The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.
Hello and welcome to today’s webinar. I’m Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance, and today we’re gonna be talking about how to onboard new agency employees. And I know this is a question that I get a lot from agency owners, so hopefully there’ll be some valuable insights for you that will help you as you make your next hire.
Before we jump into the substance of the day, I do want to go over some housekeeping things while everybody’s continuing to log into today’s webinar. First of all, the full replay will be available in the library on the SAGA website, so if you’re a SAGA Pro member, you will have access to this as well as all of the other webinar replays that are there.
If you have questions and you’d like to ask them during this live session, just use the q and a function at the bottom of your screen. And you’ll be able to submit the question. I will take the questions at the end from live [00:01:00] participants. If you’re watching this on replay, it won’t have the q and a section.
But instead, you can send an email to me at chip@smallagencygrowth.com and I’ll be happy to try to answer it there. Or you can join the SAGA community on Slack, or you’ll have an opportunity to engage with me as well as other agency owners who may be able to help answer your question. If you’re talking about this webinar on social media, please use the hashtag agencyleadership so that it’s easy for everybody to identify, and if you’d like to access additional resources, whether it’s something that I mentioned during today’s webinar or that you’re interested in learning about outside of this topic.
Just visit smallagencygrowth.com. Use the search engine at the top, and you will find answers to a lot of the questions that you may have. And of course, if you don’t find something, use the Ask Chip functionality there so that you can propose a topic for a webinar, ask a question that, that maybe I can answer for you directly.
All right, with housekeeping out of the way, let us dive into [00:02:00] the substance at hand and I’ll start by telling you what we’re going to be covering here on this session. First I’m gonna talk a little bit about why onboarding is important, and I think most of you probably have a general idea of its importance, but there are some things that you’re perhaps not thinking about in the onboarding experience that will make a difference to other aspects of your business.
I’ll talk about the things that you need to think about as far as onboarding before the employee has even walked through the door. I’ll talk about how your first day with your new hire should look. I’ll talk about the first 100 hours with that new hire so that you can think about how to get the ball rolling correctly.
I’ll talk about how onboarding is really an ongoing process and never truly ends. It’s just there may be less of an emphasis. And then finally I’ll talk about some of the challenges of in virtual versus in person onboarding. And that will be throughout the whole presentation. So with that, let’s go ahead and jump into why [00:03:00] you should care about onboarding.
And obviously if you’re here. , you know that it’s important. You’re already thinking about it, so you’ve crossed the first hurdle. But the reason why onboarding matters is not just because it helps you with the performance of that employee, and it certainly does. The better that you onboard someone, the better that they can get started and start getting into the routine and do things the way that you want them to in the manner that you’ve come to set an expectation with your clients that you will perform.
But that performance is not just their individual performance. It’s helping the whole team’s performance because onboarding is not just about the new hire as an individual, it’s about the whole team, because you need to make sure that you’re integrating them because every new hire has an impact on everyone else around them.
It’s one of the reasons why I encourage agency owners to try to avoid hiring more than one position at a time, if at all possible. Because every time you bring a new person into the mix, it changes the whole team [00:04:00] dynamic and sometimes you uncover new opportunities with that new hire, maybe you uncover something that another employee is now able to step up and do because they have some of their workload relieved.
There are all sorts of things that change when you bring someone else into the picture, and so if you’re able to think about that, And understand that onboarding is not just about that new hire. You will get more out of this process. The other reason, or one of the other reasons that onboarding matters is because it helps with consistency.
And by consistency I mean that you’re setting your team up to do things in a similar way so that you don’t have Sally and Joe doing two totally different things for clients. They should be operating in the manner that you’ve set forth and with the expectations that you’ve established. And onboarding helps to educate that new hire in that process.
Of course, as part of that, you’ll also be taking input from that new hire, ideally, because [00:05:00] onboarding is also about educating you as the owner and educating their manager, because every new hire is going to come in with their own experience. Even someone who’s just coming fresh out of college to that role will have some additional perspective to offer and some ideas because there are a fresh set of eyes looking at our processes and looking at how we do things.
And we should be learning from that and taking advantage of it. That too is part of onboarding. And the other reason that that onboarding matters is because it really drives retention and satisfaction. It helps you to set the table so that the employee knows what to expect from you from the experience of working at your agency.
