Dive Brief:

• Balancing a newcomer’s need to learn the ropes and your desire to have him or her quickly produce is a challenge for any time-strapped boss, says an article at the Harvard Business Review.
• Managers must answer questions such as: What’s the best way to bring your new employee on board? Who do you enlist in the training? And how long should you expect it to take?

Dive Insight:

Experts in the HBR article cite several ways for better onboarding. For example, Dick Grote, performance management consultant and author of How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals, says it's important to be thoughtful and deliberate about their first few months. Put yourself in the new hire’s shoes. “You want to make sure that his first day is memorable in a positive way,” says Grote. 

And while orienting new hires to strategy or explaining rules by going over the employee manual or sharing compliance regulations, “...the focus should really be on culture and politics,” says Michael Watkins, author of the bestselling book, The First 90 Days, in the article. Watkins adds that effective onboarding starts during the recruiting and hiring phase—when you’re interviewing the potential hire and assessing fit.