Prepare Onboarding with GitScrum and Retain Talents

Why Prepare Talents Onboarding

People are busy most of the time. When you hire newcomers, you ask your team to welcome them, talk to them and be available. That’s the right thing to do. The point is there is the need to ensure you hand your new team members all the vital information about your company. That would include knowing your company’s profile and values, guidelines and internal rules they must adapt to.

As the company’s demands won’t give a break, you better prepare your corporate Onboarding, which will work like a “survival kit” for all team members who are interested in belonging to the company. Of course, this doesn’t mean you won’t give them attention or talk to them. You will just do your part, handing valuable and accessible information, while they will do theirs, reading and learning. It’s a fair trade.

Important reasons for elaborating your Onboarding:

• Helping newcomers adapt;
• Teaching your company’s values;
• Compliance – communicating the company’s guidelines and internal rules;
• Training new collaborators about your work style.

How to Prepare Onboarding with Project Management on GitScrum

1. Analyze the Audience

To elaborate consistent instructions for all job positions, consider one by one. You can create separate guides per department or functions. One tip to select the priorital content is to use GitScrum User Stories, to check the specific needs of each function. User Stories are short reports written by a person (employee or client), with a summarized specific request. So, it’s good to keep an open channel with your employees to write User Stories and tell you the needs in their routine. These hints will be useful to improve work conditions and to elaborate workers Onboarding.

2. Content Plan

After studying your audience, the next step is to plan the Onboarding content. It comes first than choosing the presentation format. You can use visual management to help you. Build GitScrum Mind Mapping to draw the topics each department must learn.

This resource is useful both for your planning, and to create didactic graphics for presentations and eBooks. They help you demonstrate lists, your company organizational chart, services portfolio and knowledge expertise. Remember the human brain can read an image 60x faster than text, use mind mapping to teach your crew.

Make a complete map of all the important topics the newcomers must be informed about. Usually, the Onboarding training is not about teaching them about their profession, but about the specific expectations of your company about them.

Some of the usual topics (you can, and should, add your own):

• Welcome;
• Your company’s Mission and Values;
• The Company’s History and Brand;
• Relationship with Clients;
• Confidentiality Issues;
• Your working tools;
• Career Plans;
• Open Channels for Suggestions;
• Channels to Interact with Your Team.

3. Define Formats and Means

You can follow your company style. Some businesses are completely formal, others are quite informal. That’s something your new employees will notice right from the start. It’s recommendable that most of your communication pieces be aligned with the same style.

You can use your project management tool to publish your Onboarding content. You have a variety of format options and still can keep all material there, available for all team members to view them always than necessary. Take a look at all the possible content you can create:

• GitScrum Wiki Pages with texts, images and embedded Youtube videos;
• Tasks with file attachments, or URL links to external files on your Google Drive;
• Documents inside a Project – text documents, presentations, spreadsheets, eBooks.

To choose which format is the most appropriate, consider the previous aspects: the audience profile, the content extent and your company style. Consider mixing formats, mainly if you have a lot of information to teach. You can have a Welcome Guide and add inspirational videos. You can use third parties’ videos internally, if you don’t have your own, provided that you mention their source.

4. Produce Your Content

Once you know the audience, have the content list and decided the format, now you have to plan the production. You will need to assign the task to a team member. To ensure the production is concluded within given time, and allow others to contribute, you can create a Sprint. If necessary, split the task into smaller tasks and allow the task leader to share responsibilities.

5. Release the Content

After all the process you dedicated to preparing Onboarding, releasing it must be something special. Try to create a “receiving” moment for each newcomer. You can send them a personalized email, and then ask them if they received it. Let them know who will be available to talk about the content that was sent. Of course, they can search for anyone in the team, but if you can name someone specific, do so. Some people are shy and feel embarrassed to ask questions, thinking their doubts might be too silly. So, the idea is to come closer and make them comfortable to ask. Encourage them to use your GitScrum project management tool for all questions at any time.

6. Present the Content

You have the option of only delivering the content and requesting team members to study it. On the other hand, it is recommended that, you reinforce the study of the content with a presentation or review. If you run a videocall or a meeting to review the points you asked team members to read, you will have the chance to make sure they understood them. In this occasion, you can also present your daily working tools, like Gitscrum.

7. Promote Team Discussions

You can promote Discussions about the most relevant topics of the Onboarding, right after the Welcome week. Next, you can continue the habit of promoting discussions of relevant topics that will be important for the team evolution. The idea is promoting general learning, with special focus on the newcomers.

8. Reinforce the Content

Don’t feel frustrated if, a month after the training, people forget its content. Know that to fix it, it will be necessary to reinforce it more than once. Make it visual in some places. It’s not because people are bad, but many times they simply forget things and they were trained to do things different during a lifetime.

Some tips to recall the content:

• Promote a second review;
• Mention the Onboarding guides every week, and their location;
• Print the didactic Mind Maps to help team members memorize the content (or request them to do so, at home);
• Promote funny Quizzes once a month, via video call;
• Promote a semester review.

9. Update the Content

Once the basic instructions are created, most of the work is done. However, information is perishable, and the task leader must update it. Team members will be glad and proud to contribute and add suggestions. As a result, you will be able to make your training more practical and effective. It will be based on the team’s everyday needs and routine.

If you encourage the team to participate in relevant online congresses for your business, they will add even more value to the training. It’s important to oxygenate the company’s environment and absorb external references. Include updates and events in your GitScrum Calendar.

10. Promote Integration and Interactions

You already taught the content. Gave the guidelines. People are ready to work. Another important thing to build a champion team, is to promote integration and interactions among team members.

First of all, they must all know each other. Even if they work remotely, they should be presented, and meet each other. Use your GitScrum project management tool to display all your team members, establish content among them and ask them to interact. They can participate in Discussions, exchange messages, work and collaborate together, recall each other attention’s with task mentions.

People work better when they are comfortable to communicate, so show them all the possibilities they have to do so!