From your bottom line perspective, if an employee is sitting idle, every minute of that is an hourly rate they're getting paid that you are not utilizing for your business. So if you want to think about it as far as that, and if someone's getting paid $20 an hour and they sit there for eight hours, three of their first days, now that's hundreds of dollars that could be reinvested in your business.

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Welcome back to the show and welcome back to my regularly scheduled sinus issues. So apologies for sounding like I'm coming at you from inside of a fish tank.

All right, well, it is Sunday and we are going to talk about the situation you might find yourself in sometimes of help. I have a new team member starting tomorrow and I haven't thought about it. I don't have plan and I don't know what to do. We've all been there where we spend so much time on looking for candidates, on interviewing, on finalizing details.

Then we get busy because we have the person squared away and realize, oh my God, they're starting tomorrow and I don't have a plan. Okay. No shame. No shame on the podcast. And if you're finding yourself in this situation, first I wanted to set the stage of why onboarding is even important, because this is something I think we can overlook.

And then we have a new person starting and we're like, well, why should I have thought about it in advance? And I want to bring you back. A long time ago, my first job in tech, I moved by myself to another state up up the coast. My husband was still in school, so I got an apartment and I started a job. And on the first day I was so excited.

I got there early. I parked my car, I go inside and the admin assistant for the team walk me to my desk, and I sat down. It was about eight 30 and no one said a word to me. Until 4 45 when I was like, well, I guess this is my life now where I got up and left and I felt terrible. I said, why the hell did I move?

Why am I here? What am I doing? And it really, really tarnished the experience in this job. My manager apparently was in a offsite all day and didn't reach out at any point. I had no idea what I was supposed to be working on. No idea where to look for anything. You know how to even get started, use that time to ramp up.

The person just like didn't think about it. And what happens when we don't think about it is it tells an employee at the outset, I don't really have time for you. I'm not, I'm not excited that you're here. I, you're not a priority. And that's not how we wanna make our new employees feel. Because a lot of times, especially now when people are freely changing jobs in any amount of time, including like way less than a year, We don't wanna set it off on the wrong foot, we actually wanna set it off on the right foot.

Not only that, okay, from your bottom line perspective, if an employee is sitting idle, every minute of that is an hourly rate they're getting paid that you are not utilizing for your business. So if you want to think about it as far as that, and if someone's getting paid $20 an hour and they sit there for eight hours, three of their first days, now that's hundreds of dollars that could be reinvested in your business.

So what do we do instead? Well, I wanted to share three simple, simple things that we can do in employees first week to help them to get set up for success, to show them that we're excited that they're there to help them get up to speed right away so they can hit the ground running. First one is to carve out 15 minutes at the start and the end of that person's first day where you can meet with them.

And if you are not able to do this, because it's literally tomorrow when they're starting and there's no way you have an all day meeting or something, then find someone on the team that can meet with that person at the beginning of their day and at the end. You want that person to be welcoming the, the new hire, telling them they're excited, they're there.

Showing them the ropes, showing them around if you're in a physical location or showing them around virtually, you know, a, a Google Drive folder or a Dropbox or wherever you have stuff, how to use the Slack channel. Whatever it is, you want someone to give them a tour at the beginning, and this is gonna be really, really important because this sets the tone right away.

Ooh, okay. I can find my way around here. I belong here. Ideally, you do make yourself available at least for one of those two meetings because if you are the person's manager and you're evaluating their career, you wanna be building that relationship. From minute one, so I'm gonna say if unless absolutely impossible, please make the time that day, at least for one of those 15 minute syncs.

And ideally, two, what is the sync? At the end of the day, it's saying, how did it go? Welcome again. I'm so excited for you be here. What questions do you have now that you've been here a little bit of time and opening that invitation for someone to come to you so they're not sitting idly, waiting around with questions and they don't really know how to ask them.

We wanna create that moment. What questions do you have? Where are you getting stuck? So we get them off and running back on day two. Next, we wanna send a welcome email where everyone in the team can know this person has joined, can help celebrate them, and knows what that person is working on. I'm calling it a welcome email.

Obviously this could be a Slack message or whatever communication forum works for you. The welcome email's awesome for a few reasons. Because it opens the door for other people to reach out to them and say, Hey, you know, I'm working on a similar space. Let's collaborate on this. And it opens the door for that person to, to reach out to other employees because they've been announced that they're actually there.

