James HolincheckI had a really interesting inquiry from a client today. This client had recently selected a new e-recruitment solution including onboarding. The Recruiting organization owned the new solution, but the client wondered whether they should really own the onboarding process. I had to think about it for a little bit because the answer is not clear cut. To me, it really depends on how you define the end-to-end process. If the process ends on Day 1 for the new hire and is really the transition of the applicant to being an employee, then recruiting would typically own that process. However, if the end-to-end process extends to Day 90 or Day 120 for the new employee and focuses on time to productivity, then it likely makes more sense for HR to the own the process and work with Recruiting and Line Management. However, this organization happened to be a Retailer. That introduced another variable. Most hiring and onboarding for Retailers happens at the store level, with little direct involvement from either Recruiting or HR. As I thought about that, I could also see the argument for Store Operations (Line Management) to own the process because store management were the lead actors in the process.
In retail, the 90-120 day turnover rates (voluntary and involuntary) are extremely important metrics. So, it would make sense for the end-to-end process to focus on time to productivity. However, it was not clear if HR or Store Operations should lead so I asked the question “how involved has store operations been involved in the project?” The answer was that they had not been very involved. If they had not been involved up to that point, it was unlikely that they would take on being process owners. I made the comment that they probably should be more involved because managing those turnover rates can make a big difference in employee productivity and store performance (I have a good similar case example for healthcare in an upcoming research note on workforce planning and analysis).
So, what do you think? Onboarding is probably the HR process that touches the most other parts of the organization in order to complete. Who owns it in your organization? Who should own it?
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
1 response so far ↓
1 George Bradt February 25, 2010 at 7:26 am
We’ve written an entire book on how to get new employees up to speed in half the time and are about to launch a workshop to help people do that. The primary requirement is that the hiring manager lead each new employee’s onboarding experience all the way through from aligning stakeholders to acquiring, accommodating, assimilating and accelerating new employees. Of course recruiting has a critical role to play. Of course HR “owns” the basic process. But the line hiring manager is responsible for results. And everything about onboarding is geared to delivering better results faster.
More in our book, “Onboarding, How to Get Your New Employees Up to Speed in Half the Time”. Executive summary downloadable at http://www.primegenesis.com.
George Bradt – PrimeGenesis Executive Onboarding and Transition Acceleration