How To Welcome A New Employee To The Team

Overall, we’re pretty terrible at hiring.

Despite mountains of evidence of their ineffectiveness, most companies still utilize unstructured interviews run by just the management class to make hiring decisions. And onboarding is no better. Left in the hands of many a well-meaning, but legally-obligated, human resources department, most employees are welcomed to their new company with reems of compliance manuals and auto-playing slide decks designed, not to show them the ropes, but to shove upon them the rules.

But there’s a better way to welcome a new employee to the team — one that dramatically increases both the employee’s engagement and the willingness of new team members to engage with her.

My friends Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy recently published their great book, No Hard Feelings — which is all about the role of emotions in the workplace. In that book, tucked away almost as an aside, Mollie West Duffy shared how her former employees (IDEO’s San Francisco office) welcomed her with what they called an “enterview” (a portmanteau of “enter” and “interview).

Everyone who had interviewed her during the process (and in my book Under New ManagementI outline why it MUST be more than just a manager or two interviewing candidates) shared with her why they are excited for her to join the team…