Enlisting essential stakeholders

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Enlisting essential stakeholders

A lack of coordination can make onboarding difficult. Let's say a new hire arrives on her first day and her work station is messy and cluttered, it makes her feel unwelcome and creates a poor first impression. Why wasn't her work station prepared? Let's look at some of the people that needed to be involved. Purchasing wasn't notified that a new employee had been hired and she would need some new equipment. IT wasn't notified about the new hire so they could setup her computer access. The Manager didn't know she was supposed to get the work station setup.

She assumed someone in HR did that. The Recruiter told the Manager a new hire had accepted the offer, but didn't tell the Manager the precise start date. You can see how one little thing can take a lot of coordination. That's why we need to identify key onboarding stakeholders and get them involved. Your essential stakeholder list includes the key people who need to be involved in the project. You can always add other people later on. Here's an example. A Recruiter might kick-off the whole process by hiring people.

An HR Coordinator might be involved with processing new hire paperwork, scheduling new hire orientation, and coordinating various aspects of the onboarding program. A Trainer might conduct the new hire training. The new hire's Manager, or supervisor, also plays a key part in onboarding their new employee. Of course, there might be other people who also have a role to play in the onboarding process. Here's some people you may wanna add to your list: the Vice President of Human Resources might oversee the entire onboarding program and may wanna be consulted on any revisions, someone in Purchasing will need to order supplies and equipment for new hires, someone in IT might need to coordinate each new hires computer and network access, and someone in Security might need to create an ID badge for each new hire and give them access to the building and parking structure.

Now, these are just examples. Your list may look different than mine. The actual people who need to be involved vary from company to company. The key is to get the right people involved up-front before you make any big decisions. Let me give you an example. In one company I worked for, getting a computer for a new employee was actually quite complicated. The IT department first needed to determine what type of computer and software was needed. They then had to see if they already had the right computer on hand or if one needed to be ordered.

The computer had to be shipped to the IT department so it could be configured and then shipped out to the employee's location. What seemed like a simple process, actually took a great deal of time so the IT department needed to know about new employees as soon as possible. It took a lot of coordination to make this happen. You can prepare for challenges like this by creating your own stakeholder list. I encourage you to download the Onboarding Stakeholders Worksheet to identify who should be involved in each stage of the process.

Get your key stakeholders involved in your onboarding project now so there won't be any surprises later on.


Source: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/human-resources-running-company-onboarding/enlisting-essential-stakeholders