Culture Focused Practice

All right. Welcome back. This is Dr. Tara Vossenkemper and you're listening to the Culture Focused Practice Podcast. Welcome. Welcome. So today we're going to talk about onboarding, streamlining onboarding for long term success. Don't give me that look. This is an incredible topic. I am, I fucking love onboarding.

I love thinking about it. I love, I don't like doing repetitive tasks. So I don't like doing, I'm not the one that does onboarding at my group because for that reason, and my time is best spent elsewhere, but I love thinking about it and figuring out how we can enhance it and what makes it better and what little thing can we tweak.

And that's, that's the stuff that really is just, man, you know, you've had the experience of being onboarded somewhere and it sucks. And you feel frustrated and you're resentful and like, you don't understand what's expected of you. Nobody is clear. You're asking questions. You're not getting answers. You, you don't even know enough to know what questions to ask.

So someone says, well, just ask me whatever you need to. It's like, fuck, I don't even know what I need to ask you. I don't even know what I'm. I don't, I don't know enough to know what to ask you. It is from my perspective, solely the responsibility of the group, the, the owner of the group, but I would say the visionary, the owner, the person who is, you know, heading up onboarding, at least the conceptual aspects of onboarding. It is your exclusive responsibility to ensure that people are onboarded well. If you ever say to a new employee, just ask me whatever comes up for you. Like, well, what do you, what do you want to focus on next? Or what questions do you have for me as a way for figuring out how to train them or how to make sure they know what they're doing, you are failing.

They don't know enough to know what to ask. They don't know enough to know you have to give them something to start with. It's your responsibility to ensure onboarding is done well, and then in doing that, you are ensuring that they- we'll talk about this -but you also are like embedding little pockets of space for them to ask questions about certain things that you've trained them on.

And so they're getting content and information. Of course, it's onboarding. And they have space and time to ask questions, but the questions are going to be grounded in something that they are being trained on and not just they're thrown to the wolves. And it's like, well, ask me what you need to, they have no idea what to ask.

That's not fair to ask. Oh man, this actually pisses me off. It's not fair to ask a new employee to come up with questions about their job. They have no idea what they're doing yet. It's your responsibility. It's our responsibility as owners, as leadership to make sure that onboarding is done well. So I feel very strongly about that.

Probably because I've been in shitty onboarding situations. I mean, that's just it. It feels lazy. I think, um, not on purpose. I'm not saying that, you know, you're being lazy, but I think it, it ends up feeling kind of like the lazy. It's just like, it just feels lazy to me. And again, that's not like, I'm not, um, lambasting your character and saying you're lazy, if you've done this, I'm saying that we need to think more about it and also we need to take the position of the employee joining us, who.

Has no idea what they're doing and stepping into something entirely new. So it's not fair to ask them to do that. Um, that's why onboarding, that's one of the reasons why it's important. is the level of frustration that it can create in people when it doesn't go well. And then we know if there's frustration, like immediately, then you've got this poor, this little, um, a little bit of like a foul taste in your mouth as a new employee.

And you start to kind of question, like, did I make the right, did I make the right decision being here? And I don't know if this is the right fit for me. So right away, now you also have somebody who's questioning whether or not they should be there, which psychologically, emotionally isn't going to feel safe for them, like they're wondering about us, the system, the group, and they're questioning, that's not a good experience for a person who's new at your place of employment.

So, we're going to talk about How to streamline hiring, onboarding. Whoops. Not hiring, not hiring today, Tara. Streamline onboarding. And we're going to talk about when we do that. Yeah, no, let's just get into it. Okay. Done talking, done talking about it. I'm just going to now get into it. Excuse me, just real quick.

Um, some onboarding, like really common mistakes. So just sort of like checkmark in these, in your mind, if you're doing these things, there's not a structure or plan in place, so you just bring somebody on and it's like, yeah, we'll teach them as we go. Really not helpful. That's one thing. Two, we've already talked about this, but expecting new hires to like figure it out.

Another one, don't do that. Don't do that. Just, just don't. It's such a horrible experience. Such a horrible, it's very disheartening too, I think as an employee to go through that. Three, I would say lack of support that you get them going, you train them for a week and then it's like, cool, you're good. And then you sort of let them go.

I'll give you a little hint. A week is not enough time. Boom. There. I said it. It's out there. Believe me or not. It's fine. So if we get into what makes onboarding effective, there's a few things that come to mind. Number one, and listen how these speak directly to the mistakes that are really common. Number one is clarity from day one.

