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Comprehensive Onboarding Beyond Line-of-Sight: Integrating Global and Virtual Teams HCI White Paper July 19, 2007 By Ross Jones
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Comprehensive Onboarding Of Virtual Teams

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Page 1: Comprehensive Onboarding Of Virtual Teams

Comprehensive OnboardingBeyond Line-of-Sight: IntegratingGlobal and Virtual Teams

HCI White PaperJuly 19, 2007By Ross Jones

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The marketplace for talent is global, and finding theright person, for the right role, at the right cost arekey components in the staffing and workforce plan-ning considerations of many leading companies.However, sometimes the talented person you'd liketo hire may live across town but prefer to workfrom home or you may want to make new talent apart of a team in which some or all of the membersare scattered among different offices and countries.The traditional solution of relocating all teammembers to a common place is no longer usuallyworkable - today's top talent often does not want torelocate from their home. Instead, organizationsare using advances in communication technologyto create global and virtual teams. But this has cre-ated a new problem when it comes to onboardingthe new hires that will be part of these teams. Doesyour onboarding program include targeted strate-gies and tactics to rapidly add and accelerate theperformance of non-US and virtual staff?

This paper deals with how organizations' onboard-ing program can be customized to fit the needs ofglobal and virtual teams. This means movingbeyond a "one size fits all" onboarding model to onethat considers global diversity and the particularrequirements needed to be a successful member ofa global or virtual team. We will focus on answer-ing three questions:

1. What are the challenges of onboarding employ-ees based outside the United States?2. How can organizations help create effective vir-tual teams?3. What are leading organizations doing to movebeyond the, "one-size-fits all" onboarding model bytargeting specific onboarding needs?

The key answers to these questions include:

o Use a common onboarding process for thejob skills needed for all new hires.o Use a targeted onboarding approach forthose skills needed to be part of specific global orvirtual team.o Focus on the individual learning needs ofnew hires.o Leverage existing HR processes into inte-grated global onboarding solutions.o Develop effective methods to evaluate yourglobal onboarding at regular intervals.

CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS FOR GLOB-AL ONBOARDING

Onboarding includes all the ways that an organiza-tion helps people navigate their early experiences ina new job. As Figure 1 shows, onboarding is one ofthree processes that are critical for optimizing newhire performance - along with effective talentrecruitment and acquisition. Helping new hiresnavigate their early experiences essentially meansproviding them with the necessary resources to dotheir job. Some of these resources will be the sameregardless of who the employee is, where they arelocated, or the team or teams they are on. However,when the talent being onboarded is global, or whenthe jobs being done are within a global or virtualteam, additional resources are needed.

As Mark Walztoni, Managing Director of theCenter for Effective Leadership Changes, tells us,"global onboarding includes both new hire andinternal staff transitions to new roles." Besides thetype of employee, there are two other importantelements that distinguish onboarding onto a globalteam. One is that both individuals and teams need

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to transition together whenever a new leader ormember joins the team. As opposed to a teammade up of culturally homogenous individuals, aglobal team will include individuals of wide diver-sity, from many different social and business cul-tures. Every time a new person, with their own cul-tural outlook, is added to a team, the group dynam-ics will change. This fact leads directly to the thirddistinguishing characteristic of global onboarding -the need to use a "targeted onboarding" approach toaccount for individual and team differences.Targeted onboarding has evolved naturally from"one size fits all" onboarding that evolved from tra-ditional new employee orientation. "One size fitsall" onboarding is where an organization providesthe same onboarding program for all new hires,independent of where the office is located or thenew hire is from. As Walztoni explains, this processis still needed - there are common features of theorganization that all employees need to know. The

key is to determine how to mix the two types tomeet the challenges of global onboarding thatinclude:

o Using the process to build employeeengagement, instead of simply processing forms.o Dealing with global versus local benefitsand payroll - will people hired locally work locallyas part of virtual teams?o Integrating into teams and/or networks -how will individuals fit into a team and makethe team stronger?o Blending company culture, business unit,and local culture - will people need local or globalperspective?

