How To Onboard The Right Way In A Remote Workplace (with Jordan Boogaard from EddyHR)

 

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Jordan Boogaard

When I think of a leader, I would say the first thing that comes to my mind is someone you could trust, someone that you can trust and look up to and that can be an example to that you wanna be like. And so a leader to me is someone that you can trust and someone that’s willing to step up and take another individual to the next level.

Tim Reitsma

Welcome to the People Managing People podcast. We’re on a mission to build a better world of work and to help you build happy, productive workplaces. I’m your host, Tim Reitsma. And today, I’m joined by Jordan Boogaard, HR Evangelist at EddyHR. Today we’re talking about onboarding.

Onboarding is, well, simple, right? Get somebody their computer, set up a hundred onboarding meetings, give the new hire a 30, 60, 90 day plan.

And I guess they’ll get to work. Well, that’s not wrong, but it’s definitely not right. Onboarding, well, it’s about demonstrating that we care, communicating what success looks like and what the role expectations are. And also leaving new hires feeling like they’ve made the right decision. We only have one chance at onboarding first impression. So take that to heart.

In this episode, we’ll hear how Jordan onboards at EddyHR and get his perspective on how to onboard the right way.

Jordan, so good to have you on the People Managing People podcast. I’m excited about this topic and it’s a timely topic. It doesn’t matter, I don’t, if we release this conversation today, tomorrow, a year from now, it’s a timeless episode. I can feel it already on the topic of onboarding the right way.

And before we get into it, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and what’s top of mind for you these days?

Jordan Boogaard

Yeah. Well, well, first and foremost, thanks Tim, for having me on excited to talk about this topic. And like you said, it is kind of one of those timeless ones. It’s changed significantly over the past, you know, 5 to 10 years with technology but, no excited to, to dive in and talk about that.

But no, about me. I’m from Utah. I’m married to my beautiful wife, Erica, and we have four children together. And so I’m pretty obsessed with them, whatever they like to do I kind of like to do, and so, you know, playing, you football with my oldest, to go into cheer competitions with my girls, to riding bikes with my five year old.

And so pretty passionate about that. And then on my free time I’m an obsessed mountain biker. And so that’s what I do most mornings is get up early and go ride. But, in regards to the business world, I’ve been in the payroll HR space for almost 14 years now. I worked at like ADP, Heartland. Started my own payroll company, actually.

And then I merged with this company, Eddy, that I’m with now about three years ago. But yeah, super excited to chat with you and dive into onboarding, so.

Tim Reitsma

Onboarding. Yeah. But before we get into conversation and I’m always see that my first two leading questions always kind of interweave with what we’re gonna be talking about today.

And I’m just a naturally curious person. I can get lost and down a train of thought or down a Google rabbit hole for hours. And so, big curiosity question for me is: what does it mean to be a leader?

Jordan Boogaard

That’s a deep question. I’ve thought about that actually recently, thinking about the people that have inspired me and led me throughout my career and throughout my personal life.

And so when I think of a leader, I would say the first thing that comes to my mind is someone you could trust, someone that you can trust and look up to and that can be an example to that you wanna be like. And so as I’ve kind of really gone deeper into my history and who’s been leaders for me, some of my favorite ones were the ones that like connected with me up front.

They, you know, really tried to understand who I was as a person. What made me tick and got me excited about life. And then they motivated me throughout the whole time as they were my leader. And so a leader to me is someone that you can trust and someone that’s willing to step up and take another individual to the next level.

Tim Reitsma

Love it. I love that succinct answer. Trust is such a key component of leadership. Being able to trust someone, but also someone who gives trust and not that sense of earning trust. And the next question I have, again, our purpose here at People Managing People is to build a better world of work.

And if we can figure out how to solve this in the next 5, 10, 20 years, that would be awesome. And people like yourself who, I know I look up to is, I’m curious: when you hear that phrase “build a better world of work”, what comes to mind?

Jordan Boogaard

Yeah. I mean, especially lately, I think globally we’ve experienced some very interesting things.

I mean, you’re up in Canada, I’m down in the United States, but I think we’ve experienced with the global pandemic of COVID, right? And building a better place to work I think is, it’s being flexible. Right? I think that’s been one of the top of mind topics to me in regards to building a better place to work is that flexibility.

