Best Practices for Effective Executive Onboarding

So, after three rounds of interviews, salary negotiation and multiple internal conversations, a senior executive is finally hired. Your team is hoping that the new individual will hit the ground running so does the newly hired employee. The expectations weren’t met even though the hiring team was confident in their choice. What went wrong? According to HBR, 60% reported that it takes them six months to have full control and impact of their new roles.

Get into gears, it’s time for a different approach. This is because the method of executive onboarding is old school. The new approach will help in the efficient and effective process of onboarding. So, in this blog, we’ll discuss the reasons behind why new executives fail early on, why executive onboarding is essential, and the best practices for it. Furthermore, we’ll see how executive Onboarding with On-demand videos can be made efficient via VIDIZMO.

New Executive Failures

There are few reasons that contribute to new executive failure. According to Corporate Leadership Council, new executives generally are not effective because;

They are unable to create a cultural fit.
They are unable to bridge the gap between employees.
Unclear about the goals.
Organizations don’t have a strategic process to accommodate executives into the organization.

The most successful organization understands these reasons that they invest valuable time and money in the resource, so they want the executive to succeed rather than spending those same resources on lost productivity and turnover.

Why is Executive Onboarding Essential?

As of now, you may have a bit of an idea why executive onboarding can be is essential. We’ll explain more! It’s all about the sink or swim approach. Often the onboarding process for senior level executives doesn’t have a structured approach. Consequently, it affects new executives and the valuable time they’ll need to start performing.

Fast and effective onboarding programs speed up the process, builds strong relationships among employees and increase productivity. A well-informed onboarding process can give a head start and adapt well for the goals. The learning process can be done side by side and can reduce the time it takes for an executive to reach their full potential.

According to research indicates onboarding executives is more critical because they face significantly greater performance expectations and have a much greater impact on the organization's overall performance. What the company requires are executive onboarding best practices.

Executive Onboarding Best Practices

1. Be Transparent

It is less likely that you are tempted to hide the faults in your organization but being clear and transparent here is the key. If the new executive doesn’t know the lack thereof from the start, they may make poor and costly decisions. Somehow the truth comes out, immediately when the employee signs up the contract, which might scare him away. Be honest about the organization and the goals to ultimately save time, money and reputation.

2. Corporate Culture Experiences

Corporate culture determines the beliefs and behaviors of a company’s employees and management interactions. Just telling about the experiences is not enough. You have to show your values in action, such as town halls, award celebrations, seminars, team meetings, etc., to immerse the new executive in your corporate culture. Recording these events and showing them to the new employees gives them insights from day one.

3. Processes and Policies

Every employee needs to be informed of the processes and policies so that they can make informed decisions while managing the changes in the organization. You can have interactive walk-through presentations of personnel management policies, safety compliances, legal and regulatory policies, financial and accounting information etc., rather than reading long documents. This will help them absorb new information in a short period.

4. Introduction with New Colleagues

Introduce them even before their first day. Call them in for formal lunches or a coffee date so that they can get familiar with other employees. Or, to save time, you can schedule an informal team meeting where everyone gets to know each other. The executive onboarding that takes hours otherwise will take a short time.

5. Knowledge From the Previous Executive

Recorded meetings/interviews of the departure executive can help preserve knowledge for the upcoming executive. They can further preserve or document the plans for the incoming leader to align their goals accordingly. L&D teams can lay out smooth processes for the transition and onboarding process.

Efficient Way? VIDIZMO for Executive Onboarding with On-demand Videos

Why have awfully long documents which the executive itself will skim through? Why not use videos + a video training platform?

Video is a powerful tool, and organizations that understand its importance are leveraging it. Be it for day-to-day meetings or executive onboarding; video is everywhere. Videos of training or onboarding processes can be uploaded in VIDIZMO to stream as video on-demand. You can enable automatic transcription and translation in multiple language. To make the video engaging, you can add quizzes and surveys with the help of interactivity features. Arrange all the videos for executive onboarding, such as security compliance and other procedures/policies via playlist, categories and collection in a YouTube-like video content library.

On-demand videos summarize information from long documents. Furthermore, on-demand videos can help new executives with information even before their joining. Using the right platform for onboarding can be critical. Thankfully, VIDIZMO is here to save the day enabling L&D teams to securely stream, manage, and share videos for executive onboarding in one searchable video content library.