And a lot of times folks feel uncomfortable reaching out and saying, hi, I'm new here. Can we meet about something? Or, I have a question, and we wanna make that a little bit easier for someone. Even if they are comfortable reaching out proactively, we wanna open the door so that it's clear why this new hire is reaching out who they are.

You've endorsed them as a person that should be connecting with people and so on. So this is gonna be really important. The email can literally be two sentences. Hey, everyone. Wanted to welcome Joe Smith to the team. He's going to be focused on X, Y, Z. I've asked him to reach out to folks about the role.

Please also reach out to him to connect. Thank you everyone. Bye. Right. That's more than two sentences and it's still very easy to write. So, and bonus points for saying, Hey, Joe. Reply with a little bit about yourself so that person can share about themselves, some personal things, some fun things, and other people have some hooks to grab onto to respond and connect with them.

That's an easy one, and we don't always do it. I've been in teams where I join and the manager doesn't send this welcome email for two or three weeks, maybe even a month, and I'm emailing people or sending invites or asking people to connect and they're like, who are you again? Like, why would I meet with you?

Just send the email. Literally, I gave you a template right now, a couple sentences, send it out. Try to do it. That person's first day, if you can. Honestly, because that's going to make everything so much easier for you. The more proactive your team member can be, the less they're asking you to be helping them and answering questions.

And we wanna be available to answer their questions, but if we're not the right person to answer a question and we could have pointed them to someone through this email, then let's do that last one. We wanna give them an overview of what success looks like this first week. A lot of employees start a job and they want to bring value right away.

And it makes them uncomfortable to just be sitting and waiting and soaking things in and feeling like, well, how long should I be onboarding for? How long should I not really know? Should I be doing my job from day one? Should I be meeting with people? If it's not clear, people make assumptions and it may not be the same as what you'd like to see.

So explain what you'd like to see outlining a couple things. Sending an email to that new employee or talking about it in this 15 minute sync and saying, Hey, wanted to let you know, here's what success looks like this first week. I want you to be reading these kinds of documents, taking in this information.

I want you to be shadowing someone in their role. Or maybe they have to start the job immediately and you wanna say, well, you know, you have to start the job immediately because you know, you are working on the customer service desk, and this was, we don't have somebody here or something like that. And so success looks like by Friday you feel like you have less questions than you had today.

Something like that. Very, very simple. But we wanna give people a clear picture of what we are expecting of them. In this first week, I've been on teams where employees come in hot, they go, I need to add value right away. I need to be adding value In meetings where they don't know anything, they're already like making suggestions on product directions, stuff like that.

And it's like, Ooh, rain and in Buddy. And I think that's because the manager didn't set expectations of. Hey, in the first week, I just want you to be getting to know people, listening, soak things up, be a sponge. Instead of that person feeling like, well, they hired me. I better run in and, and start changing stuff.

So when we set expectations, we can make that person have such a more seamless transition, and they make a better impression from the start. Those are the three things we can do. If you have a new hire starting literally tomorrow or imminently and you haven't really thought about it, make 15 minutes at the start and end of that first day, or find someone who can connect with the person just to welcome them, show them the ropes, give 'em that tour of the company.

Second, send a welcome email within the first few days, introducing them, talking about what they're gonna work on, and inviting other people to connect with them. And then third, give them an overview of what success looks like their first week. If you do this, you will give your new hires such a better experience than like 90% of managers out there because people don't think about it.

They think it's like, oh, whatever. They'll figure it out and it makes a bad experience and they wonder why did I join this company? And that is not what we want our new hires to think. We want them to think, I am so excited I joined this company. Right. Okay. So that's what we're gonna do. And if you want more specific support on how to set up your onboarding system, this is one of the core six areas of the ops playbook because they know it needs to be tailored to your own company.

It has to feel authentic. So this is why we cover this in the Ops Playbook because it's a fundamental piece of how you drive efficiency in your team and it saves you money at the outset, and that's what the Ops Playbook is all about. Finding those little quick changes that you can make on your team that optimize people.

Save time and save money that you can reinvest in your business. To get started with the playbook, reach out at hello@liagarvin.com or head tolia garvin.com/playbook. See you next time. That's all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple Podcast where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive.

I always love to hear from you, so please reach out@ at liagarvin.com or message me on LinkedIn. See you next time.