And if that expectation is set well during the onboarding process, they’re much more likely. To stick around. One of the reasons why employees will leave agencies or frankly other employers is because they thought that the role was something else. Maybe they were sold something different during the hiring process.
Maybe they were sold something different when they first got [00:06:00] there, and then it became something that. they were not interested in excited about, and so you want to make sure that you’re using that or onboarding process to clearly and properly set those expectations because it will lead to a much more successful experience for that hire at your agency.
The other thing to keep in mind, and, and I’ve mentioned that, that I was gonna highlight some of the differences between virtual and in-person onboarding. Good onboarding is especially important if you’re running a virtual agency or you have a virtual role in a hybrid type agency. You need to make sure that you’re bending over backwards in those early stages to, to increase the amount of communication that you’re doing and to do everything that you can for that, that hire who is not picking up things from the water cooler to try to, to find ways to integrate as much of that experience as possible. If most of us think back to our pre pandemic jobs or non-virtual jobs that [00:07:00] we’ve had where we had that opportunity to catch up with people over coffee, hang out in their offices or in their cubicles, stop by and have lunch whenever we wanted.
Those are all part of the experience and they add a lot to onboarding a new hire. And so if you don’t have the in-person experience to offer to that hire, you need to manufacture some of those opportunities to interact with colleagues that might be More challenging than you would otherwise do because they don’t happen naturally.
And so perhaps you can do some of this through Slack, but some of it also should be through Zoom and other video conference tools, and you really want to think about that with those new hires to make sure that they are getting the full experience of working for your agency. So one of the things I always tell agency owners is that onboarding is not something that starts on day one.
And oftentimes I will have an agency owner come to me and say, okay, I’ve got a new hire starting on Monday. [00:08:00] How should I be doing the onboarding? Well, and what I’ll tell them is they’ve already started the onboarding process. The onboarding process starts with the very first conversation, really the first interaction that you have probably over email with the prospective employee.
How you communicate with them, what you communicate to them, the, the overall feel that you give them. That’s all part of the onboarding experience, and so we need to be conscious of that. A lot of times we’re sort of harried in the hiring process. Most small agencies are hiring when they’re already understaffed and they, they just need a resource.
Perhaps someone has left, perhaps we just got a big new client. Whatever it is, there’s a lot of pressure on us as the agency owner to do a lot of things at once. But we can’t cut corners during the recruiting process. We can’t cut corners because it impacts the ability to onboard effectively. And so we want to think about that.
I would also add, it’s important to be evaluating the new hire from [00:09:00] that, the potential new hire from that perspective as well. I’ve never seen a new hire who has improved from the interview process to how they are as an employee. So you’re also, as part of the onboarding, effectively watching them to see how they behave.
Are they punctual? Do they, do they cancel? Do they reschedule? Are they proper and professional in their email conversations with you during recruiting? All of that goes into the mix. And how you address some of those issues and how you work through them with the prospect also carries over to what they will expect of you when they are an employee. So make sure that you’re not treating the hiring process different than you would treat someone who is an actual employee.
In the interview process that you have, as I mentioned before, expectations are so important because part of that onboarding process is making sure that when you’re meeting with them and telling them about the new role, you shouldn’t be sugarcoating it. You don’t want to make it sound miserable, but you want to make sure that they understand that there are, you [00:10:00] know, there’s always things that come with any role in any business, but particularly in agencies.
Where there’s going to be time pressure, or client criticism or all of those kinds of things. Whatever the role has that you know may be difficult for them to handle, share it with them during the hiring process. You don’t want anybody to walk in and have a surprise as an employee. The offer process, the, the actual process of extending the offer, that’s a critical part of onboarding.
So how do you do that? Are you, are you making a phone call to them and offering verbally and then sending a proper offer letter in a timely fashion? I hope you are. That’s the best way to do it. That’s the way that you make sure that you are presenting everything in a very professional and organized way.
And so when you’re sending that message, to your new hire, that’s a good way to establish that you do things the right way. And if you’re doing it the right way, it makes it more likely that your [00:11:00] employees will do it the right way as well. And so once they’ve accepted the offer, you need to think about this transition period.
