Sowing the seeds of success
Having welcomed two new team members into the Juniper family this summer, we share our top tips for successful onboarding.
When things get busy, it can be easy for induction and training to fall down the priority order. However, it is so important that a good introduction to a new role doesn’t get de-prioritised. We've been very fortunate to be able to induct our two new team members over the summer, which is historically a quieter period for us. It has given us the luxury of having the time to step back and think about what we want the induction process to look like. And here are some of our findings…
Understand your why
For our Managing Director, Nicki Kavanagh, the key thing with new recruits is for them to understand the Juniper why – why are we here? After 30 years of managing people, she feels passionately that new team members need to understand how they make a difference. What it is about their contribution that is valuable to the business? What's unique about them? What makes them special?
The Juniper team is here to help individuals, teams and businesses be the best they can be, that's our vision. Early in the induction process, we talk a lot about that - what our recruits will bring to the business to help deliver the vision and how they can continue to add value. There’s very often an assumption that new team members will organically get to know about the business over time, perhaps through one-to-ones with key individuals in the team. However, we have found that ensuring new team members have a clear understanding from the outset of what we are trying to achieve, gives a much more positive experience for all.
Share your story
We find that giving new people a bit of insight into the history of the business provides them with context and is a great way to help answer the ‘why?’ At The Juniper Co. we’ve gone from being a learning and development company, to being a change and communications company, to being a strategy, change, learning and development company – we've continued to flex and grow according to the needs of the market and our clients. Discovering how we got to where we are today; what our business is all about and how it's evolved is extremely valuable for our inductees.
Get to know each other – including the more challenging bits!
We make it a priority to get to know each other as people, discussing the value that we all bring as individuals, each with our own unique experience and skills; as well as some shared skills, of course. We explore our shared love of communication and of good practice in planning, project management, and client engagement. We also learn about each other's personalities - our likes and dislikes, our personal preferences, what makes us tick, and how we tend to perform under pressure.
We find it beneficial to have these conversations early in our working relationship. Learning how someone wants to engage and what motivates them is a very valuable insight into how we can best work together; it's precious and worth prioritising.
We also talk about pressure quite a lot before we actually feel it - it helps us to understand each other and to prepare for how we might support one another in the moments when the pressure is on. We're all very good at being model citizens when we're not under pressure, but what about when we are? We take time to think about how we can play to our strengths but also how we can help each other when the going gets a bit tougher. We found it pays to be very open about that right from the outset.
Consider investing in DISC personality profiling
Every Juniper inductee completes a DISC personality profile as part of the selection process. They then review that with Nicki, quite early on. We like to show that it’s not just something done in the recruitment process, but that we're going to carry on talking about it and understanding it better. You receive a 12-page report when you complete your profile, so our team members are encouraged to keep going back to it and thinking about different elements of it. An early priority with new people is to spend some team time focusing on our profiles, helping us explore how we like to be managed, how we tend to behave under pressure, etc.
Keep your clients at heart
Once a new team member understands the culture of the business, is on board with our why, and has got to know their colleagues, we feel it is important to help them get immersed into the projects they are going to be working on. We have found that it is important to focus on the role in relation to the projects that our team members are going to be involved in. Therefore, our new recruits spend a lot of time looking at the history of the projects they are working on and the background of their clients. We have account plans for each of our key clients, which is a great place for our new team members to find this information.
Meeting the clients and spending some time getting to know them, is always an extremely important part of the induction process. We are very fortunate that both Hannah and Calvin have client projects and some key dates to look forward to very early on (or coming up soon) where they can physically meet their clients. Getting together in person is a brilliant motivator, particularly with international projects, and a great thing to put in the diary early on.
Utilise your tools
We encourage our recruits to start gaining experience with the tools that we use as soon as possible. To help them achieve this, we try to incorporate these tools into the induction process. For example, we build our induction plans in SessionLab (a recently launched learning and development platform). Getting on board with the tools we use as quickly as possible gives new recruits the best possible chance of understanding how to navigate them before they start work.
Go beyond the office
As well as our team time in the office, we also take the opportunity to spend time together as a team and get to know each other outside of work – evening drinks and a team lunch date were a great place to start with Calvin and Hannah. We all happen to have a passion for food, which is handy because we have spent time literally chewing the cud together!
The Juniper Co. is a people business, and we need to be able to demonstrate the very best practice in developing our own people, so that investment is key.
The last word from Nicki:
“We were in a luxurious position over the summer of being able to invest significant time in our induction process. Had we not been, however, I would still have put a lot of emphasis on induction and ensuring new team members have plenty of opportunity to ask questions, because you can't expect them to understand things that they haven't been able to engage with and discuss.
“Before you even get to the clients, the culture of our team is critical to our success. So, we need to spend time on that and with each other. Making that investment is very important to me.”
Photo by Rachel Reinhardt on Unsplash