On-boarding as a Consultant

This post was written by Jacob McNulty

Orbital RPM began a consulting project in mid-December.  We have been hired to lead the Change Management and Communications aspect for a Fortune 500 company that will be outsourcing all of its IT services to an outside vendor for a seven-year contract. 

We were pulled in to the project at the last possible minute.  Most of the people on the transition team have been working together for months or years.  People are spread as far as Ghana, Peru, Australia, Indonesia and throughout the United States. 

One of the areas where Orbital RPM offers consulting is on the rapid on-boarding or integration of new-hires so when we started this project last month, my wife (who sells consulting services) and I had a conversation around the on-boarding of consultants. 

Consultants often are engaged in a project for less time than it takes many new-hires to become completely integrated into their new company.  Given that, how can companies quickly integrate consultants that they’re paying top dollar so that they can be productive immediately?  I reflected on this as we were integrated into this project…

At Orbital RPM we have based our New-hire Integration solution on research.  Some of that research came from MIT Sloan School of Management who did a study on the rapid on-boarding of new-hires.  Their results talk about two different approaches to on-boarding a new-hire:

• Informational: making sure a new employee has the knowledge they need
• Relational: making sure a new employee knows who to go to with questions

Most companies favor the informational approach - think training videos, binders, paperwork and how to fill out expense reports all on Day One.  Research shows that, if you had to pick one, the relational approach is much more effective.  Establishing relationships early-on gives people a network they can come back to with questions when they can’t remember a detail from the deluge of information they received on their first day.

It’s been awhile since I’ve been a new-hire so this project was an opportunity to put myself in the shoes of one.  On my first day two main things happened:

1. I was walked around the office building and introduced to other people that I would be interacting with on the project as well as introduced on conference calls with all of the countries listed above
2. I was given Zip files and countless Power Point presentations with all of the information on the outsourcing project that anyone would ever want to know

You can probably see where I’m going with this…which of the two activities do you think has been more beneficial to me?  It was the introductions to people that I’ve leveraged more.  Have the PowerPoints been useful?  Of course, but if I only had the relationships to go on, chances are I could’ve gotten each of those presentations given to me when I needed them just through asking the right person.

This is one of those great instances where the cheaper and simpler solution is the more effective one.  If you don’t have the resources or the budget for a fancy on-boarding process - whether for full-timers or for temporary help - make sure that newcomers know who to go to with questions.  Arrange a meal for others to get to know the new person, have them give a presentation about themselves, anything to get them integrated and comfortable with the people that they’ll need to turn to in the future for information.  Information that people simply can’t absorb all at once.

Tags: business training, change management, corporate training, development, learning, learning strategies, new employee orientation, new employee orientation program, new hire integration, new hire orientation, on boarding, onboarding, organizational learning, professional development, rapid on-boarding, workforce development