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by Diego Pérez Morales

Integrating new employees into a company is a delicate process that requires careful planning and execution. A well-structured onboarding program can make a significant difference in how quickly and effectively new hires adapt to their roles. By implementing a comprehensive approach that includes checklists, the assignment of ‘buddies’, and clearly defined goals for the first 30, 60, and 90 days, companies can ensure a smooth transition that benefits both the employee and the organization.

Checklists are an essential tool in the onboarding process. They provide a clear roadmap for new employees, outlining the tasks and responsibilities they need to complete during their initial days. This not only helps them stay organized but also reduces the feeling of being overwhelmed. A well-crafted checklist should cover everything from administrative tasks to introductions with key team members, ensuring that no important step is overlooked.

Assigning a ‘buddy’ to new employees is another effective strategy. A buddy is an experienced colleague who can offer guidance, answer questions, and provide support during the initial phase of employment. This relationship helps new hires feel more comfortable and connected within the company, fostering a sense of belonging. The buddy system also encourages knowledge sharing and helps new employees understand the company culture more quickly.

Setting specific goals for the first 30, 60, and 90 days is crucial for measuring progress and ensuring alignment with company objectives. These goals should be realistic and achievable, providing new employees with a sense of accomplishment as they meet each milestone. Regular check-ins with managers can help track progress and address any challenges that may arise, ensuring that new hires remain on the right path.

Communication is key throughout the onboarding process. Regular feedback and open lines of communication help new employees feel valued and supported. Encouraging them to share their thoughts and experiences can provide valuable insights for improving the onboarding process. Additionally, celebrating small wins and acknowledging their contributions can boost morale and motivation.

Ultimately, a successful onboarding process is about creating a welcoming and supportive environment that empowers new employees to thrive. By focusing on clear communication, structured guidance, and achievable goals, companies can ensure that their new hires are well-equipped to contribute to the organization’s success. As the saying goes, “A good start is half the battle,” and a smart onboarding process is the first step towards building a strong and cohesive team.

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Story by Tammy Perkins

Navigating professional transitions can be a whirlwind of emotions for employees, whether starting a new job or leaving a company. Onboarding is essential for creating a sense of belonging and shared purpose that extends throughout a new hire’s tenure. And this vital initiative should be about more than following a checklist.

Onboarding provides an opportunity to make your newest colleagues feel genuinely connected to the team and confident in their contributions. This ensures they can thrive from day one until their final day with the company.

The importance of onboarding

The first 90 days are a crucial time for employees to establish themselves and for leadership to set the tone. It’s a great time to encourage new hires to envision their contributions to the business’s success. When leadership actively engages and guides new team members through this process, it fosters a sense of alignment with the organization’s goals. This transforms onboarding from a routine task into a long-term motivation, engagement, and loyalty initiative.

Yet too often, companies miss the mark. A recent Gallup poll found that only 12% of workers strongly agreed that their firm excelled in onboarding them, and just 29% said they felt supported and fully prepared to start their role. These numbers reveal a huge opportunity gap. When companies approach onboarding as a mere formality, new employees can feel disconnected and disengaged, which leads to costly turnover and lost potential.

Offboarding is another aspect of the employee experience that companies overlook. But it’s worth noting that how we support workers as they leave is just as important as onboarding them. A Gallup poll of 150 Fortune 500 CHROs found that just 10% considered their employer highly effective in managing departures.

Leaders play a vital role in connecting employees to their colleagues and organization, especially during transitional seasons. (more…)

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by Lindsey Witmer Collins

Taking the right perspective on feedback is half the battle. Here are a few golden rules to keep in mind.

1. All feedback is a gift. 

As an app developer, I conduct plenty of user testing during the design phase of our products. But it’s never quite the same as your product fully being out in the wild, playing a part in your users’ lives.

Think about how often you’re asked for feedback. You go to a restaurant, then you get a text asking how the service was. You get your bike repaired, the store owner asks you to rate them on Google. You buy a new laptop, and an email hits your inbox asking how you’re liking it.

Organizations go to great lengths to get a sense of how their customers feel and what they think about the product or service. Any time you can hear straight from the source, it’s a gift—a gift that helps you ask questions that matter in the next iteration of your business.

An example: In the first iteration of Scribbly’s ordering user experience, I generated a preview of the customer’s book cover. A prospective customer sent me a note that she wasn’t sure the illustrated likeness of her niece was good enough.

This was someone I knew, and she sent me a text about it. I was grateful; some people won’t tell you stuff like this, especially if they’re your friend and want to be supportive. I sent her a preview of the full book with its other illustrations of her niece expressively moving through the jungle adventure. Seeing all of it together, she changed her mind.

What I learned is that the cover wasn’t enough. I needed to show the whole book.

This is an expensive thing to do for every prospect, but I knew then that it needed to be done. I changed the ordering process because of this, and conversion skyrocketed.

