Onboard Your Employees Like You Onboard Your Customers

Carmen Smith, Chief People Officer, Coyote Logistics

Effective and structured employee onboarding is all too often pushed to the side these days for lack of time and resources.

It’s dangerously easy to think “This can wait” or “This is good enough” when you’re integrating a new hire to your team; business priorities often demand that attention and resources be committed elsewhere.

But imagine if you brushed off customer onboarding like this.

As an effective business professional, you know that onboarding a customer to your business is critical to building a successful relationship that will generate revenue for years to come.

This is certainly true in the logistics industry where I work. We know shippers will never stop needing people they trust to help them move their freight, and we want to earn and retain that trust indefinitely.

Amid the additional pressure caused by the “War on Talent” in today’s hiring environment, it’s vital to think of employee onboarding in just this way.

You need to onboard your employees to your business with the same intentional commitment to relationship building you use with your customers. If you do, you can grow a committed team, retain talent, and empower employees to embrace your organization’s core values and use their skills to deliver services and results.

Talent Success Through Onboarding

Onboarding employees is more than getting them into the HRIS, enrolling them in benefits and granting them access to systems. A robust onboarding program designed to foster talent success offers in-depth and role-specific training on tools, technology, resources, culture and values.

At Coyote, we invest in onboarding with a goal of talent success as a foundational part of our people strategy. We believe it’s best to mix methods of onboarding to include time in a classroom (physical or virtual) with other new hires and on-demand learning and coaching.

Here is our recipe for success — one borne out by engagement scores that prove we’ve set a foundation for workplace experience and employee value.

1.HR Technology

Customer technology platforms create efficiency and are the foundation of the customer experience. Employees should find similar efficiencies in their HR software to experience this as a truly foundational talent support system. Invest in the right HR technology to provide a streamlined process for paperwork, help outline benefit options and give your new employee a clear opportunity to set up their initial talent profile.

"Effective and structured employee onboarding is all too often pushed to the side these days for lack of time and resources"

When employees can easily document professional experiences, certifications, mobility and career desires in their talent profile, they’ll take a big step toward becoming a source of internal talent for future openings in your organization.

Connect with your technology team to automate profile and equipment set-up for the HRIS to ensure a successful and stress-free first day experience for all hires.

2.Tools & Technology

Spend the time to teach new hires the technology they will use to service your customers or track their daily work. If possible, give them the opportunity to virtually shadow employees in real time to help them understand the tools at their disposal.

If your company uses any bespoke or proprietary industry-specific software, it is worth including it in onboarding even for hires who won’t use it in their specific roles. Interweave company processes and knowledge into training on these tools to help employees further understand the organization’s history.

We do this at Coyote to help rapidly foster a shared sense of experience and expertise for people who may be new to the logistics industry entirely. It creates workplace efficiencies as well as equity for all employees.

3.Resources

Many new hires face a daunting challenge in learning where to go to obtain the resources they need. In a hybrid workplace, it can be even more difficult to simply identify and meet the right people to find what you need, leading to lost time, lost productivity and mounting frustration.

Maintain and distribute a digital playbook that outlines all available resources to help employees become aware of resources they might not know exist and keep them informed of updates and enhancements.

4.Coaching

Providing a live guide to all the tools and resources outlined above is an essential element of onboarding. Coaches gauge the success of new hires and can tailor additional learning or integration opportunities as needed to ensure continued positive growth.

In total, an effective onboarding can take 3-6 weeks in a training or coaching environment. Ensure its lasting success by extending cultural assimilation through an employee’s first full year and be open to holding both in-person and virtual sessions depending upon their needs.

5.Culture and Values

For rapidly growing organizations and especially for those with a global reach, maintaining a strong culture is a big part of organizational secret sauce.

A robust, holistic onboarding program must be deeply rooted in culture, guided by the advancements of technology but brought home by people, in order to bring everything to life.

At Coyote, we have offices across the U.S. in every time zone, as well as Mexico and the EU, and everyone who works within them (and remotely elsewhere) must represent us positively with the shippers and carriers in our network.

We thrive as an organization with a clear mission and identity because of how well we’re able to foster a consistent culture for every employee.

At the end of the day, we all know both customers and teammates stick around for a reason — because of the people they work with.

By effectively communicating and upholding values and culture from day one, you can create an organization full of the kinds of people that will keep both customers and employees coming back.

Logistics

HR Technology

HRIS

Customer Experience