How the "one size fits all" and targeted onboardingprocesses are mixed differ among organizations.Much of this variation will depend upon the extentof an organization's use of global talent. This can

Figure 1

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be seen from an online poll of participants in a July19, 2007 Human Capital Institute webcast dealingwith onboarding for global and virtual teams.Thirty-three Percent of participants noted that allof their organization's hiring needs were within theU.S. However, 36% of the participants worked fororganizations with global hiring needs in which thenon-U.S. onboarding process was designed by eachlocal job location. In contrast, 28% of the partici-pants' organizations Non-U.S. onboarding processhas a mix of global and local components, whileonly 1% worked for global organizations with aconsistent global orientation process across coun-tries. According to Walztoni, if global organiza-tions want to effectively use global and virtualteams, they need the mix of global and local com-ponents that, according to this survey, only a littlemore than one-quarter of organizations are using.

There are several general solutions to the challengesof improving global onboarding. "Assign account-ability for integrating new staff into teams andinternal networks," explains Walztoni. Whensomeone feels ownership in the process, andresponsibility in the outcome, they will be moreinterested in ensuring its success. In addition,Walztoni encourages organizations to leverageavailable communication technology to help buildteams. Voice mail, email, and video conferencingare the basics. However, company websites,GroupWare, and other Intranet solutions should beused as well to "communicate company culture andenhance work flow." And it is important to remainfocused on the goal of these approaches - to buildnew hire engagement in their work and with theirteam.

Walztoni goes on to describe several specificprocesses that can be incorporated into an organi-

zation's global onboarding process. First, it isimportant to determine which new hires needwhich type of onboarding. New employees whowill interact exclusively with the local office andlocal peers will obtain most of the skills andresources they need through a common, "one sizefits all" approach. However, even for these people,some customized onboarding should be providedthat focuses on their specific function. The cus-tomized onboarding will become even moreimportant for new hires involved in global cross-functional teams - where both diversity in cultureand functions need to be considered. And bothtypes of onboarding need an awareness of country-specific learning, negotiating, and value systems.Even an organization with a common processamong all global offices still needs to consider localculture and values when implementing this processin different locations.

But how can you deliver a customized onboardingprogram for all members of a team, when thoseteam members may be scattered among severalglobal offices? "Asynchronous delivery of global,business unit, functional, and location onboardingmodules by HR, manager, technology, and self-study," can be achieved with some of the same com-munication tools used to link global team memberstogether, stresses Walztoni. However, even virtualteams need some real "face-to-face" time to develop- both as individuals and as teams. Organizationsneed to invest in leadership meetings, as well asmeetings for people do the same function. Andthese links within functional groups can be main-tained by regular conference calls among subjectmatter experts. The key is communication - face-to-face when possible and regular virtual meetingsat other times.

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A critical part to overcoming global onboardingchallenges is realizing that the effective onboardingof team leaders will be critical to the future effec-tiveness of that team. It is very important, especial-ly for the make or break first 90 days of a new team,that senior leaders accept the team's objectives, aswell as having a clear idea of their own objectivesfor the team. All key leaders should have and usepassports to actively create and strength the linkswithin the global team. Walztoni provides anexample of a leader of a financial analysis teamwho, by visiting team members in Japan, became"energized by their commitment to global onboard-ing." This example also points out the importanceof social onboarding - in many cultures, forgingpersonal and social links is a prerequisite to opti-mizing individual and team performance. Andleaders can most effectively create that link by visit-ing their various team members. In general, theonboarding of new global team leaders shouldenable them to:

o Understand the onboarding process andonboarding and transition competencies.o Be aware of their personal onboardingstrengths and development needs.o Understand the basics of the company, theirbusiness unit, role, and expectations.o Be committed to building strong networks.o Be energized by the company's commit-ment to onboarding, learning and development.

CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS FORONBOARDING VIRTUAL TEAMS

While many global teams are virtual, not all virtualteams are global. And the onboarding of virtualteams and team members, whether global or not,must consider three levels of factors - organization,

leader, and team. The organizational-basedenablers include the creation of robust global func-tions in which teams see themselves as the owner ofthe function - a likely cause of improved perform-ance. It also means an organization that creates aninfrastructure that encourages cross-cultural anddiversity awareness and negotiating skills acrossorganizational and cultural boundaries.Organizations should also include the right mix ofloose and tight controls of teams - both to ensurecreativity and ownership of function within theteam, as well as accountability to the business goalsof the company.

Virtual team leadership skills are also critical forsuccess. "The key competency for these leaders isthe ability to manage across boundaries," Walztoniexplains. It is relatively easy to identify the level ofthis skill among team leaders. Low-level skill ispresent when the leader is only interested in theirown particular silo or turf. Moderate level is iden-tified by the ability to collaborate, but not to actual-ly share information openly. The top virtual teamleaders expect to collaborate and, most important-ly, initiate action with other people and teams with-out explicit authority - they look to network andforge links with others. In addition to developingcollaboration among teams, top virtual team lead-ers also look to develop social networks and rela-tionships within and among teams. According toWalztoni, these skills can be built into organiza-tions' learning and onboarding processes, as well asbuilt into the job requirements to lead a virtualteam.

The members of successful virtual teams also needtheir own core competencies1. As with the organi-zation and the team leader, team members requirecross-cultural and diversity awareness to be able to

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understand and work with people from various cul-tures and backgrounds. Beyond this, the effectiveteam member needs the following skills:

o Project Managemento Ability to Balance Work and Personal Timeo Use of Technology o Ability to Create and Manage Boundarieso Resiliency

And all of these organizational, leader, and teammember skills need to be integrated into team mile-stones and activities that promote and measure suc-cess. These include start-up activities such as iden-tifying key organizational and team roles, buildingthe team charter, and holding a team-orientationsession. Ongoing team activities should includeprocesses for adding new team members and forrecognizing team accomplishments. However,according to Walztoni, the most important initialteam activity is to adopt an external or organiza-tion-based model that will effectively guide theoperation of a virtual team. For example, a taskforce in India, part of a larger global virtual team,

successfully adapted the model presented by JohnKotter and Dan Cohen in their 2002 book, TheHeart of Change, and showed how it could beapplied to the entire team. The model's 8-stepapproach starts with building a sense of urgencywithin the team to gain momentum for change andsuccess, and leads to implementing structures andfunctions that will make the changes stick (seeFigures 2 and 3). The important thing is to find andbegin using a model for team creation and opera-tion early in the process - nothing will slow the startof a team more than being faced with a "blank sheetof paper" on how the team should function, stress-es Walztoni. And as people move from one teamto another through their career, they will take andapply the models that worked for them on priorteams, resulting in the further application andrefinement of the most successful models through-out the organization.

TARGETED GLOBAL ONBOARDING

As discussed above, the old "one size fits all"onboarding process still has its place. All new

Figure 2

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employees need a common introduction into theirorganization's culture and business goals.However, members of global and virtual teams willneed onboarding targeted to the specific diversityand functions of their team. Achieving "targeted"global onboarding requires organizations to applymarketing principles to develop specific learningmodules. The demographics of the team will need

to be considered. What arethe cultural, ethnic, gender,and age composition of theteam? The skills needed byall members of the team willdiffer according to theanswer. And the learningrequirements will alsodepend greatly on the orga-nizational lifecycle stagethat a specific team findsitself. Some teams will bepart of a start-up initiativerequiring intensive manage-

ment. Other teams will be part of a "cash cow"business unit that is maximized by a more "hands-off " approach. An organization will likely have sev-eral of these lifecycles at the same time - all requir-ing different types of team leaders and team mem-bers. The onboarding process must enable teamleaders and members to learn the necessary skillsfor their relevant lifecycle (see Figure 4).

