What is Employee “Inboarding”? Onboarding for Employees Who Are Promoted or Changing Jobs Within the Organization

June 9th, 2015
Written by: Elizabeth Richards

TPO has been promoting the importance and value of proper employee onboarding for years—and we are thrilled to see more and more CEOs, Presidents, Executive Directors and HR Executives recognizing that they need to invest in a measurable onboarding process before making significant new hires.

Well, there’s another key group of employees that can benefit from onboarding—or “employee inboarding” as we sometimes call it: Those who’ve been promoted or changing jobs within the organization.

Why Inboarding?

The needs for Inboarding are similar to those of Onboarding: Increasing the time to productivity of the newly promoted employee; identifying a poor fit as quickly as possible; and protect your overall talent investment by increasing retention.

But many managers assume that since a promoted employee already knows the organization, he or she doesn’t need as much guidance as a new employee. They tend to forget that, for internal hires—those changing jobs—the first 90 – 120 days are just as critical as they are for new employees. Here are just a few of the reasons why managers don’t pay enough attention during this important juncture:

• Managers tend to focus on hiring technical skills but don’t think about the cultural fit and how it impacts performance and retention.
• Managers are relieved: “I was swamped, then I promoted “Robert,” and now I’m off to attend to other priorities.”
• The Halo Effect: Because the manager thinks he made a good decision, the promoted employee has a halo around her head.
• Managers perceive that something like Inboarding should be HR’s job, not theirs.
• Managers don’t get rewarded or recognized for how they bring people into a new job–how they train, help the employee become productive and ensure a cultural fit. They get rewarded because they’ve launched a new product or software system or have reached a revenue goal.

What Should the Inboarding Process Include?

Inboarding should be a measurable, data-driven process that has a number of key metrics, reports and milestones, including:

• Weekly and monthly Productivity Assessments and progress captured and measured on Individual Productivity Plan
• Productivity indicators—TPO uses its proprietary Productivity Measurement tools.
• Non-Productive Compensation calculations
• “Bad Hire” Evaluation Guidelines
• End of Inboarding Period Evaluation and reconfirmation of the hiring decision
• End of year company Inboarding Productivity Conclusion

Remember: Before you promote or shift an employee into a new role, make sure there is as rigorous a process in place as there is for bringing on a new employee.