People have been working from home for many years, but now some people have been forced to work from home or work remotely and not come into the office and do that group space. And so, I think if you’re trying to really build a better place to work it really starts, and this sounds may sound cheesy, but it starts with like onboarding, right?

That first impression that a company gets when you bring on a new employee. And so when they come in to, to be onboarded and they’re learning about the company, they’re learning about the culture, they’re gaining who their leaders are and who they’re gonna trust and things like that. And then those leaders sit down with them and they set those expectations.

If leaders and managers can set the expectations up front and the individual employee understands what those expectations are, and whether you set up like weekly goals or quarterly goals, and you hold that individual accountable to them. Whether they’re working at the office or they’re working from home or they’re working from, in my case a Starbucks or a corner bakery or whatever may be.

I, I work out of my backpack 99% of the time. As long as you’re on that same page and those expectations are set and the individual contributor is accomplishing those, I don’t think it matters where they work or how they get it done, but they just accomplish those task you know, they get exactly what the company wanted accomplished in those that timeframe.

I think that’s the way you make a better place to work is being on that same page and being held accountable to your expectations, so.

Tim Reitsma

Oh, we’re, we’re so aligned on this. I wrote an article a while ago about this, just about that clarity that leaders provide their organizations, their teams, clarity on the vision. What, where are we going? What are we doing? And here’s what you’re responsible for. At an, team level and an individual level, and here’s the accountabilities.

It’s not, you know, accountabilities, we sometimes view as a negative, but here’s how I can make a difference within this organization. And, you know, that’s at a 10,000 foot level, but we’re aligned on that, when we hear those words, expectations and accountabilities versus yeah. You’re sitting, I’m sitting in my home, you’re sitting in your home.

And if I didn’t know what I was supposed to do today, would I just sit here and stare at my screen for eight hours? It’s creating that, that good experience, a good onboarding experience. And it’s a good lead into, I was just sharing before we hit. Well, go ahead.

Jordan Boogaard

I was just gonna say with that being top of mind, it’s been interesting cuz every May I do this thing called “how may I help you?” on LinkedIn.

And I try and help people find new jobs, like people that have been laid off or they just wanted to make a transition and move to a different space or just move to another company. And I’ve talked to hundreds of people I’ve, as I’ve done this for the last four years. And one of the things that was most shocking to me is people that are like six months, two years into their career, they didn’t know what their expectations were.

Like they read the job description and it was completely opposite of what their manager was trying to get them to do and accomplish. And so, I think it’s shocking that a lot of people leave because those expectations that they had front or what they read on a job description when they were hired, is the exact opposite of what the manager, whoever’s overseeing is trying to get them to accomplish today.

So anyways, it’s kinda interesting topic.

Tim Reitsma

It is. It’s very timely as I was sharing, before we hit the record button, I was reading a study or just kind of briefing through a study real quick, you know, 700 person study that was done last year. People starting a new role in, during the pandemic and apparently out of those 700 people in the US based study, 62% didn’t have a clear idea in the company’s work culture.

So, after they’re onboarded, they still don’t have a clue. And 71% said they were unsure who to even build a relationship with. So can you imagine, like being onboard in a remote environment or remote workplace, sitting there and going, I don’t know who I need to talk to.

Who should I talk to? You know, for all in an office, we can walk around, grab a coffee, meet somebody at the ” water cooler”. And who are you? What department do you work in? But in that virtual space, we don’t necessarily have that, which it’s just crazy that we’re not putting the focus, the emphasis on this.

Yeah. And so I’m curious, I mean let’s just dive into it. What does it mean to onboard the right way? And I’m really in the context of a remote workplace.

Jordan Boogaard

Yeah. No, again that’s a load of question. You know, onboarding in itself and then you add into it the right way. I think for every company, the right way’s gonna be a little bit different, but if we were to agree on specific terms, I would say one of the first things to be onboard the right way is to one, let’s go back to, you know, like before you even onboard ’em is to, before you hire ’em and everything like that, what are those expectations? Right?

And those expectations should be laid out very clearly in your job description. And so, I think a lot of people fail at posting job descriptions and sometimes they go super deep. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve been on job boards lately, but there’s some that do a very simplistic, which I love actually is, you know, bullet points and say, here’s what the job is.