How are you preparing them for day one? It’s not just saying, you know, we’d like you to start on Monday. March 3rd or whatever it is, and we’d like you to be here at certain time. You want to be clear what’s gonna happen, paint the picture for them. If you can try to provide them with paperwork in advance that they can fill out, that’s even better.
You want to try to really set this up so that they are hitting the ground, not necessarily running, but prepared for day one. And so how you handle this transition period between the offer letter and maybe they give notice to their existing employer and the day that they show up to work for you makes a big difference.
And so make sure that you’re showing yourself as organized. If there are things you need from them as part of that process, ask them for it in advance. If the, you know, if you have a parking situation, make sure that you’re setting up the parking arrangements before day one so that they don’t have to pay for [00:12:00] parking somewhere else and figure it out.
Tell them this is, this is what we have for parking and these are the, the, the systems that we have in place to help you out. Make sure that you have equipment ready. One of the mistakes I see often is, is a small agency hires a new employee for a role that they haven’t had, and they’re scrambling at the last second to try to find a laptop or other equipment for that individual. Make sure that you’ve lined up software licenses if you need them. You don’t want to be doing all of that on day one or worse after day one with your team member because you know they’re coming and you should be prepared for it. And that again, it shows that you are organized and it will help a lot with setting the right expectation for that team member.
Now in a virtual environment, make sure that you are thinking about these things in advance. If someone needs equipment or information or something like that, and they need it for day one, if they’re not in the same office as you, you can’t just hand it to them. So you need to arrange for shipping, for example, for a [00:13:00] laptop, and make sure it arrives in time for their first day.
There’s nothing worse than being on your first day as an employee and scrambling to figure out how you can even do anything because you don’t have a desk, a telephone a laptop, whatever it is that you need to do your job effectively. So make sure that you’re planning all of this before day one.
But now we’re getting into day one.
They, you’ve told them to show up and they show up, and how do you handle that? So the first thing that you need to think about is what time do they start? And it’s very tempting and I see most employers tell the new hire to start on at the, you know, to come in at the same time that everybody else does. I would strongly encourage that you have new hires start an hour or so after the normal start time.
That’s a good way to make sure that everybody’s there and organized. I can tell you that I had one role that I showed up for early in my career, and I got there before my boss at the time, on my first day, and they [00:14:00] didn’t know what to do with me, and so it caused a lot of confusion. You don’t want the new hire to experience that.
You want them to come in, come into an environment where everybody is already ready. If again, they’re virtual, you wanna make sure that you’ve had time to prepare for your day and you’re not sitting there scrambling and trying to respond to overnight emails or other things that, that you may have to do at the beginning of the day.
Make sure that whenever they show up, you and the rest of the team are ready for it. So schedule that first day start time, not necessarily for your opening time for your agency, but the time that works best to start the onboarding process. And you want to make sure that you have a good welcome in place.
Maybe this includes some swag. If you’ve got logo gear or something like that, or coffee cups. Make sure that you have a nice little welcome kit for them. Make sure that you have that equipment that you’ve pre-prepared for. Make sure that you’ve got a space for them. If you’ve got a physical office, make sure it’s all set up and ready.
Don’t have junk left over from the previous hire. [00:15:00] Make sure that the desk is nice and clean and polished and all that. Make sure that you are making that, that first experience as welcoming as possible. Make sure that whoever is the first person they’re likely to see knows that they’re showing up. I’ve seen many cases where maybe the, the owner knows that the new hire is starting at a certain time, but they haven’t communicated it effectively to the rest of the team.
Again, you don’t want that experience where that new hire walks in and someone says, who are you? Why are you here? Communicate. Communicate with your team. Make sure that they understand that a new hire is starting, and introduce that employee by email in advance. Say Sally Smith is joining and here’s Sally’s background.
We’re looking forward to having her, this is the role that she will have. Be very communicative with your team so that they can be part of this welcoming process and make sure that you’ve worked with them to start scheduling out things in advance for that first day. You want to make sure that part of that welcoming process is introducing them to the [00:16:00] culture of the agency, and that means perhaps taking them out to lunch or perhaps after work drinks or something like that.