Figure 3

Figure 4

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Targeted onboarding also means focusing on thefunctional role of the person being onboarded -whether a new CFO, sales representative, or callcenter supervisor. One company did this for anewly hired project manager by sending the personto five different global offices to meet with func-tional counterparts - an example of "peer coaching"that Walztoni recommends as an effective form oftargeted onboarding. Function-specific onboard-ing also requires metrics to determine what func-tions, and what level of performance, is needed toensure the success of the organization's businessstrategy. Only by knowing what the importantfunctions and skills are, can they become part of theonboarding and learning process.

A targeted onboarding program also needs to con-sider the transition being made by the onboardedperson - both team members and leaders. Is thistheir first experience being part of or leading aglobal team? Are they coming from or going tobeing a functional manager, business manager,group manager, or enterprise manager? Knowingwhere the person is coming from and where theyare going in their career is vital to developing alearning program targeted to their needs. For thoseresponsible for the onboarding program, thismeans being able to answer these three questions:

1. How should we assist leaders through each tran-sition?2. How do we determine and assess the skills,knowledge, abilities for each passage?3. What general or targeted resources are availableto support individuals, team, and the company?

Finally, targeted onboarding is for transferees aswell as new hires. The person being transferred

into a new position within the organization willneed to master a new set of management and func-tional skills, as well as the industry and lifecycleknowledge of their new business unit. For thesejob-specific competencies, the onboarding processshould treat transferees and new hires similarly.However, the new hire's onboarding will need toinclude help on building the social relationshipsand business networks necessary to be an effectiveteam member. The new hire will also need to learnabout the company's business culture and goals -and this can be accomplished through the sameasynchronous (e.g., web based) learning tools dis-cussed above.

CONCLUSION

As Figure 5 shows, targeted onboarding is not areplacement to the "one size fits all" approach.Instead, it should be thought of as a series of indi-vidually tailored learning "satellites" spun off fromthe core onboarding content that all employeesneed. These satellites, or learning modules, aredesigned to provide individuals with the specificskills they need for their new function - includingtheir role within a global or virtual team. Andorganizations do not need to start from scratchwhen building a targeted process. All organizationshave existing HR processes that focus on talentmanagement issues by function, as well as by loca-tion - the global (home office) versus local officelevel (Figure 6). These processes can be adapted aspart of a program that provides the common, glob-al onboarding needed by all employees, and thevarious local (and function-specific) onboardingneeded by each individual. However, the key todeveloping an effective targeted onboardingprocess is to start backwards. Determine what is

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successful performance for aparticular job and the skillsneeded to achieve that perform-ance. Then design a programthat develops those skills.

And finally, targeted onboard-ing programs need to be evalu-ated like any new business ini-tiative. Metrics need to bedeveloped that measure howwell a person has beenonboarded - the bottom linemeasure of success for the pro-gram. Walztoni recommendssurveying global onboardingparticipants after three inter-vals: 30 days, 90-days, and 180-days (see Figure 7). The surveyscan be quick and simple, butneeds to measure the three crit-ical success measures of allonboarding - employee engage-ment, productivity, and satisfac-tion.

Figure 5

Figure 6

Figure 7

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1 Mark Walztoni adapted this list from: Deborah L. Duarte

and Nancy Tennant Snyder, Mastering Virtual Teams:

Strategies, Tools, and Techniques That Succeed, 3rd Edition,

2006 (Book and CD).

Based on the Human Capital Institute webcast,Comprehensive Onboarding Beyond Line-of-Sight:Integrating Global and Virtual Teams, July 19, 2007

PRESENTER

Mark WalztoniManaging DirectorCenter for Effective Leadership ChangesMark Walztoni has over 25 years of humanresources leadership experience in leading compa-nies such as American Express, Ernst and YoungLLP, and Thomson in addition to chief humanresources officer roles for founding entrepreneursin the professional services and technology sectors.He is a certified executive coach, an internationalspeaker on individual and organizational changefor organizations as diverse as Fortune Magazine,the Society of Human Resources Management, theOrganizational Development Network, BenefitsManagement Forum, World At Work, and theBaltimore Chamber of Commerce. Mark earned hisgraduate degree in Organizational Psychology atColumbia University. He has been quoted in theWall Street Journal and was the subject of a featurearticle in Computerworld Magazine concerningrecruiting and retaining technologists. He has alsoserved on the boards of several non-profit organi-zations and is currently completing his first book,"The Alchemy of Effective Leadership Changes -How to Transform Yourself, Your Team, and YourOrganization".