Here’s a couple bullet points, what you’ll be doing. And then if you know, see what you like and you get a first interview, then those expectations or those, you know, job descriptions you go into a deeper and they, they let you know what those expectations are, right?

Whereas some of them you read and it’s like six pages of like, you need this experience. You need to know how to exactly how to do this. And you need to be, you know how to do exactly how to do that. And if you don’t, you’re not the right candidate. And if you don’t have a master’s union, if you don’t have this. Where some people will still fit into that criteria, but they don’t have every specific, you know, thing that that company’s asking for.

And it weeds a lot of people out. And so I think before we can even jump into onboarding, I wanted to talk about that a little bit, because you need to set those expectations up right first, because then as you dive into onboarding, now you, once you’ve hired that person and they become, I consider it almost as your child, right?

It’s like, you go ahead, you get married, you have a kid. Well, you decide to have a kid and bring that person into this world. It’s, you’re bringing that person into your company. You’re bringing in that person into culture. And they’re a part of you no matter what, and they’re gonna represent your company in many different ways.

And so once you’ve decided to do that, if you do it the wrong way, just think what happens if that employee goes rogue or starts posting on social media or gets on a podcast and talks about the culture and does things like that and it goes viral. And it’s not even close to what your company culture is or what it is.

And so anyways, if you’ve onboard that person improperly and don’t do it the right way, there’s a lot of things that can go negative, I guess you would say, right? And so, if, I mean, we could probably talk about this portion of it for an hour, but if we kind of dive into doing it the right way, technology’s evolved.

And so I would say doing an onboarding properly today is not throwing paperwork at them. On day one, no employee wants to come in and sit down and have an employee handbook that’s, know, 70 pages long. And say, Hey, here’s the employee handbook. We’d like you to read through it. And if you have any questions, please come back to us and let us know.

And they throw you in a dark room, they give you a drink or something like that and say, Hey, read through this. Oh, also we got this legal paperwork that you have to do as well, right? In the United States it’s, you know, the W-4, the I-9, your direct deposit forms. All that stuff can take not even just a day, but can take a week.

And so, if you’re a new employee and you’re coming into this company, and the first week you’re thrown into a room and all you’re doing is reading about their culture and legal jargon from an attorney that you don’t even understand and you’re not super stoked about. What kind of experience, I mean, I’ll ask you does that create? Right, Tim?

I mean, if you’re thrown, how would you feel if that’s how you were onboard these days?

Tim Reitsma

Oh, absolutely. I’ve been onboarded like that, where it’s, you know, this was many years ago. Pre-pandemic is, you know, Hey Tim, here’s your cubicle, here’s your laptop, here’s a link to the employee handbook.

Somebody will come get you at some point this morning. And here’s a bunch of paper you gotta fill up. And wasn’t introduced to anybody. So I’m sitting in a cubicle and it was awkward. It was terrible. I didn’t even know where the, you know, don’t know where the washroom is. Don’t know where the water is and you’re sitting there going, okay, I guess I’m filling out paperwork. I guess that’s my first day.

And it leaves that first impression. I mean, that’s in an office scenario. Now, imagine this is in a remote scenario where you’re sitting at home, you get an email and say, Hey, somebody will set up a meeting with you at 11, but they’ve asked you to be there at 9:00 AM or 8:00 AM. It’s like, okay, what am I supposed to do for three hours?

And yeah. And it just, you know, it sets that it’s that first impression. I love how you said, you know, when you decide to bring a child into this world, it’s like, you know, you’re bringing an employee into your organization. How do you want to treat them?

How do you want that first impression to be? Do you want them to go home to their family or shut their laptop at the end of the day and say, wow, I joined the right company. Or be like these 62% of the 700 survey and go, I don’t know what the heck this company’s about?

Jordan Boogaard

No it’s 100%. I mean, you can, you know, take it before you bring a child into this world or wherever it may be, but like you go on a date, that first impression, right? Say you’re on technology, bring it back into this or you swipe right and you on that date with that individual, and the first impression is, who is this individual that’s just, you know, talking about this subject and I don’t even care about that or whatever it may be, whatever that bad first impression is.

