people ops stuff
onboarding and crying 📎
Onboarding is a pretty critical period during the employee experience. As the candidate, you’ve dated around and, now, both of you (the employee/the employer) have decided to actually be partners. It’s a big deal! Expectations are high. Feelings are high.
Most of the onboarding process can be automated, but, your girl, definitely lagged on getting that started because I thought it would slow down a taaaaad bit and that it would be manageable at some point. Joke’s on me, I’ve been in the crosshairs of "some point” for about two years now.
Onboarding begins before the new hire starts. I have to:
Get them a laptop
Get them on BambooHR, our new HRIS that will streamline employee info because we have both international and stateside folks
Get them on Justworks for payroll
Get them their email (which is automated from our identity management platform) which then means getting them added to the right groups
Slack for all the slackin’ aka multiple channels
Discuss with their direct manager their onboarding project
Set up their onboarding doc and make copies of our product onboarding and new hire evaluations; also making sure product onboarding is up to date since we ship quickly!
Set up multiple onboarding sessions (at least 10 sessions)
1:1s with key stakeholders / exec team
Cry (jk, maybe depends on the day)
Set up their welcome meeting that covers all of the above
Set up check-ins to make sure they don’t want to quit the first week
Sometimes I have to do this at least 3-4x a month and that’s not including the other stuff that’s happening e.g. ongoing payroll, performance stuff, people management stuff.
“Sounds good” becomes my defacto response to confirm meetings, projects, access, and everything else. I learned from my colleagues that the “thumbs up” emoji is actually aggressively millennial or has a stern undertone. Lucky for me, there’s an emoji for everything and I have am now less aggressive in my millennial-ness.
I don’t actually cry through the process, but if I wanted to, I’d welcome it. It can be a lot and it is a lot, especially for a tiny team of one. How I stay organized-ish is a surprise to me as well.
In spite of all of it, as People Ops, how I show up to these calls and meetings matter. Can you imagine if the one person that’s supposed to be representative of the company acts as if they don’t want to be there? I’m a firm believer that how you treat your first ten is how you’ll treat the next 100, and 1,000. These first touch points are critical and can influence an entire employee’s experience for better or worse. So, let’s aim for better, yeah? 👍
therapy stuff
hinged therapist advice 🗒
If you’re being judgey about something or someone right now, consider if it’s a reflection of you that you’re judging 🤯