Sandbox - Onboarding Offboarding

Onboarding form? checklist? - some kind of intake form or page for the new person

• This form kicks off a list of things that needs to be done before a person starts

  • Start Date

  • Name

  • Email

  • Home institution

  • WBS area - similar to this https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScqvpvi30p-hYDmpXZzpwije8F7Xisiv35dY4VHaFzJ9mxwwA/viewform

  • New staff member position

  • Assign email lists, google groups, and Atlassian User groups, ticket queue, etc. needed

  • Assign Onboarding Buddy

Set up Individual Training Plan

Define which PPT the person should be given - separate one for each “Team” with some that is consistent across the Project

• we will need PPT for each Team - new staff guide

• Include Team based contextual list of who / which team is responsible for what. Who owns what data etc.

• Overview of project history / Timeline for ACCESS project.

• Overview of working group/standing committees

• Ask each awardee to provide a slide about their project to include in overview

  • have regular reviews of the information

Use Job description and WBS area to define what the person will be doing so both they and their supervisor understand what is expected

Training Schedule - what they are doing to train each week

• Meet with stakeholders

• Define Internal Users/Stakeholders and External Stakeholders

• Meet with some members from different service teams - mini welcome panel

  • Review tools needed - how to use internal systems - how to wiki and google drive

Communicate Hire to the Team

• email to Team, ACCESS and have Comms feature it in the internal newsletter (or external as needed)

Review of training - How did we do - what questions do you still have - any suggestions

• Get feedback on training material and see what was most effective and what needs work.

• assess both the effectiveness of the onboarding and asking what improvements could be made.

ACCESS Manager should check in with staff members supervisor of record

• Communicate with home institution manager

Address open questions or challenges they are facing.

ACCESS “Mid-term” / trivia quiz

Are they comfortable with the volume of work/meetings they’ve been assigned?

Make sure meetings have stored agendas that are adhered to - make sure when you hold a meeting that it needs to be a meeting - don’t waste people’s time

Make sure all work can be tied back to the PEP - The goal is to have everyone in the team familiar with high-level project activities.

All project members participate in program-level activities to foster career development.

Stay in regular touch via Slack

Have regular team meetings and cross team meetings

Should we create a “human API” where for each project in the program we could identify a point of contact (POC) or subject matter expert(SME)  for each track.  Having pre-identified POCs for other tracks would help in our work.  

Creating and participating in Working Groups is a heavy lift. The EC should empower staff to push decision-making deeper into the levels of the program.  

New people find it difficult to speak up during this all hands meetings because they are actively learning while people are sharing their status.  Should we have “New Employee parallel sessions” at meetings?

Have the EC provide more coordination for the overall program. More transparency would be beneficial

Summary email after meetings instead of sharing minutes notes

Perhaps a “what’s everyone working on” once a month?

There is some confusion as to who our users are.  In Support, our users are the ACCESS users.  (separate by Internal Users/Stakeholders and External Stakeholders)

Sharing feedback from our user community would be helpful as well. 

Mentorship program, particularly for bridging the gap between a team member and the broader organization

Another potential structural improvement (especially for the Operations’ concierge role) would be having an “embed” (~1-2 weeks or total 40 working hours) within each ACCESS Track to help members network across teams and familiarize with various workflows.  

Some of these issues can be identified earlier by performing
stay interviews with employees before they reach the point of wanting to leave.

Stay Interviews Can Be an Antidote to Exit Interviews

Exit Checklist - what goes on it?

• change passwords and access to system

• notify team when someone leaves

• communicate with partner institute - change in person and notification of how this may impact and any mitigations implemented

Exit interview - what do we ask?

• Why are they leaving

• Ask about any challenges in the organization they see and how they might be addressed.