But do you go on a second date with them? No. I mean, and it’s the same thing. You get a week into filling out paperwork and watching, you know, training videos on sexual harassment or whatever it may be that’s required to do.

There’s better ways to do it. But by week two, your first impression’s so bad that you may already be looking for another job. And so with the great resignation, as everyone’s calling it these days, you can’t just hire great talent without onboarding a properly and setting those expectations if you’re gonna retain ’em, right?

And so I always call, it you know, learn how to hire and retain employees the proper way. And you’ll keep employees for life, you’ll be able to, you know, help them build their career and be a phenomenal leader and take them to the next level. But if you get that first bad impression, it could go sour and they’re looking for a new job.

I mean, honestly, with how many people are switching jobs these days, every two to three months, I would, I don’t know, I haven’t seen studies on it or I don’t have specific numbers, but I would predict that, you know, 80 to 90% of those were sold on a vision that was not a hundred percent realistic. They got those expectations from their job description.

And then on day one, they had such a bad first impression and a bad taste in their mouth that they were negative and wanting to look elsewhere immediately. And so you gotta have that really good first impression, so.

Tim Reitsma

Yeah, that first impression is so critical. I was recently at an HR conference and one of the speakers was talking about, you know, employee boomerangs.

And people who’ve decided, okay, I’m gonna leave this company, go somewhere else and realize, oh wow, this company was pitched me the, a completely opposite of what I would be doing. Hey, old previous company, can I come back? And, so it’s fascinating. And there’s a lot of data coming out now about, I don’t have specific percentages, but people who, you know, want to go try something new.

And for whatever reason, realize it wasn’t the right decision. And I love that you said that it’s, you know, onboarding the right way, but even attracting the right people, getting your job descriptions crystal clear, you know, get out of the jargon. You know, if somebody has, it’s like you said, six pages of, here’s what you’re responsible for.

Six pages of things, it’s like, no, I think that’s four jobs, not one, but nailing it down and spending that time on that. You know, I came from a company who was about five accountabilities. Here’s the five things. And that was extremely helpful because when we were interviewing people, here’s the five things that you are accountable for.

Would you agree? Do you sign up? Do you like that? And it worked because then it created a succinct onboarding experience. So important.

Jordan Boogaard

That’s awesome. Yeah. And I mean, that’s in person, right? And you brought the question in regards to doing it remotely. That’s an even more difficult task, right?

Especially to kind of bring ’em into your culture and help ’em understand what your values are and what your company’s trying to accomplish. And so, I mean, just kind of some best practices in regards to doing it remotely There’s some really fun ways you can do it, right? We’ve done it where you can gamify it.

And so, Hey, here’s what the expectations are. We need you to do this documentation for, you know, legal purposes. We need you to read through this handbook for this purpose. And if you get this all accomplished within this allotted amount of time, we actually already collected, you know, your favorite place to shop is Nike and your favorite, you know, place to go to dinner is Ruth’s Chris.

And so by getting it done in this timeframe, we’re gonna reward you. And we’re gonna give you $150 gift card to Nike and a dinner for you and your spouse to go to Ruth’s Chris. Right? And so by doing that, you’re still using the money you would’ve spent anyways to, to do a lunch or whatever made been doing in person, but you’re motivating ’em, you’re getting them excited.

You’re rewarding ’em for getting that work done. And, it just, it takes it to another level where that person’s excited to get the boring paperwork done. They’re being rewarded. They’re feeling like you actually care about them. And then you ask them questions to understand, know, what motivates you? Where do you like to shop?

What’s your favorite place to eat? Like those kind of things, even though they may sound little, but then when you use ’em and reward ’em, it just goes a really long way. And then on top of that, the great thing is if you’re tracking like birthdays, work anniversary, and stuff like that, you had that date in your background stored.

So now it’s, you know, say it’s Tim’s birthday and he loves Nike. Hey Tim, so, so excited that it’s your birthday today. Happy birthday. Here’s a $50 gift card to Nike. And he’s like, oh yeah, I did put that I like Nike and my company gets that. They understand me and they’re rewarding me recognizing me for my birthday and for my anniversaries and stuff like that.

