Speaker 1: Hey, Chandler Bolt here, and in this video, I want to talk about how to onboard your employees successfully and how to create an onboarding checklist. So you spent the time, you've went through so many applicants, you've done so many interviews. Maybe this was weeks, this was months. You filtered all these people, you did all these interviews, and finally you've got that A player hired. Maybe you checked out my A player hiring process video. If you haven't definitely check that out. That's the video before this video. And that's how you hire A players, but let's assume that you've got an A player and now you're to the point where, hey, we're getting started. What next? Well, now it's onboarding. And this is a part where I just see so many companies, it's just the wheels fall off. It's like, you know, you're great. Here's the login. Let's do this. Right. And you just say, hey, because usually by the time you've hired for this person, you needed them to start working weeks ago. Like you're bursting at the seams. You don't have the time to hire them much less the time to train them. What I would urge you in what I'm going to lay out in this video is how to have a system for this. Now, this is going to be a lot of heavy upfront work once if you don't have it created. But then every time you onboard someone into your company, this is how to do it successfully. It's how to do it repeatedly. It's how to remove yourself from the process so that you can predictably bring people up to speed in less time. So I'm talking as little as a week or two weeks, or maybe even 30 days, depending on how big the position is. You can get people up to speed really quickly by following this process. Now, good onboarding starts with two things, some intentionality and a checklist. And I can't stress both of those things enough. So you need to be super intentional about this process. That's what I'm going to lay out in this video. But also you need to create a checklist for folks to follow. So if you don't currently have a checklist, create a rough draft based on this video, run your next employee through that. And then with each employee that you onboard, keep adding to and improving this checklist, this process. This is something that I think this is one of the things that we do best outside of hiring is our onboarding checklist. It's really, really, really good, but we always edit, add. I mean, every time we bring a new employee through the process, a part of the process is them giving feedback and then we make it better. But then we also pick up things as part of the process. And as the company grows, there's always going to be things that need to be changed. So let's start with the five keys to successfully onboarding someone. Then I'm going to walk you through kind of the six step process. And then lastly, I'm going to share some kind of more advanced tips and tricks that we've learned along the way. So these five keys are really the North Star, the things that you need to be thinking about as you take people through the process. Number one, teach and reinforce the core values. You need to go through the core values. A lot of times at self-publishing school, we have people print out the core values, hang them up in their workspace. I've recorded videos on this channel about our core values. So we have them watch that playlist. And then also we talk through those with new employees. So you're teaching and you're reinforcing the core values. So this is kind of a code of conduct for how we do business. Number two, we're helping them get clear and get a clear line of sight on their goals and the goals of the company. So this is kind of two parts. So we'll review what we call the one page strategic plan. This is from Scaling Up. It's kind of our strategy or execution document. So it's here are the goals for the year. Here are the goals for the quarter. Here are the goals for the month. And then we'll review their job scorecard with them and their KPIs so they have a clear line of sight. So they know exactly what success looks like in the first 30 days and the first 90 days. And here's how that relates to the company goals. Number three, your goal is to get them a baseline knowledge and skills to be able to operate in their role ASAP. Okay. So there's a lot of different components to this. But the way that we do this is we have them go through the products. So go through all the products that we have. We have them go through our entire playbook, which can be pretty tedious, but it's going through, hey, what are our decision making guidelines? What are our product offerings? What are, you know, all the links you might need, like all those things. They're going through our playbooks. And then lastly, they're going through key training videos. Now, the goal here is within two weeks, they're able to do at least 50 to 75% of their role. Within the first 30 days, they're able to do at least 70, 80, maybe 85% of their role. And then you can train and develop after that. Number four, set expectations and challenge people to perform. This is so important. As you're reviewing everything, hey, you're going to set expectations. This is what success looks like in the first 30 days, in the first 90 days, but also you're going to want to challenge people. So I'm really challenging people to give their best. And so sometimes that