There's a couple different types of clarity. So I would say there's like two offshoots for this. One is that there's clarity on the role. So of course, there's like What's expected in this role? What are the metrics that we want to see you, that we're going to track for you, that we want you to pay attention to? How does this role fit into the larger system? How does your, this role or the role intersect with others at the practice? On a day to day basis, this is what your job looks like, so to speak. That's, that's one sort of onboarding and onboarding to systems. Like we use this system, we use this system. It's expected that you do blah, blah, blah in this system, here's something you're not going to access it much, but it's important to know, you know, here's where you can find everything. Literally just getting them really clear from day one. You're talking about these things. That's one, one sort of offshoot is the logistics of the role and what's expected.

Excuse me. The second one. Is structure and clarity around the onboarding process. So this one, it might seem meta, but it's not that meta. Basically, if you know that your onboarding process is 90 days and you know what you want them to do on week one and on week two and on week three and who they need to connect with, put that in writing and give it to them.

They should know this thing. They deserve to have clarity and the employees should also know what the onboarding process looks like. And so that's the second piece of clarity, not only about, again, what's expected of them in their role, but also what they can expect in the hiring, the onboarding process, excuse me.

So from start to finish, how long it is, who's involved, all of those things. That's one thing. Second thing. So one thing being clarity, clarity from day one. Second thing is that your onboarding should just be infused with culture. Everything you do should be culture centric. You're going to think I'm fucking nuts, but it's so much easier said than done.

Wait, no, no, no, no, sorry. That is not what I meant. It's easier, it's easier than it sounds. That's what I meant to say. Thank you. Oh, my goodness gracious. I was just, I think I was just talking without thinking, which never happens. Never. I never do that ever. Such a surprise. Um, it's easier than it sounds.

There we go. That's what I meant to say. A couple of ways you can do this. So actually I have to say before you need to go read The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. C O Y L E probably one of my top three favorite books related to business of ever, ever, ever. He is. the way he writes about it is incredible and sort of breaks it down.

I have nothing but uh, rave things to say about it. So I'm not going to spend the whole time talking about that, but go read it. The book, the, the very essence of the book is that, um, culture is sort of divided into three broad concepts. One is a purpose. One is belongingness, say, I would say safety slash belongingness, and one is a vulnerability.

And you need these three things at a... the most successful cultures, like in business have these three things on a consistent basis. So when I say culture infused, I'm also filtering through purpose, belongingness, vulnerability. Those are always in my head when I'm talking about culture, but I'm also thinking from an EOS perspective of core values. I'm thinking of core focus. I'm thinking of vision. There's overlap between in my mind, there's overlap between, uh, EOS and culture code. So I'll, I I'm when I talk about them, sometimes I might like bob and weave between them, but they just, they're so inter interconnected in my mind. I it's, Yeah, they're very interconnected.

So when I say culture infusion, here's what I'm talking about is every step of the way you should be thinking about things like belongingness and safety, vision, vision slash purpose, core values, how we exist together, vulnerability, all of those things need to be part of your onboarding process.

From the outset, this means when somebody joins your team, here's an example of what this could look like. When somebody joins your team, for example, You could do something as simple as give them a welcome gift that's personalized to them. It's so small. That's such a small move and it sends a profound message.

It says, we see you, you're important to us. We want you here. I'm not just talking swag with your company logo. If you do that, you need to also put their name on it. It needs to be something that is personalized to them. Even a little gift basket with snacks that you know that they like. If somebody, we do a little onboarding, just a new hire survey, like what's your favorite candy?

This hire basket that we are going to get that a new hire is going to get includes little pieces of their, of their favorite things. Like we see you. So there's a sense of the entire time. There's something about belongingness, which ensures it ties directly with safety. You're one of us. You belong here.

You're safe with us. It's like, we're here, we're here together. You're one of us now. So belongingness is something that's always filtering through my head, every step of the way. Anytime questions, inviting questions, normalizing fears, those sorts of things, ensuring that, when you're making mistakes, like, Hey, I fucked this up the first time I did it so I want to actually talk to you about this again. Seems small, but that's like a vulnerability message. Like it's okay to make mistakes. You're sending that message to people. So my point is every step of the way, you should be also thinking about how does this thing that I'm doing ensure that I'm living out our value. See, thinking about EOS, which is culture as well. So trying to live out your core values that you're talking about them right away, for example, or you are, you know, talking about your, your mission, why we're doing this, which at that point we're looking at vision from an EOS perspective or purpose from a, um, uh, culture code perspective.