And so, anyways. Yeah there’s things you can do to really motivate those people and feel like, I mean, show that you truly care. Cause if you don’t care, then why you’re hiring ’em? But, you know, show that you truly care and that you want them to be a part of the team and, and for the long term. Right? So, anyways.

Tim Reitsma

Well, I think you’re kind of touching on something that I think is really important when we’re onboarding in this remote way is, how do we want that person to feel? How do we want these individuals to, again, close our laptop after day one, day two, day three what is that experience we want to create?

You know, I had the opportunity to onboard in person and at People Managing People. Now we’re mostly remote. So if I would wanna be onboarded, how do I wanna be? Right. It’s like, make sure the laptop is there. I was onboarded remotely once and day one I had no computer, so that was really hard.

So again, it’s just at its core is going back to, you know, how do we want our people to, to feel within our organization? And it goes back to being a leader, is going back to that trust.

And I’m curious, a horror story of being onboarded the wrong way. Have you heard of anything, anything come to mind? Especially in the context of remote, what have you seen or heard, or maybe there’s just something top of mind of like, just don’t do this?

Jordan Boogaard

I mean, honestly the first thing that, that comes top of mind isn’t remote, but it’s a personal experience that I had. I was brought into a company. I was super stoked because it was a promotion. It was a big job for me. And I was like super excited that I had, you know, accomplished this and that I was gonna be able to hire right on at this level and things like that. And I show up day one. And the director of HR comes out and sits down with me and they’re like, wait, what was your name again?

And, oh, we didn’t have you starting today. And I’m like, wait, so should I go home? Or, you know, like there’s this whole other group that had started the same day as me. And there was about 10 individuals and they had their swag, their new shirt. They had like their welcome, you know, they had these, like there was like four or five items, you know, their computer, all this kind of stuff.

And I show up on day one, like super excited. And they’re like, who are you? And, you know, oh, you’re not supposed to be starting today. And they rushed it and got some like, kind of hodgepodge stuff together. Know, these few individuals had swag with their names on it and, you know, cups with their names on it.

And I was just super disappointed. And so that bitter taste like, honestly from day one, I didn’t wanna work there, really. And I left within a year. And it was primarily because that, that, you know, bad taste I got from day one. There, there were multiple editors, it was a, you know, kind of a tech startup and things like that.

And it didn’t go the direction that I wanted it to, but that first impression, and then not even knowing who I was, was just, was a horrible for me personally. But yeah, I mean, I’ve onboarded, you know, thousands of people and been doing this for a long time. And I would say that the biggest thing that is a fail, especially remotely, is exactly what you were talking about earlier, that organization and having everything set up properly, right?

When you hire a new person, like for example with Eddy, we’ve gotta get ’em a computer, an email account, swag, decorate their desk, you know, set up, we set up meetings with all the executives so they can sit down from the first day and they can kind of tell ’em the story and their vision of the company and what their experience has been, and really get to know ’em.

And so we do some really cool things at Eddy and I, I think we do it the right way to be honest with you. It’s the best onboarding experience I’ve ever had, as is here at Eddie. And I’ve gained a ton of experience on knowledge and learned from this. But, yeah, you know, if day one they don’t have their computer.

If day one, they don’t know what their email is and they don’t know what these kind of things are, you’ve gotta make sure that you’re structurized and everything’s just kind of a hundred percent set up and you have a process in place for every employee you’ve onboard before they start. And this is weeks and months in advance.

Because if you wanna rapid hire someone, you can, if you’re structured and organized. You know, if you know, bring someone and say, Hey, you’re starting in two weeks. That means you gotta have their laptop ordered. You’ve gotta have, you know, their tablet, whatever it is, you gotta have all their software, tech has to do all their stuff on the back end to make sure they have logins to Slack. Logins to all the different softwares you use.

All that stuff needs to be done. You’ve sent it to ’em and they’ve experienced that before they, they are on day one. And so I would say organization and structures is the key thing to making that work properly.

Tim Reitsma

Yeah I like that. Even just set yourself up a checklist. You know, if you’re an HR leader listening to this and don’t have a remote onboarding checklist, you need one.

