Chapter 6
Onboarding Employees in a Start-Up Company

Contributed By: Don Barkman, President of The Business Center

About the Author: Don Barkman worked for three Fortune 500 firms for 15 years and operated his own training and consulting business for more than 20 years. He has helped numerous clients design start-up organizations and trained their workforces to operate in highly participative team systems.

Don’s Contact Information:

The Business Center
www.bizcenter.com
120 Westview Lane
Oakridge, TN 37830
865-220-0774

Don is the author of “START-UP!, A Guide to Getting Off on the Right Foot” and “Skill-Based Pay: Design and Implementation.” Both books have proved to be invaluable guides to start-up organizations. He is a certified Scanlon Plan consultant and has been a speaker at national conventions for the Ecology of Work, ASTD, and so on. Don holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from Ohio University.

HOW IS ONBOARDING UNIQUE IN A START-UP ORGANIZATION?

Starting a new operation like a store, a restaurant, or a plant means bringing together many new people and orienting them to their new jobs. Some of these people may be internal transfers while many are external hires. While the internal transfers are already familiar with the organization’s existing culture and procedures, the new people don’t have a clue. However, if the start-up unit will be significantly different from the culture of the existing organization, then the internal transfers may need as much orientation as the new hires.

Start-ups are unique opportunities to do things differently. Expectations for success and “good things” run high across the board. Orientation needs to maintain this positive “can do” attitude, while tempering it with the reality that not everything will go as planned or hoped for. Orientation is as much about controlling psychological expectations as it is about acquainting people with how the organization works and what their responsibilities are. Traditional orientation techniques can be employed to convey information about the organization and each employee’s responsibilities, but it is the issue of expectation management that makes start-ups unique.

The entire leadership team from the human resources staff through the first-line leaders must understand and present the same picture of how the organization will operate. This is especially true if employees are promised the opportunity to participate in decision making as is often the case in team systems.

One great pitfall of orientation is for the human resources’ staff to present one version of participation to new hires only to have either a much more restrictive or more liberal description given by line managers when employees arrive at their work stations. Having line managers conduct orientation briefings about the “management system,” while human resources staff members assist, helps to keep the message consistent. Periodic random visits with employees on the job by top managers and human resources staff can check to see if mixed signals are being sent after initial orientation.

What makes a start-up organization so susceptible to expectation issues? It has to do with how well things go according to plan. We all know that “Murphy’s Law” pessimistically predicts “Things will go wrong at the worst possible moment.” Start-ups tend to believe in the optimistic opposite, Yphrum’s Law: “Everything that can go right will go right at exactly the right time.” According to this outlook:

There is a plan for everything and there are no surprises.

All the money needed is available to build everything the best way.

Only the newest and best tools and equipment are purchased.

Everyone who applies for work is fully qualified and eager to work.

All the equipment that is ordered arrives on time and works perfectly the first time.

No one misunderstands anything anyone says.

The wages, benefits, and working conditions are the best in the country.

All jobs are always interesting and never hard or boring.

All the training is interesting and useful and everyone remembers all of it.

No one displays irritating behaviors after they are hired.

Customers and other company groups never change their minds.

The economy chugs along positively—just as forecasted.

If you are lucky enough to have this type of start-up where everything is planned and all the plans come true, count your blessings. If, on the other hand, you suspect there’s a possibility the unexpected will happen, that communications will get messed up, or that reality may fall a bit short of the ideal, then you appreciate why careful orientation is essential for start-ups.

New hires usually recognize that “You never get a second chance to make a first impression!” Companies are in the same position. The impression created by the firm during orientation and throughout start-up lasts a long, long time.

Most new hires will give a new employer the benefit of the doubt at the beginning. In fact, they may be overly optimistic and expect they are being hired into the best of all organizations. Expectations that cannot be met need to be adjusted during the hiring process. Orientation actually begins prior to a job offer.

There are several ways to incorporate aspects of orientation into the hiring process:

Describe the expected organization culture during the interview process. This is particularly important if the culture is very different from what employees were accustomed to in their previous jobs.

Give applicants an opportunity to visit the job site and perhaps perform a sample of the job duties they will perform (sometimes called a “realistic job preview”).

Show a video of the working conditions and job duties from a similar operation.

Show a video of interviews with company employees working in a similar culture and operation describing what it is like from an employee’s viewpoint.

Provide written materials for prospective hires to read, and question them about the material in later interviews.

Provide a time for potential hires to ask questions about the culture and job duties.

MANAGING EXPECTATIONS IN A START-UP ENVIRONMENT

Because start-ups are often fast-paced, there are loose ends and incomplete plans that will be resolved as the start-up progresses. Leaders must be very cautious not to overextend their explanations and “promise” things that have not been decided. Pay scales, advancement ladders, and work schedules are especially sensitive items.

Here is a true story to illustrate this point of the importance of managing expectations of new employees in a start-up environment:

A human resources staff member was responsible for part of pre-employment orientation. He had the job of explaining to new hires what the new company intended to do with its participative management programs. He was an honest, well-intentioned person. He did his best to paint an accurate picture based on what he knew at the time.

During one orientation session, he compared his company’s innovative pay system to that of another local firm using a similar system. He intended to illustrate the features of the system, not the pay rates (the other company’s pay rates were much higher). What did people remember?