I’ll add an asterisk to that. If you’re doing something or planning to do something with your new hire after work, communicate that to them and the rest of the team in advance. So you don’t have a situation where you say, oh yeah, you know, usually we go to the the pub next door with our new hires only to find out that they have a prior commitment that evening or that half of your team already has a prior commitment and so can’t do that.
So think about those things and make sure that you’re preparing for that because that all leads to the experience and that first impression they have of the entire team. Hopefully you’ve shared, as I mentioned before, some of the paperwork in advance, but whatever you haven’t shared in advance, whatever you do need to process that day, make sure that it’s organized, have it all filled out as possible.
If you’ve got information already, fill it out for them. Don’t force them to sit down and, and put down a lot of information on paper or type it in on the computer if you’ve already got it and it’s [00:17:00] right there and accessible. You want to make sure that this is going smoothly. Have a copy of the handbook so that they can have it there to review or share it digitally with them.
However you’re sharing it, make sure that they have access to it right away. All of that goes to the feeling of how organized you are and how well you are preparing them for what they have to do. But now that we’ve dealt with sort of the big picture and bureaucratic stuff, now we need to think about the actual role they’re filling and how do we get them ready.
Part of that is with orientation, and we need to think about this sort of like when you would have orientation, perhaps if you went to college or something like that. You need to explain where everything is. And so you should have someone who is a guide for this new hire, and that may not be you as the owner, it may be someone else, and you want them to, to point out where all the, you know, where’s the coffee maker?
What are the, the local lunch places like? What are the, the resources that you have available? Do you [00:18:00] have an intranet or other kind of online resource? Introduce them to Slack and how you use it. Introduce them to other team members. Walk them around If you’re in a physical office. If you’re not in a physical office, you should be scheduling opportunities for them to talk to the various team members.
Maybe it’s a, a team zoom that day just to sort of welcome them, welcome them, show them everybody’s face. Let them hear voices and understand who’s there and what their roles are. You’ll have to be doing more of this and reinforcing it over time, because it’s overwhelming for many new hires on that first day, and you can’t expect that they’ll remember everything that you share with them, but you want to make sure that you’re starting to bring them into the picture and help them to understand that.
And you need to make sure that not just you, but the rest of the team understands the importance of this first impression that they’re making. And you don’t want people to feel like, you know, someone, someone is too busy to talk to them or say hello on that first day. It really needs to be that welcoming [00:19:00] environment where everybody’s starting to get a chance to get to know each other, and I think the more of that that you do on this first day, the better you’re positioning yourself for what comes next, which is the first 100 hours.
And I choose a hundred hours in part because I got my start in politics and it’s often talked about a president his first 100 days, but it’s really, for me, it’s, it’s a hundred hours. It’s that first two or three weeks for a new hire that is, I don’t want to say make or break, but it, it certainly makes a big difference.
And in those first couple of weeks, you want to have an opportunity for that new hire to, to do a combination of learning and doing. You don’t want to just throw ’em into the deep end of the pool and say, okay, just, you know, start doing all this stuff. Maybe they come in with a lot of experience and so maybe they are pretty ready to start taking on client work or whatever kind of task that you have them slated to do.
But there’s still things that they’re going to need to learn to make sure they’re doing it in the [00:20:00] manner in which your agency expects it to be done. And so you want to have that combination of doing and learning. You don’t want them to just learn. You don’t want to just say, okay, spend the first two weeks training.
Because that gets boring and people don’t, it’s very difficult for them to retain all the information that you’re throwing at them if they’re not also having an opportunity to apply it by doing. So, you really want to have a good blend of it. What’s the right mix? Is it 80 20? 50 50? It depends on the individual.
It depends on the role, and you’ll need to sort of feel that out both during the hiring process, but also be ready to make adjustments as you get going with them. But you want to make sure that you’ve got this blend that you’re setting them up for success. You need to avoid anything that’s going to make them feel overwhelmed.
And so you want to introduce them to things at the right pace. And if they’re picking up things quickly, great, keep giving them more. If they feel, if you feel like they’re starting to, to struggle to understand [00:21:00] either your process or some new platform that you’re using that they haven’t used before, all of that comes into play and you need to continue to modulate it.