Think about all the processes, all the people involved, what you need from the hiring manager. Hey, hiring manager, have you, if you use a 30, 60, 90 day onboarding plan, what is it? Do you have it planned? Like, do you have a plan? What is this person doing on day one, day two, week one, week two? If the answer is, well, I don’t know, but you know, I know they’re gonna be busy.

That’s not an answer. You know, we need to get, you know, hyper clear because again, it’s that first impression. We, you know, ambiguity will kill that, that excitement very quickly. And setting up that structure and then you can play around with that, right? Maybe it’s, maybe if somebody is like, okay, I know what I need to do. You can pull back on it.

Jordan Boogaard

100%. Yeah. I mean, I found the easiest way to do that is, is reverse engineer it. So set up that 90 days, go backwards to day one. And if everything looks clean then roll it out and set up, you know, if you can, the more you can automate, the better. But, yeah, I mean that reverse engineering goes a long way.

Tim Reitsma

Yeah. I’m really curious about EddyHR. And you’d said it’s just an amazing, or maybe even the best, I think you said onboarding experience. So like, what is, what are one or two things that you do that you think other companies should be doing? Or what may set Eddy’s onboarding apart from others?

Jordan Boogaard

Yeah. I mean, no, thanks for asking that question. I would say the biggest thing that Eddy does is they make it really simple. And so whether you’ve been in HR for 20 years, or you just got thrown into HR because you’re a company of 10 and you were the executive admin for the owner of the company.

And all of a sudden he’s saying, Hey, take on HR. It doesn’t matter what your experience level is. You could get in and without us even training you, but we do. Like, obviously we onboard you and do it properly. You could figure out how to do it. And so that’s the key thing is ease. Right? And so don’t make your processes complicated. Simplifying ’em as, as much as possible.

I always say if like, like, for example, like on a PTO example, right? If your paid time off policy, the lowest level employee doesn’t understand it, it’s too complicated, right? It’s the same thing with onboarding. If you don’t keep it really simple and really clean, that you can automate it and do it a hundred times over every single day, then you’re gonna fail because you’re gonna miss things.

You’re gonna have your checklist and some of ’em may be too much to get done in the day. And so the more you can simplify, the better, but, yeah. Anyways, going back to Eddy. I would say that’s the biggest thing they do is they simplify it and they simplify it through the whole process. And so if you need to onboard, like, and bring in your documentations, we can make any document fillable or signable.

So all your legal documents, W-4s, I-9s, all that kind of stuff. A majority of it is already in there and you can kind of customize it to yourself. And then your employee handbook, you can upload it. You can put in signatures. And so there’s zero paperwork. It’s all automated. You can do it straight from your cellphone.

The last 10 people I’ve onboarded at Eddy, I asked them, how long did it take you to do your onboarding paperwork? And the average time was anywhere from the fastest 15 minutes was really quick, to 45 minutes. And so you’re looking at 30 minutes to go through all that documentation. You can do it right from your computer.

We set up to like, make it so you can reward ’em at the end, give ’em a gift card to their favorite place to shop, wherever like I mentioned before. But it just really simple and easy. So that’s, I guess the biggest selling point there.

Tim Reitsma

Yeah. I mean, again, you hit the nail in the head is, it’s not complicated. It doesn’t need to be complicated. You don’t need to script out every single minute of every single day. But again, from an onboarding experience in a remote world, I mean, leaving an employee, a new hire sit there for two, three hours, not knowing what’s next, what meeting is next, you know, that’s not good.

So, you know, you could fill up their time. And, again, at this conference I was recently at, they were talking about onboarding in the remote way. And how this one company was saying that they had lost employees right after the onboarding, because the onboarding was so terrible. Just to your point earlier.

And so they knew that, okay, we need to throw some resources here. It’s that first impression and setting that expectation. I think that’s where you hit the nail on the head is, you know, setting up that expectation, that first impression. Keeping it simple, gamifying it, and there’s so many templates out there.

And I know, EddyHR, the Mavericks, there’s, you know, head there for resources, head to People managing People for resources. You’re looking for that one-on-one template, that 30, 60, 90 day, that checklist, you name it. They’re out there. But that’s not there to solve your problem. Design it first and then start looking for resources to, to fill it in.

Would you agree with that? Because I often hear about, Hey, I need an onboarding. I just need a checklist. It’s like, no, I think that’s probably your third or fourth thing you need. I’m curious what are your thoughts on that? And do you agree with that, or?