2. Maybe it’s them. Maybe it’s you. It’s probably still valuable. 

My children never knew their grandfather, my dad, who occupied such a huge place in my life and childhood. So I had the idea of creating a Scribbly book about him and his life that I could share with my kids. I wanted to tell them about how he grew up on a farm with nine siblings, a lot of sweet corn, and a legendary pickle picker; how funny he always was, and how talented, too. All of this in a vibrantly illustrated bedtime story, hardbound with sewn binding and a premium, soft-touch matte cover. I would write the story and use AI for the imagery, since that’s what Scribbly does.

One family member took great offense to the entire idea. They suggested that making something with AI bearing the image and life of someone who has passed amounted to, more or less, sacrilege.

Getting harsh feedback from someone so close to me, it stung. Still, I held it up to the light.

I like it a lot better now.

3. Don’t be precious. 

I can use honest feedback. I could’ve used more of it my whole life.

Nice people won’t always tell us the truth, so it often comes from someone…less nice. But you can’t let the messenger get in the way of the learning. There’s usually something there—something real, something useful, something you wouldn’t have seen on your own.

Over time, I’ve learned to take feedback objectively, not personally. As a young professional, that wasn’t easy. I wasn’t confident enough, so I was tender. Precious. Everything stung, because I feared it might be true. Deflecting was how I coped with how exposed I felt.

If you feel that way too, consider another way.

Ask yourself: Is there something here for me? What signal is this giving me that could help me improve?

I think about how much energy we spend defending ourselves. Arguing. Posturing. Pretending. And for what? If you think you’re perfect, you’ll never grow.

For me, I want to keep making things—and making them better. That means staying open. Staying curious. Staying humble, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Feedback isn’t always easy. But it’s how we get sharper. Smarter. Stronger.

It’s not a threat to who we are. It’s a path to who we could be.

Lindsey Witmer Collins is the founder of WLCM App Studio.

This post originally appeared at fastcompany.com

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by Mark C. Crowley

Uncertainty has become a defining feature of life today, a reality that challenges workplace leaders to adapt rapidly, make decisions with limited information, and foster stability amid constant and sometimes highly erratic change.

At the same time, this uncertainty directly affects employees, making it incumbent upon leaders to provide the support and direction their teams need to successfully navigate an unpredictable world with both resilience and clarity.

It goes without saying that the role of a leader has grown increasingly more complex, requiring us to instill stability, foster adaptability, and maintain focus without being overwhelmed by the relentless pace of change.

In just the past month in America, we’ve witnessed the introduction, removal, and reintroduction of tariffs, massively disrupted supply chains, a whipsawing stock market (putting everyone’s retirement savings at risk), major companies mandating a return to office work, and the emergence of artificial intelligence technologies—innovations sparking equal parts excitement and fear as they reshape industries and raise questions about job security and the future of work.

It’s a lot for all of us to deal with.

Through my own leadership experience, I’ve learned that it’s absolutely pointless to try to control chaos—and far wiser to coach teams on how to thrive in spite of it. The following are five strategies I’ve used over the course of my career that workplace leaders can adopt to help their people negotiate complexity and perform at their best—regardless of what turbulence the universe throws our way:

1.   Be a Rational Optimist

In today’s world, it’s all too easy for pessimism to seep into our consciousness and negatively shape how we interact with those we lead. Being an abject pessimist, however, is entirely at odds with effective leadership, as it curtails productivity, stifles creativity, narrows perspective, and stands in the way of meaningful progress.

Yet, while pessimism can directly undermine progress, leaning too far into optimism also carries its own risks. Effective leadership requires striking a balance—offering hope and inspiration while remaining realistic about the challenges ahead.

In his book Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes, New York Times bestselling author Morgan Housel makes this exact point by urging leaders to be “rational optimists.” He emphasizes that our role as leaders is to imbue a deep belief in people that difficult challenges can indeed be overcome, while also being very honest about the strong likelihood that they’ll face setbacks, surprises, and disappointments along the way. (more…)

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by Jay Titus

For years, business leaders have preached the power of learning and development. But let’s be clear: A company that has a well-funded learning program is not necessarily one that has a true culture of learning. The distinction is critical.

A culture of learning is not simply a corporate training catalog brimming with thousands of courses that, to be frank, not many may use. It’s not a set of PowerPoint presentations or TED Talks shared over email or posted to Yammer. And it’s certainly not just a “perk” touted in job postings.

A culture of learning is something deeper, more foundational. It is an ongoing, systemic approach to workforce development that sees skill gaps not as liabilities but as opportunities.

Many companies still view employee learning as a box to check, a series of training modules or upskilling initiatives aimed at fixing perceived deficiencies. But in organizations with a true culture of learning, continuous improvement is embedded into the very fabric of how work gets done.

A Deloitte study found that high-performance organizations with continuous learning cultures are 92% more likely to innovate, 37% more productive and 46% more likely to be first to market with new products. The key? A partnership between employer and employee that is based on trust, transparency and shared goals. (more…)