Being properly onboarded to a job is crucial when it comes to success on the job. I have had my fair share of onboarding experiences with multiple jobs. Some were great, others were not and it really showed in my work. Through my job experience, I have also been fortune to take classes about team management that I have been able to apply to my everyday work.
Managing individual and Team performance, was the name of one of my favorite class. This class was extremely informational, and it was the kind of information that you could apply to your work and personal life. To me the highlight of the class was learning about motivational theories. I found it extremely useful learning about the different ways people are motivated because through this, you can learn how to better manage these individuals in a way that works best for the employee. Not only was this beneficial information from an assistant manager position, but it has helped me understand my coworkers in other jobs. This makes teamwork more seamless!
As for an experience that was not as beneficial, was the onboarding experience for a local public pool. I joined the lifeguard team for this pool and my onboarding process included mostly videos on the facility and what to do incase of an emergency. When it came to understanding my duties off the lifeguard stand, such as laundry and what to do in the office, it was very minimal and I had to learn “on the go”. This lead to frustration and I felt like I was not doing a good enough job. I was being coached by fellow lifeguards and had minimal to no interaction with managers. It was quite the adjustment to be interviewed by the manager and dropped into the deep end after completing my informational videos with no additional guidance from the individual that hired me. As an article from this week would say “It is important to encourage managers to check in with new employees and make time to offer support”(Ellis). I think this would have made my onboarding experience much smoother and comforting knowing that the manager was there to support me.
Citation:
Ellis, A., Nifadkar, S., Bauer, T., and Erdogan, B. (2017). Your New Hires Won’t Succeed Unless You Onboard Them Properly
Links to an external site., Harvard Business Review Digital Articles