Jordan Boogaard

Yeah, I would say I agree and I would add more to it.

I mean, that data’s out there. You’re 100% accurate. You know, People Managing People, HR Mavericks, Eddy, I mean, our competitors. We’re gonna commoditize world there. There’s so many resources are out there for free that you can go gather. But I think the key portion of that is, is making it your own. Right? You know, when the people come into your culture, what do you guys stand for?

What are you guys trying to accomplish? What are your goals over the next five years? Like if people don’t know what those things are when they come on day one, and you don’t get ’em excited about it because, well, for one, if you’re not excited about it, that’s I guess another bad onboarding experience I’ve seen. You know, many day ones sort of employees, they come in and the person they’re reporting to is kind of a bump on a log and no one wants to be around them.

They’re an ER, whatever you wanna call ’em. And it’s like, holy cow, who did I just introduce my newest member to? Why would they wanna work for him anyways? And so, anyways, you gotta have those people in the right place too. And make sure that their expectations are set at the highest level, because they’re gonna be the ones representing your company and setting out first impression for your employees.

And so, if we were to kind of take a step back, I mean, yeah. Looking at your current staff and your employees and making sure that they’re excited about your culture and that they’re putting that enthusiasm into the new employees, goes a long way as well, so.

Tim Reitsma

Absolutely. And I think as, you know, I always like to end conversations on, you know, what’s that one thing somebody can do today, whether you’re leading people or you’re head of HR, and you know, that there’s work to be done on your onboarding. Whether it’s in person, remote, hybrid, whatever that looks like, what is that one thing that somebody can do? Or where should somebody start?

Jordan Boogaard

I mean, that’s a deep question at one thing. I’m a man of many words. I don’t know if I can break it into just one thing. But if I were to break it into one thing, I think especially with this generation and the things the way like with COVID pandemic, this may sound really cheesy, but show ’em that you care.

Showing an individual that you care about them and that you want them to succeed, I think is gonna go further than anything in regards to like rewarding them with a trip or, you know, a TV or whatever maybe. I mean, I’m a sales guy. And so there’s a lot of different SPS and incentives out there, but I would rather have a manager that cares about me and truly cares about me as an individual and as a person, not just, and as an employee, than winning the top award, right? That would go so much further for me than anything out there.

Because I think especially, I mean, top of mind these days too, we didn’t talk about this, about mental health, right? That’s huge right now. Mental health and, you know, people being able to break away and be able to take care of that and whether it’s getting a therapist or maybe, but like when you have a manager that cares about you and you feel like you can go talk to him about anything, again, caring is the thing that I think that matters most. Because people want that comfort of having people that care about them, so.

Tim Reitsma

I love that we’re ending on that note. It’s, you know, again, like you said, there’s a commoditized space. In some ways there’s checklists, there’s templates for onboarding in whatever environment. But it’s, you know, at its core, treating humans as humans, we’re bringing people into our organizations and inviting people into our work lives and our lives in general and showing that we care is so, so important. Yeah.

Jordan, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. And how can people reach you? How can people get a hold of you if they wanna know more?

Jordan Boogaard

I have to say, thanks again, Tim. No, I truly appreciate you reaching out to me and have me on your podcast today. But the easiest way to find me is absolutely on LinkedIn.

And so if you go to LinkedIn and look up Jordan Boogaard, I’ve got all my personal, my email, my cellphone number’s on there. So you can contact me that way. And then obviously at our website, if you wanna check out Eddy, ww.eddy.com. It’s not a great way to find me, but Jordan Boogaard on LinkedIn is the easiest way, so.

Tim Reitsma

Perfect. I appreciate that. And to anyone who’s listening, we’ll put links to, to Jordan’s contact information in the show notes as well. And again, Jordan, thanks again for coming on.

And for those who are listening, I always appreciate your feedback, your thoughts, what other topics you’d like to hear. So please reach out to me at tim@peoplemanagingpeople.com or find me on LinkedIn as well. And with that, I hope you have some inspiration and some clear actions on how to restructure or recreate or redo your onboarding experience with your organization.

Thanks again and have a good one.

Jordan Boogaard

Thanks Tim!