Many of us can remember taking a personality assessment, whether that is in a current position, in a first job - maybe even in college. Personality assessments are typically aimed at identifying strengths and weaknesses. In an educational setting, these assessments may provide the participant with good career matches. In a workplace setting, these assessments can help leadership identify candidate position fit, or overall work team diversity.
You have navigated your new employee through socialization, position training, and overall integration into the organization. They are now confidently going through their day and meeting other co-workers. You have noticed they attend your check in conversations with excitement and suggestions for improvement and began answering questions for newer hires joining the organization.
Now, let’s dive into the core of the onboarding process. If you missed the blog about pre-onboarding, I suggest reading that first and then coming back to this one. We went through the first impression, now the new hire has officially arrived for their first day: the first moment of onboarding. This stage is where the new hire becomes an integrated and productive member of your team. Let's explore this critical phase in the employee journey.
Onboarding is a free, first opportunity to retain your new hires. It allows the organization to set the tone for the new hire experience, while having an opportunity to instill a new culture or proper training. Many organizations focus on the main course of onboarding, and even more often on orientation. There is a less known (but highly valuable) missed step: pre-onboarding. In this blog, we'll explore what pre-onboarding is, how it can positively impact your employees and your organization, and some best practices to bring back to your new hires.
This is an original article from JFF’s Center for Apprenticeship & Work-Based Learning.
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the manufacturing industry hard, and apprenticeship may be one strategy toward a stable recovery.
As the novel coronavirus spread across the country and around the world, many manufacturers had to cut back operations and lay employees off. These moves contributed to the overwhelming surge in new claims for unemployment benefits, which had surpassed 40 million in just ten weeks as of May 23, 2021.
This is an original article from JFF’s Center for Apprenticeship & Work-Based Learning.
Work-based learning refers to meaningful training that takes place at work, usually under the direction of employer coaches and managers, and has been shown to produce high value for both companies and workers.
What does it take to build a truly remarkable team and a high performing organization? At the IMEC 2020 Conference on Enterprise Excellence, leaders in manufacturing, healthcare, education and business will come together to highlight best practices and strategies they use to achieve performance excellence. Despite representing different industries, these organizations have taken a similar path to performance excellence, and as such have overcome common challenges across industry. One challenge that is all too familiar to manufacturers is the workforce crisis. With the rise of the silver tsunami, manufacturers – and other industries – must take strategic actions to protect and build their greatest asset – their people.
When I was leading Organizational Development strategies at my former company, we used to call it the “getting hit by a bus” scenario. Then someone decided that was too morbid so it was rephrased to the “winning the lottery” scenario. In either case, we used the scenario to help the C suite and other senior leaders to think through who would replace their most critical employees if they no longer worked at the company. If your best and brightest employee won the lottery one evening and didn’t show up for work the next day, how would operations continue with minimal disruption to employees, customers, and stakeholders?
Facing the reality that the current workforce is dwindling down due to the silver tsunami sweeping the industry, manufacturers have a hard time finding quality replacement. The silver tsunami refers to the large number of baby boomers who are retiring from the workforce. For manufacturers, this is the majority of workers – they are not only losing employees, but also years of acquired knowledge and skills. It is time have to get creative about finding and developing talent while riding the tsunami wave. The problem is the disconnect between the industry and the general public. Unfortunately, the next generation of workers has misconceptions about manufacturing and trade jobs.
