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Onboarding New Hires at VSP
November 06, 2007
By Sarah Boehle
In a quest to make new hires more productive—sooner—and to enhance job satisfaction during their first year on the job, Vision Service Plan (VSP) in Rancho Cordova, Calif., revamped its half-day new-hire orientation program in July 2006 to create a two-day "Onboarding Program" that features a comprehensive approach to integrating new team members into the organization.
The program begins with an e-mail welcome package that outlines the terms of the new hire's offer of employment and includes a PowerPoint presentation about VSP's business, goals and culture.
Upon starting their new job, employees are welcomed with a brushed chrome VSP-logo'd photo frame (a symbol of the bridge VSP aims to span between work and the rest of life) before attending two days of orientation, which are kicked off with a greeting from the CEO and are hosted by a variety of presenters from HR, training, sales, marketing, and payroll and benefits.
During orientation, all new hires also have an opportunity to sit with one of VSP's customer-service representatives and listen to the live calls coming into the company's call center. A campus tour highlighting facility amenities such as full-service cafes, ATMs, personal mail services, a game room, basketball court, and a putting green also is included.
Training recently spoke with Shauna Harrington, director of workforce development at VSP, about the Onboarding Program and what makes it work:
Training: What improvements or changes have you made to the program since it launched in 2006?
Harrington:
• We have always tried to make a practice of having a VP, the COO or the CEO make a personal appearance during orientation and welcome new hires to the company. Whether an executive did so, however, used to depend on availability. Now, we have formalized these appearances; they're a required element of the program.
• We added a career development component where we introduce new hires to our training curriculum and educate them about how to develop themselves during their tenure at VSP.
• We now invite members of our sales and marketing staff in to talk about their business and the competitive landscape of our industry. This adds a lot of value. It is one thing to understand VSP, but it's also important for everyone to know who our competitors are, what the marketplace as a whole looks like, and what our customers value.
• Every new hire is now required to visit the call center for a half hour to sit in on calls and listen to our reps while they assist customers. This activity is enormously helpful in connecting the entire employee base with our call center and helping everyone to understand what our employees there do. It also has helped our call-center personnel to feel appreciated. The process shows people what their job is like and illustrates how important their role is as the "eyes and ears" of our company.
• We developed a new-hire checklist that we now give to managers to assist them in onboarding new hires. The checklist contains questions such as, Did you have lunch with your new hire on the first day? Did you give him or her key accountabilities in the first week? Was the new hire introduced to everyone in your department? Was the new hire assigned a buddy?
Training: What results has the program delivered to date?
Harrington: In examining reasons for leaving, including "other employment," "quit without notice," and "other," we are seeing a significant decrease (25 percent, not including call-center employees) in voluntary terminations compared to the previous year (prior to the launch of our new Onboarding Program).
Training: What are some tips that you have for other training professionals interested in launching a similar program?
Harrington:
• Know what your business objectives and corporate values are—and ensure that they are incorporated into your program.
• Get support and input from the top prior to planning.
• This is not just "HR's" program; it's company-driven. Partner with the business areas and employees to help create content and present the information. This will ensure new hires are connected to the whole organization and know how their role fits in.
• Continually assess and improve the program based on participant and management feedback.
• Capturing the enthusiasm of a new hire when he or she first starts and keeping that momentum rolling is so critical to successful onboarding. For this to work, the managers and other employees play a key role in helping new hires feel a sense of connectivity to and engagement with the organization as a whole.
• Use a buddy system. Our Onboarding Program includes a buddy program through which managers match each new hire with a more experienced employee who can help the employee to "learn the ropes" at VSP and orient him or her to VSP's culture, processes and systems. The buddy also may share ideas on non-work-related topics such as restaurants that are close by, VSP sports leagues, etc. The relationship includes up to three months of informal "check-ins"—such as a quick phone call or e-mail, or even a lunch meeting, and it is designed to assist new employees with knowledge to ensure better productivity and performance effectiveness. The buddy may or may not be the direct job/task trainer.
• Follow up. After 90 days, new hires are invited to a one-on-one meeting with HR after providing input via a new-hire follow-up survey that is designed to gather feedback about the assimilation process. A few months later, new employees attend required training pertaining to the company's values (Walking the Talk), diversity/inclusion education (The Inclusion Workshop), and coaching/management philosophy (Situational Leadership).
Headquartered in Rancho Cordova, Calif., Vision Service Plan is the nation's largest provider of eye-care coverage. The company placed 102nd on Training magazine's 2007 Top 125 list, an annual ranking of organizations that excel at human capital development.
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