.

Systems

Identify the systems the new hire must learn, and to what level. Include tools, processes, and organizational workflows.

• Customer database (or customer relationship management platform): Accurately enter contact notes after every client meeting.
• Timekeeping: Submit weekly reports independently.
• Ticketing system: Open, update, and close tickets with appropriate documentation.

Managers can use these four areas to list all the elements that take a new employee from day one to being a productive member of the team.

Which brings us to how to use this roadmap.

How Managers Use the Roadmap

Think back to when you started a new job. At first, everything felt overwhelming, but then a few things clicked, and you thought, “I can do this.” Over time, you cycled between bursts of growth and periods of settling in until one day you realized, “I’m starting to get pretty good at this.”

Most people develop in fits and starts. They struggle at first, but once something clicks, it unlocks insights that accelerate growth. To accommodate that kind of learning, onboarding must be an ongoing collaboration, with shared responsibility between the manager and the employee.

The roadmap facilitates this relationship by capturing feedback from the new hire and helping the manager tailor support and coaching. The new hire can express where they want to go next, and the manager can help focus their development efforts.

It also becomes a tool for tracking progress. The employee can use the structure to record updates and check off milestones. This provides the manager with a clear picture so that they can accelerate high performers or offer targeted support when someone is struggling, whether it’s with time management, systems, building relationships, or something else.

While this approach requires investment, it doesn’t all fall on the manager’s shoulders. A structured onboarding program allows more people to participate in the process. If a team member is a whiz at the ticketing system, they can be the go-to resource for that system. If another teammate excels at client communication, they can help coach that skill. This builds trust, strengthens team culture, and lightens the manager’s load.

However, managers are still responsible for addressing performance concerns. Without clear expectations, it’s easy to delay action and hope things improve. Those lingering issues frustrate the team and undermine productivity and culture. A structured approach gives managers the clarity and confidence to step in without delay.

And if it turns out the role isn’t the right fit, they can address that too. Letting an employee go is never easy, but it’s better for everyone if it happens early. The employee can move on with dignity, and the company can find someone who’s a better fit.

Launch New Hires to Long-term Success

We’ve all been on that plane: ready to go, buckled in, and stuck on the tarmac. Everything appears set but nothing’s moving, and everyone from the pilot to the crew to the passengers is frustrated.

The same thing happens when new hires check every box on day one but then never become independently productive. It isn’t for a lack of effort. They need a better runway, which means expanding onboarding to be a strategic process designed to build confidence, accelerate contribution, and cultivate culture.

Developing a strategic onboarding process doesn’t just help your next hire succeed; it’ll make you a better manager, strengthen your team, and shape the culture you’re trying to build.

That’s how you get new employees off the tarmac and into the air.