Social Onboarding

What is social onboarding? How would it work? Why should it be used?

Social onboarding is a method of engaging new employees with other employees throughout the organization and can be done in a number of ways from pre-employment, through a deliberately built onboarding plan and through unstructured interaction between employees.  

Social onboarding is something that I believe should be used because it goes well beyond the more logistical and compliance components of an onboarding process.  These components of onboarding are the easy ones to measure such as completion of formal new hire orientation and compliance courses, reviewing policies, signing a code of conduct, etc.  When thinking about a speed to proficiency in a new position, these formal pieces give little context about the new position and the work to be done.  These more logistical activities in fact, are more of a benefit to the employer rather than the employee in the sense of compliance risk reduction.  Additionally, these are largely solitary activities with little or no social interaction, thus negating much of the excitement and energy that current employees may be just waiting to share with their new colleague. 

Social onboarding can be done a number of ways including an interesting concept of engaging new employees prior to their first day. Two recommendations for doing this include: offering access to an online knowledge base where many FAQs can quickly be answered and additional less formal information about the organization can be found; and inviting the new employee into an internal social network if possible. 

There are many benefits of social onboarding where it is a win-win for the organization and the new employee.  Some of these include connecting new employees with resources, with colleagues, and with the actual behavior component of the organizational culture. Further, there are a number of statistics from various research reports about the cost savings and other benefits for the organization of retention of a new employee.  But retention is a two-way street, not just something that benefits the employer, an employee who stays at a job and is engaged, is also not going to be going through the disruptive and uncertain experience of job seeking, which may include financial uncertainty, stress and costs in both money and time during the application and interviewing for new positions.

In getting to an engaged and retained employee, the best way is though their work where most of their learning will occur and interaction with others occurs.  This leads to another area where social onboarding can be valuable is through a social recognition program where actual on the job actions and behaviors that model and spread examples that are consistent with the organizational culture. 

So social onboarding is more than just a series of steps to complete once an employee joins an organization, it is a series of interactions with both online and in-person social encounters.  This can occur as early as even prior to beginning their first day of employment and can continue indefinitely after joining an organization.  It can work with access to online social resources such as knowledge databases, internal and external social networks.  It can also be promoted through a recognition program where interaction and behavior that is conducive to the organizational culture is rewarded and championed.  And social onboarding should be used because it is both a path to job proficiency and a route to engagement.