means, you know, for me personally, my personal philosophy is I'd like to open up the hose and find out how much they can take. And so it's like, hey, this is like kind of the baseline for this person's workload before they get overwhelmed. And then I can recalibrate from there. I do not want people in the first week, two weeks, four weeks to be kind of sitting on their hands with nothing to do. I'd rather they have way too much to do than not enough. Now you're setting expectations here. So I'd rather be tough on people in the first 30 days, the first 90 days than lax and let things slide. So I really want to challenge people and set expectations as to what best does the standard looks like in their first 30 days. And the fifth key is to hold people accountable and make micro-corrections along the way. Now, I know this probably sounds like exactly what I was just talking about in the previous point, but it's so important that I'm kind of saying it twice, but saying it in a different way. And that's that you need to hold people accountable and you need to make micro-corrections. So if someone shows up late for a meeting at self-publishing school, like we just don't do that. If they miss a huddle, we do not do that. And so they might be two minutes late for a one-on-one or two minutes late for a daily huddle. And we say, hey, this is not how we roll. Like we show up early to meetings. Don't let it happen again. Like we're making micro-corrections, hey, you could improve here. Hey, why don't you tighten up your goals here? Oh, hey, you can make this little edit here, but I'd rather give too much feedback in the first 30 days than not enough. So we're making micro-corrections and giving feedback as much as possible in the first 30 days. Now let me walk you through the basic six step process we walk people through as part of their onboarding. So as you'll see here, step number one is the pre-onboarding checklist. So these are all the things that we need to do before someone's first day or really kind of as they're starting to get onboarded. The number two, we've got the urgent thing. So this is really their first day. So we have their first day is a bunch of docs, it's logistics, it's non-compete, non-solicitation, all that stuff. It's the employee handbook, it's signing all of these things and kind of the basics that they need to do to have the right tech, the right logins, last pass, all those things. And then you roll into their primary tasks. So this is really their first week on the job. So we're getting super clear like, hey, in this order, you can see there's moderate, there's most important, there's low importance. So we're helping them prioritize like, hey, here are the most important things for week one. But even within that, like, here is what's more important than the other stuff. And so they can prioritize and execute accordingly. And then as we keep going, we've got the secondary, that's more of their second week, then we've got initial training. So this is where you can really add stuff specific to the training that person needs. And then at the end, we've got the gradual training. So this is stuff that, you know, maybe over the first full 30 days or 90 days, like here are the books that we want them to read, here are the trainings that we want them to go through, and all those things so that they can be set up for success, and kind of more big picture training to know the SPS way. So now that you've got the five keys, and you've got the six step process, and kind of that you've seen the onboarding checklist and all that, let's go into some tips and tricks. And this is a little bit more advanced. So the first thing that we do is we've started to divide our company onboarding checklist from our role specific checklist, okay? So then you're going to build out this is kind of the broad company specific onboarding checklist. So you've got all the things that no matter who you are, what department that you're in, what position you're in, you need to do all these things. And then you have role specific onboarding. So this just kind of takes it to the next level. So maybe it's sales specific onboarding, maybe it's customer success, specific onboarding, maybe it's leadership specific onboarding. So there's different things that we're going to want to teach and train and have people go through from a leadership perspective. So then you really start to build out those role specific onboarding checklists. Another thing we've done is pair people up with what we call an advocate. So obviously, you know, the people who are going to be highly connected and in this process is the manager. So, you know, you got the new hire, then you got the manager that they're reporting to, you got me as a CEO, I'm in there, but not super involved. And then you've got my assistant who is really involved. She's helping them with all the logistics, she's meeting with them daily, kind of all those things. But outside of that, we want them to have someone on the team who's in their corner. So we'll pick an advocate. And a lot of times this is strategic. So maybe if it's someone in customer success, we might want to pick a coach who's an advocate because we want student success and coaches to be talking more often. Or maybe if it's in sales, we might have an SDR or someone in marketing, or maybe our best sales rep is now their