Sunday, May 30, 2010

How I am on-boarding a new colleague into my team and making him comfortable and productive

There have been many reorganizations in my company recently. Looks like almost always we are getting new colleagues, who are required to start contributing immediately.

Recently, James, one of my rock star colleagues from the sales enablement organization moved on to a new job and a new person, Steve, took his job. I have been researching about the best way to on-board colleagues into a new role. The people I spoke to said that the most important thing is to be part of a community of people who will "re-pot" them into the new job without the shock and stress of "re-potting". So i decided to delight the new colleague with a community of people to support him.

When Steve sent me an email asking for access to a demo system, instead of just replying to his email, I created a learning space for him and shared the information with him in the learning space. I suggested a book he should read and told him how to get access to the book. I invited my product management colleagues to join the learning space, specifically set up for Steve. More importantly I also invited James, who played the role very well before, to join the learning space so that Steve can ask him questions and guidance. Steve now has access to content, software and people to on-board him into his new job.

When required, I plan to invite the partners who have integrated with my product to Steve's learning space so that they can share info about the partnership and technical integration with him.

All this interaction is captured in a learning space where Steve is surrounded by two product managers and the person who had his job before. Every one who joined Steve's learning space gets an update on the activities of the space in their mobile phones and can reply directly from their phones if required. I can already feel that Steve is comfortable and is on his way to high performance.

I used SAPStreamwork to create this learning space. If you like what I am doing and would like to try it out in your organization, check out www.sapstreamwork.com. You can have up to 5 activities for free. Go ahead. Delight a new colleague and get the best out of him.

Don't worry about the message on the home page that says, SAPStreamwork is for making decisions. Of course it helps you make decisions. But it can do much more.

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