It's infused. That's my point. Like everything culture should be infused in the onboarding process. Specifically how that looks. I told you one thing that we do right away is that we will, um, you know, give a little welcome basket with some of the favorite things and some, we also do some role specific gifts.

So if somebody's coming on, um, I have a group therapy practice, mental health therapy. So if somebody's joining our team, if they're a clinician, we'll do therapy specific books, like The Gift of Therapy by Irv Yalom and he's, you I'm a total existentialist at heart. And so Irv Yalom is just the bee's knees in my opinion and that book is, was a pivotal for my own clinical, clinical development, excuse me, clinician development. And so that's a book that's important to me. That's meaningful. I think it's really talks to, speaks to a lot of like clinicians. So we gift it, but we also do this bomb ass pad folio. That's like, um, I think it's faux leather, but it's really nice.

And it's got the counseling hub logo. And then we get there name engraved on it. Boom. It's done. Like we have, it's, it's, uh, unique to the practice. It's kind of swag, right? Like it's specific to the practice, but also your name is engraved on this. Like we create this for you specifically it's yours and it's functional, which feels important.

I hate gifts that I don't want to get a gift I'm just going to throw away. Don't give me you know, a key ring. I'm not going to fucking use it. I already have enough key rings and I throw them away anyway. So my point is something functional, something like thoughtful, like everything should be intentionality is actually where that comes to mind.

If you're thinking about onboarding, think about also intentionality. And again, in trying to infuse culture, I got to move past this. I'm, I just could just keep talking about this all day. I don't mean to, you know, drag it out, but with that said, I'm so sorry, one more thing. So we talk about the little gifties.

Also somebody new that's coming on right away they're introduced to values and vision and our accountability chart and how we operate like right away.

It's like, this is who we are. This is how we exist. This is what we do just boom, boom, boom. We want to hit them with that immediately, especially the values piece, because we, I want them to know, we want them to know. This is us. You're one of us now, but also this is who we are and it's really important to us that we live this out and you're here because we think you do.

We already did our assessment. That's how you're at this point right now. So again, this culture piece is infused throughout. Okay. Third thing. So first we talked about, um, clarity from day one, making sure that, you know, being very, very clear about onboarding the, roles, of course, but also the process.

Two is trying to infuse culture in everything you do. Everything in onboarding should be infused with culture. Three, support. So, You could theoretically, if you did onboarding and you all of the training is the exact same, you could automate everything. I love automating. I don't want to do the same shit every day.

I want to automate things that are going to be the exact same. I'm going to automate it because I don't want to keep doing it. That's I get very bored with that sort of thing. What that doesn't do is provide support for a person. And so if you do automate things, as an example, if you're automating videos.

Or if you do train somebody, I say, you don't do videos. You're just training somebody, train somebody, they meet with their mentor, they meet with somebody and then they're like, okay, you got it. Good luck. And then you don't check in with them ever again, or maybe once over the next six months, and it's just to correct them and then ask them to make sure to follow up if they have questions.

That is shitty. That's shitty onboarding. There needs to be ongoing support for a person as they're coming onto your team, as they're joining your team and joining your practice. So if you have a peer mentor, or like a team lead, or like an onboarding liaison, or an onboarding coordinator, or their direct superior, their direct supervisor, Or the visionary at the practice or the boss, whoever the hell it is.

It doesn't really matter. You just have a point person. That person should be engaging in consistent check ins and providing ongoing support for this new hire. It could be a buddy system. I mean, it's that's really simple to do. It's sort of fun for some employees really like that. They like being the buddy.

If you don't want to do that and you'd rather be more formalized and structured than who will do that too. But you need something in place. So that the person joining That's like a person they can go, they know, okay, thank God. Like I'm confused about this, but I can ask them when I see them next. And I see them tomorrow or I see them on Friday or I see them next week.

I can wait, or I can text them. They say, I can text, shoot a text real quick. It provides a level of safety to somebody joining to be able to go to another person and say, I need help with this thing, but please help me. I I'm confused about this. Boom, done. That's your point person. So make sure that you have like a buddy or a mentor or something, somebody that you, you know, embed into the onboarding process.

That's going to provide support along the way. Again, this doesn't have to be the direct supervisor. It can be, but it doesn't have to be. This should be scheduled. This should not be PRN. It should not be as needed. It needs to be scheduled. So it should be part of the onboarding process that you meet with your mentor, or, you know, For the first month you meet twice a week, just for 20 minute check ins for the next month, you meet once a week for 15 minutes or for an hour, the first week, I don't care.