advocate. And so they're teaching them. They're kind of there for any spillover questions or any like, hey, I kind of don't feel comfortable asking this maybe, or I want to get your opinion or just someone in their corner who's looking out for them, who's encouraging them, who's saying, hey, anything else that you need. So we just want to make sure that people feel supported. They feel encouraged and that they've got a lot of people in their corner when they get started. And the advocate, kind of that process is a really great way to do that. Another thing that we've done that works really well to get people up to speed quickly is having daily town halls. So this is really, you know, kind of a 30 minute daily standing meeting. And the kind of thing here is you've got the person who's the head of onboarding, who's my assistant, you've got their manager, and then you've got the new hire. So now all of a sudden, and if you're hiring multiple people at once, you can batch this. That's amazing. We'll meet daily or they'll meet daily and they'll go through the person's onboarding checklist and answer any questions that person has. And I know this probably sounds extreme, but especially if you're running a virtual company, this is super, super, super important because that's a daily touch point just to get questions answered, get help, clear the path, help them recalibrate, give feedback, like all those things that daily touch point goes a long way to getting people up to speed much faster. Another thing I'm going to recommend here is to over communicate via town halls and also through the dedicated onboarding Slack channel. So we use Slack for internal company communication. And what we'll do is any time we have one person or a batch of people who are going through onboarding, we have an onboarding specific Slack channel. So that person knows, hey, this is a safe space. I can ask any questions. We can post updates like I as a CEO can jump in and say, hey, new hire, how's it going? Anything I can help with? How are you tracking with your onboarding? How's your week been like? How's your first day? We can come in and support that person and over communicate with that person via town halls, yes, but also via the dedicated Slack channel. Now the last couple of things I want to recommend here is to slow down to speed up. And it's kind of the overarching theme within all of this is, like I said, at the beginning of this video, you need to be intentional and you need to have a checklist. So a lot of this means you're going to be spending more time on this the first time that you do it. And sometimes with each employee, it's like, hey, you might be spending more time than you currently are. But the result is you're getting people up to speed just so much faster. You know, I have comments all the time from people who joined self-publishing school and they're like, oh my gosh, it was a lot. Yes. Like it was tedious and it was long days and there was a lot of pressure and like I was moving through a lot of things. But I'm two weeks in. I feel like I've got the hang of this whole thing, right? And they're already ready to go versus I know that a lot of companies, it takes three months, six months. You still haven't got access to everything you need. You still haven't learned things. You're still not quite sure how things work. So slow down to speed up and I promise your employees will perform better and they'll get up to speed faster. Now, the last thing that I want to recommend is to have your assistant involved. This is huge and super important, and I've got a separate video on why you should hire an assistant if you don't have one, I think is one of the most important hires that you can make in your business. But an assistant can come in handy here with onboarding and in a huge way. So my assistant is a huge part of the onboarding. So now let's say if it takes 20, 30, 40 hours of someone on your team's manpower to successfully onboard someone, well, what if you could have 50, 60, maybe even 75% of that time be done by your assistant instead of you or instead of the leaders on your team? Well, now all of a sudden, if we're hiring and onboarding something, it's not this stop everything. I can't get anything done. I got to focus all my attention on a new person, but my assistant is able to help with that. It speeds up the onboarding process. It saves people time and it helps your highest leveraged people on the team stay focused on what's truly moving the needle. So there you have it. There's how to successfully onboard someone onto your team and how to create an onboarding checklist. I hope that you found this helpful. I'd love to hear your comments below in the chat. So comment below. Let me know what were your biggest takeaways from this video. Did you like the onboarding checklist? Utilize this right now. Don't wait. Create an onboarding checklist for you, for your business, and try it out with a new hire. Let me know how it works. So comment below. Let me know your takeaways. Seriously, take two minutes right now. I'd love to hear your thoughts. I read and respond to every single comment. So comment below. As always, click the like button on this video as well. And then lastly, the grand finale, click that subscribe button to the channel, to the podcast. Thank you so much. And I'll see you in the next video. Bye.