You guessed it—the pay rates, not the structure of the system. When the new company did not pay as much as the firm he used in the example, who got blamed for missed expectations about the pay program? He did, and by proxy, so did the new employer. The sender almost always takes the blame if the message doesn’t get across.

Most new hires come from companies that have been in business for more than a few years. Some are just out of school—but that school has been around for a while.

Those are “stable systems.” Stable systems have had the time to plan, try, change, and adjust how they operate. Eventually, most of the common problems have happened and people know what to do about them. Organizational life is more routine. Policies and procedures don’t change very often. Events are predictable. Maybe employees there didn’t like the way things were done, maybe they did, but at least they knew what to expect.

Start-ups are organizations that are in the process of being formed. Many systems and practices are only on the drawing board. They are concepts, ideas, plans. All the pieces may not be put together yet. Some of the pieces may be missing altogether. The company may be waiting for equipment to arrive and be installed. There may be a need to write policies on how to call in for illness, or to write training manuals on how to run and repair equipment. An Employee Handbook and Company intranet site may not be available or fully formed yet.

Because of the evolving nature of start-ups, orientation is a continuing process. Planning to check with employees all the way through the start-up and stabilization of the organization will help issues surface and enables you to manage them proactively. Orientation may begin with many explanations, but it progresses to a sensing and responding mode as things swing into action.

Start-up is tough because you are trying to do work when the systems for doing the work aren’t ready yet. Even simple decisions can take a long time while the organization figures out who should be involved, what should be considered, how the decision should be communicated. Nearly everything is a “first time” event.

After a while, a pattern develops and systems are created in the new organization. In the meantime, there’s the double workload of doing the work while systematizing the way it is to be done. Getting new hires to understand this aspect of start-up is part of onboarding. It is one of the major contributors to high levels of overtime prevalent in startups and usually affects the professional and leadership staff.

New employees join start-ups because they see the adventure and promise of a better life. Many are young and often inexperienced in the demands of the workaday world. Older workers may have a more tempered view. A few may be downright cynical but join anyway. Start-ups attract people just as the pioneers of early America were attracted to the West. Some sought opportunity, some had a vision of a new future, others were leaving behind a bad situation.

All employees bring along baggage from their previous employers. They may project that employer’s practices and behaviors onto your new organization. If they worked for good firms, they will expect good things. If they were mistreated, they may expect you to do the same. The lenses through which they view your actions will color their perceptions. What does each of your new employees bring to your start-up? You will need to address those experiences and perceptions during hiring and orientation.

In start-ups, expectations for good treatment, good work, good opportunity, good pay, and good security are all high. This is the “halo effect”—when a few things look good, everything looks good. “Young love” also has this same wonderful feeling to it.

Reality, however, has a way of disappointing people. Organizations can’t always live up to everyone’s great expectations. Onboarding must give employees a “realistic yardstick” instead of an “idealistic yardstick” for measuring success. It can also help to address the fact that different people have different expectations. Meeting one person’s expectation may mean not meeting someone else’s. For example, not everyone can get promoted to the same job.

Here is an example to illustrate that different employees (or groups of employees) have different needs and situations, causing a potential problem with expectations.

The first group of employees hired into a company was sent to Japan for extensive training. Traveling to a foreign country was both exciting and scary because some had never flown before. This first group got the inside track for future leadership positions because of their early selection and special training. Employees who came later had to wait much longer for the opportunities that were available to the first group. On the other hand, the first group had to cope with much more uncertainty regarding who would be doing what.

Sometimes companies can’t deliver on the expectations they knowingly or unknowingly created. When people are first hired to start up new organizations, some details aren’t completely finalized. What gets presented to new employees is what the company and its managers intend to happen. Unfortunately, the best plans sometimes don’t materialize. Sometimes they get delayed—what was supposed to happen in one year takes three.

Is that somebody’s fault? Did people lie about the plans? No, not really, but it can be perceived that way. Things don’t always happen the way we want them to. Patience and charity help to make some of these developments easier to handle. Nurturing these virtues during orientation can prove beneficial.

People who don’t like change may not adapt well to start-ups. They may have picked the right company, but at the wrong time. Start-ups are full of changes (and changes, and more changes …). Some of these changes people will like, some they may not. Some they may have influence over, some they may not.

Start-ups often include a lot of experimentation. Something is tried and checked. It may be modified. The new way may be abandoned and the original way readopted. Employers need to help employees think about how they will respond to changes. People who want simple, black and white answers, or a lot of rules, will find start-ups frustrating. Orientation can’t cure this problem, but selective hiring may prevent it.

Professionals who study start-ups describe an unavoidable “let down” sometime after the start-up gets up and running. This post–start-up dip is like the postpartum depression some mothers experience after delivering a newborn. Routine replaces discovery. The small “family” atmosphere present when there are fewer people and everyone knows everyone drifts away as the organization grows. Don’t be surprised if it happens to your new organization. Orienting new hires to the start-up environment is replaced by a follow-on orientation to regular operating mode.

There’s an excitement in joining and working in a start-up organization. There’s more challenge in a start-up than at almost any other time in an organization’s life. Enjoy it while it lasts. Plan your orientation to help employees “go with the flow,” and sailing through both the advantages and challenges associated with a start-up organization will be much easier for everyone, resulting in increased employee retention, productivity, and engagement.