It's up to you, whatever it is you want to do in that regard is up to you. But my point is it needs to be scheduled then. So, okay. One other quick thing. I believe in automating. I, again, I think I said a minute ago, I don't like to do the same thing over and over. I think it's, I'm just bored. I don't want to do the same thing over and over.

So I'm going to automate as much as I can. You absolutely can and should automate. You should not and cannot lose the relationship. You cannot lose the human touch. So if you automate things, what I would encourage you to do is to automate anything that's rote kind of administrative anything that if you're doing the exact same thing every time you onboard like it's the exact same structure that when you're talking about something automate it record a video and do that as part of the onboarding what you should not so something like um any standardized process if you're going over like policies or compliance or an hr welcome packet or like basic training like automate those things What you cannot and should not automate is anything related to like a culture focused conversation or any like, ah, duh, you can't automate feedback, any feedback about stuff, trying to automate engagement.

You're not going to do that. You can't do that. So if you do automate things and you're doing videos, What we have found to be pretty, um, effective, pretty helpful and effective is automating videos and I'll just, let me say real quick, our, you know, our, our onboarding is 90 days and every week is structured where we have, you know, watch these specific videos.

And then we schedule check ins each week. We're also scheduling a check in to not only review the videos with questions people might have, but also just check in, like, hey, how's it going so far? How are you feeling about things? How are you doing? Do you feel welcome? Do you need any additional support?

What can we do to make this seamless for you? What can we do to ensure that you're getting what you need out of this? It, that's the relationship, right? That's the human touch part of it. So make sure that if you automate things, you are also staying connected to that person. So automate training, do not lose, lose the humanity of it all.

I want to finish this up and say, let me just recap real quick. So the things to keep in mind with onboarding or with onboarding, excuse me, make sure you're providing clarity from day one, make sure you're infusing culture throughout your onboarding experience. Make sure you are providing support and check ins.

And again, if you're automating anything with regard to onboarding, which I would encourage you to do, make sure that you do not lose the human touch of it and that you have this, you know, you have the human touch, you have the human component to it. So strike that balance between automation and humanity.

Humanity. Like we're fighting against automation. The humanity of it all. Okay, so just really, really fast. Here's my, here's my ask. Here's what I think you should do. If you have employees, here's what I want you to do. If you have employees, I want you to go to the most recent one at minimum, three at most employees, And ask them, what would have made their onboarding better?

Just one simple question. What would have made your onboarding process better? If you want to do two questions, you could also ask, the first one is a must. What would have made your onboarding better? That's number one, that's a must. Second question you could ask is, what would you, of the onboarding process, what is an absolute must keep?

So you're getting not only what they would want to improve, but what they, what felt very important to them. So I would do those two questions. And if you only want to do one, then go with the first one.

Second thing, if you don't have employees, I would encourage you to think about one of your onboarding experiences. You could think about two. Think about one that you felt good about and one that you felt shitty about. For the one you felt shitty about, ask yourself, what would have made that onboarding process better? And for the one that you felt good about, ask what What was it that I loved? What was it that was helpful?

And from there, then you can start to build out your own, you know, processes basically. So, goodness, this was longer than I thought it would be. I could honestly keep going that we're not even talking about the specifics of this. I felt like kind of meta. We're not even talking about the specifics of onboarding and like things to ensure and how you might structure it.

That's a whole different conversation, but I still, I'd love talking about onboarding. So here's what I want you to do. I already gave you homework. Two other things. If you, actually three, number one, subscribe, make sure you're staying up on all the videos, subscribe. I don't know what button to click, wherever you're listening, but there's going to be a subscribe button somewhere.

That's one thing. Second thing, if you want more, you all know I love EOS. If you don't, you know now, I love EOS, I love Giona Wickman's work, I love Traction, the whole EOS world. There's a bunch of books. There's, I think it's called the Traction Library is what they call it. Um, I do have a free, it's a free Facebook group. I opened this up for, it's the EOS Collective for Group Practices. So if you're interested in integrating EOS, implementing it, making, just ensuring that you're doing it well, that you're surrounded by people who are also doing it, then find us and hang out with us.

Third, if you need more support, find me at taravossenkemper.com/culture-focused-practice. I have a membership for a steal. It's a monthly steal. You get me live for a Q and a and a training every single month. There's a private group. There's a portal with access to all the recorded, all every, all the trainings, all the resources that you want. So find me there if you need me.

Otherwise, I will see you all next time. Thanks. Bye.