Back in March, I wrote about my experiences chairing a double search committee. I ended that blog post with questions around onboarding and what happens after a hire is successful. I’m happy to report our two searches were successful and our new folks started this summer. Now that our new departmental colleagues are settled, I thought I would write a bit about how we approached onboarding and things I’ve learned in that process. 

What influenced our onboarding? 

My personal experience with onboarding and the department’s desire to successfully onboard our new colleagues really informed how we approached this work. 

My personal experience with onboarding: When I think about onboarding, I think about my first professional library job at Penn State. In this first role, I had two supervisors, who both did a great job onboarding me. My immediate supervisor created a schedule for my first six weeks and was intentional about setting up meetings with colleagues across the organization. My dotted line supervisor found a campus committee for me to join almost immediately, and that committee also had a project I could tackle right away. Even though this role eventually had me working Sunday to Thursday, from 1-10 PM, I was onboarded in a way where I felt really connected to a lot of different people. This experience informed and influenced how I think about onboarding new colleagues, especially now that I am in a department head role. 

Department’s desire to successfully onboard new colleagues: The department has known for a long time that we would be bringing on new colleagues in 2024. In January, as we developed our departmental goals for the year, we decided to have an onboarding specific goal. This meant everyone had a vested interest in creating this experience and we all wanted to ensure the people we brought onto the team would feel the sense of community we value in our unit (see my past post about the ways I appreciate the laughter on our team). It was really great to see the department come together around this and personally, it helped me to feel that this onboarding would be less daunting because I wouldn’t do it alone. 

How did we prepare to onboard?

As we did Zoom interviews and on-campus interviews with our finalists, I found that I got clarity on where these two roles needed to go, once a successful candidate was hired. I am so appreciative of all the questions our candidates asked, because it helped me think through some elements of the roles I hadn’t gotten to quite yet. Over the course of the interviews, I accumulated dozens of sticky notes with ideas and questions and potential projects. Once the hires were made and start dates were set, I could turn my focus to preparing onboarding materials. I ended up drafting four documents for each role:

• Drafted goals for the new employee to work on during their first six months (after which their annual performance review would occur and they would then draft their own goals for 2025)
• Scoped project work (connected to their drafted goals and job description) providing a series of big and small projects that would allow them to collaborate with department colleagues and learn more about the library and campus
• First day schedule where most meetings (such as getting their ID card, getting their computer setup, meeting with their supervisor, etc.) are set up by our library’s admin team to ensure consistency for all our new colleagues
• First four weeks schedule, which ended with a one-month check-in meeting with me as their supervisor

I shared these drafted documents with the department in May, right before we had a departmental “Mega Meeting” which focused on onboarding preparation. We met for most of the day (10 AM – 4 PM) and about three hours of this meeting was dedicated to onboarding discussions. Two goals helped to scope these conversations:

1. Determine how members of Education & Outreach Services will support the on-boarding of our two new departmental colleagues. 
2. Discuss the values and expectations we have for each other in the department.

In the Mega Meeting, the department had the opportunity to reflect on and share with the group their positive and negative onboarding experiences, provide feedback on the drafted goals and project work to ensure alignment across the department, and helped brainstorm the various meetings and connections we might want to facilitate for our incoming colleagues. We also did some collaborative work around co-creating expectations for the department, something we had discussed when I started three years ago but nothing we had formally documented or returned to. We talked about how it was important to make implicit things explicit in order to create an environment that was welcoming and accessible. By the end of the meeting, I had enough information and insight from the department to finalize our documentation. 

How did onboarding go?

I’m obviously biased, but I felt like onboarding was smooth. Because the department reviewed and provided feedback on the onboarding documentation, everyone knew the priorities for the new colleagues and how everyone played a role in supporting this process. It felt like we all had ownership in the work and we all cared about onboarding being successful. Our new colleagues could jump right in and I think they felt supported by the whole department.

As a supervisor, it was great to have drafted goals and scoped projects that I could immediately give our two new colleagues. Throughout their first month, we regularly checked in about their goals and projects, and adjusted as needed. I heard from both new colleagues that having this direction was beneficial because they knew where to focus their energies as they got settled. And the scoped project template was so useful, our library adopted it as a standard for onboarding colleagues!

What did I learn about onboarding?

As I reflect on this onboarding work, there are a few things I’m taking away from the whole experience:

• Involving the whole department in onboarding is a worthwhile endeavor. It allows you as a supervisor not to do it all alone and ensures that your team understands the priorities of the role. It was also a way for everyone on the team to find ways to collaborate with our new colleagues, which helped to bring them into the departmental fold. 
• Even if you think you’ve done enough to make the implicit explicit, there’s still more you can do! Joining a new organization (and new dictionary of acronyms) is daunting and as you onboard, you’re going to miss things. Having a department support onboarding means your new colleagues have lots of folks to go to and ask questions when they need that insight/translation/context.
• Onboarding is labor! As the department head, I spent many hours thinking about job descriptions, developing scoped projects, identifying role priorities, setting up introductory meetings, and reflecting on what success could look like in year one. Onboarding that is full of care and intention is not something you can whip up in a few hours. It takes time, reflection, and revision. It’s worthwhile labor but you have to account for it. 

I’m pleased that our new departmental colleagues are moving and grooving. I’m proud that our department made onboarding a goal and priority for the year and I’m happy that we could deliver on that goal. I would love to hear from you about onboarding practices you either experienced or do that show care and intention to bring someone into your organization!