Onboarding Isn’t Enough: You Need to Integrate Your Executives

In “Onboarding Isn’t Enough” (Harvard Business Review, June 2017), Michael Watkins writes, “Many businesses think they are doing a good job of executive onboarding when they actually aren’t. Nearly all large companies are competent at the administrative basics of signing up new hires. However, many do surprisingly little to help onboarding executives understand the business, integrate into the culture, and connect with key stakeholders. Companies vary vastly in how much effort they put into the integration of executive hires, with major consequences for time to performance, derailment rates, and talent retention.”

The evidence from research into onboarding effectiveness conducted by Genesis and Egon Zehnder for the article indicates that many organizations are adept at onboarding mechanics, but fall short in helping a new hire build key relationships and integrate with the organizational culture.

To help organizations get a feel for how well (or not) they are onboarding their new leadership talent, Genesis developed an Executive Onboarding Effectiveness Assessment. This free tool is designed to help HR and talent acquisition professionals quickly pinpoint how their organization performs on the following 4-level spectrum of support:

Sink or Swim: Companies at this level do little more than provide a new executive with space and basic resources, such as technology and assistants.

Basic Orientation: This level involves sharing information about company policies, team member evaluations, organizational structure, strategy, and business results. Essentially, the company provides raw data, and the new leader studies and interprets it independently. If the executive is given anything more qualitative, there is no support to ensure that its significance is well understood.

Active Assimilation: At this level, the company organizes meetings with key stakeholders to accelerate a transfer of deeper knowledge about the business, the team, the culture, and strategic priorities.

Accelerated Integration: At this ideal level, the company orchestrates custom-designed experiences that enable a new leader to integrate more fully and rapidly. 

Take our assessment to find out how good a job your organization does of onboarding and integrating newly-hired executives. Then, download our nine-page guide “How to Successfully Onboard and Integrate Your Executive Talent,” to gain an understanding of where newly-hired executives need the most help, the types of support available, and how transition acceleration advisors differ from leadership development coaches — a crucial distinction for providing the right kind of support in the first ninety days. 

Visit our Accelerate Leaders page to find out more about the customizable transition acceleration solutions we offer for leaders taking new roles.