MODERATOR

Joy KostaAs Director of Talent Development and LeadershipCommunities at The Human Capital Institute, Joybrings twenty-five years of experience in multiplefacets of organizational development, humanresources and business management with anemphasis in customer satisfaction, service quality,process improvement, and applying the MalcolmBaldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. Asfounder and President of Performance Partners inHealth Care, a company dedicated to building bet-ter patient experiences, she has authored severalcurriculums in leadership and staff development,and co-authored with Harold Bursztajn, MD SeniorClinical Faculty member, Harvard Medical School,Building a Treatment Alliance with Patients andFamilies.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This White Paper is made possible by Vurv, spon-sors of HCI's Comprehensive Onboarding Track.

ABOUT VURV TECHNOLOGIES

Formerly Recruitmax, Vurv Technology has arelentless passion for delivering world-class tech-nology that helps top organizations find, developand manage the workforce with unrivaled efficien-cy and success. With solutions for recruitment, onboarding, performance and compensation man-

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agement, Vurv helps organizations unlock the cre-ative energy, talent and passion of their people.

ABOUT THE HUMAN CAPITAL INSTITUTE

The Human Capital Institute is a catalyst for inno-vative new thinking in talent acquisition, develop-ment and deployment. Through research and col-laboration, our programs collect original, creativeideas from a field of top executives and the bright-est thought leaders in strategic HR and talent man-agement. Those ideas are then transformed intomeasurable, real-world strategies that help ourmembers attract and retain the best talent, build adiverse, inclusive workplace, and leverage individ-ual and team performance throughout the enter-prise.

The Human Capital Institute gratefully acknowl-edges the financial and volunteer contributions ofour Underwriters. They include:

- ADP: VIRTUAL EDGE- AIRS- AUTHORIA- AXIOM CONSULTING PARTNERS- AXSIUM- BATRUS HOLLWEG INTERNATIONAL- BERNARD HODES GROUP- BEST SOFTWARE- BROADBOOK TECHNOLOGIES- BUCK CONSULTANTS- CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT- CENTER FOR TALENT RETENTION- CLEAR PICTURE- CORNERSTONE- CORNERSTONE ON DEMAND- CUSTOMINSIGHT

- DBM- DNL GLOBAL, INC.- DOUBLESTAR, INC. - ECONTINUUM- FIRST ADVANTAGE CO. - HAY GROUP- HCR SOFTWARE- HEWITT- HR CONSULTING- HUMAN CAPITAL MAGAZINE- HRSMART, INC.- HYPERION- IBM - ILLUMA- INSALA- JOBSTER, INC.- JWT EMPLOYMENT COMMUNICATIONS- KELLY SERVICES- KENEXA- LOMINGER LIMITED INC.- MONSTER CANADA- MENTTIUM CORPORATION- MONSTER GOVERNMENT SOLUTIONS- MONSTER.COM- MONSTERTRAK- MONSTER JOBS- MULTI-HEALTH SYSTEMS- MYBIZOFFICE, INC.- ORACLE- PEOPLECLICK- PLATEAU SYSTEMS LTD- PREVISOR- RECRUITMENT AGENCY ASSOCIATION- SABA SOFTWARE, INC. - SELECTMINDS- SEQUENT, INC.- SKILLSNET CORPORATION- SOFTSCAPE

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- SUCCESSFACTORS.COM- TALEO CORPORATION- THELADDERS- THE RIGHT THING- THE NEWMAN GROUP- TALENTTRACK- TMP WORLDWIDE- TOWERS PERRIN- UNICRU- VANGENT- VELOCITY RESEARCH GROUP- VURV TECHNOLOGY, INC.- WEBHIRE- WORKBRAIN- WORKSTREAM, INC.