And it’s one of the reasons why you need to have really outstanding communication with this new hire. If you are their manager, you need to be checking in with them on a daily basis and making sure that you’re communicating and saying, Hey, how is this going? What do you need? What can we do better? If someone else is the manager, make sure that they are doing those things.
As an owner, it’s your job to coach your other managers to do their job effectively in working with these new hires. So you don’t want to micromanage it, but you do want to coach it, and you want to make sure that you’re having that opportunity to make those adjustments to that new hire’s workload so that they are coming along at a good pace and, and starting to really.
Understand the way that you do things and can start delivering the results that you’re looking for, whether that’s on client service or behind the scenes work [00:22:00] or business development or whatever the role may be. But regardless of their role, they need to be spending time with everyone during these first 100 hours.
They need, they should be set up with a specific one-on-one with anybody that they’re working with directly within your agency. So that they have an opportunity to learn more about what that person’s role is, and they can start to get to know them as a person a bit so that they can interact more effectively.
But even if it’s someone that they may not be working with directly on a regular basis, there needs to be an opportunity for them to get to know them and what they do. So make sure that you’re sprinkling these throughout those first 100 hours, those first two to three weeks. You don’t want to necessarily, batch them all up and have them, you know, meet with six people in one day and, and really just kind of throw all that information at them, but spread it out and have them do a one-on-one each day, for example, where they’ll have an opportunity to start building those relationships and building that understanding of how the agency works and what it [00:23:00] does.
Make sure that you’re sharing in that process what they need to know to do their job well. You need to be communicating to them about who your clients are, what kind of work that you’re doing for them, how they fit into that picture and why the work that they’re doing makes a difference. You need to make sure that you’ve got processes in place so that you don’t just say, go take that hill, but you can say, go take that hill, and here is how we typically do it.
If you’ve got someone who is coming into place and they’re, they’re replacing someone who may have left, you want to try to, if at all possible, have their predecessor document their processes very clearly in advance. And you should have processes documented generally, but there are always opportunities to document more specifically, particularly during a transition period and flagging anything in that process that is particularly timely and important.
For example, if you’ve got a client who you’re in the middle of working on a big event that’s coming up next month, [00:24:00] make sure that you’re identifying the specific key outstanding tasks that are in that process that the new hire may be responsible for or may be contributing to getting done well. So the more documentation that you have, the better.
At the same time, again, make sure that you’re asking for feedback because they may have ideas on how you can improve the process. They may have questions about the process because some knowledge was assumed when the process was documented and nobody noticed that someone who has not previously worked at the agency might not know what that gap is in the assumed knowledge, and so you want to make sure that you’re factoring that in, and if there are, there’s good feedback or good questions that need to be answered, maybe you update your process so that it includes that so that the next person who takes on that responsibility will have better documentation to work with. But you also want to have this new hire, have the opportunity to see what’s going on.
And so that may mean having them sit in on [00:25:00] client meetings, even if they’re not directly participating, it might have them sit in on other meetings that you have internally because it helps build their knowledge of how it works. If it’s something where they’re going to be participating directly with the client,
give them an opportunity to observe first before you throw them in and start making them actually interact with the client. Even if it’s just one call to observe, that helps a lot so that they can get to know who the players are on the client side, how they conduct the meetings and those kinds of things.
And so that process of observing can be really helpful. And I know in a lot of small agencies, it’s a challenge to do this because a lot of times when you’re hiring, and particularly if it’s a replacement, you may not have a lot of backups since maybe that new hire is the only person who would typically be in that client conversation.
You may need to sit in, or another manager. A colleague may need to sit in on some of those early meetings to make sure that it’s a smooth transition. You don’t want to have a new hire who is forced to, you know, [00:26:00] make policy, if you will, for the agency before they are ready. And so you want to have someone in there who can help guide them and help that new hire take on as much as possible in those first 100 hours, a more observational role, rather than a role of responsibility, particularly when it’s client facing.
And then finally, in those, those first 100 hours, you need to be incredibly supportive. And not just you, the rest of the team. You need to be there and ready to answer questions. And if someone, a new hire gets stuck on something, make sure that you’re being extra responsive in getting them the information that they need, the resource that they need, the decision that they me they need.
All of that will help a lot in setting the, the tone for that new hire that you are there for them, in addition to asking them to work for you and to produce results for your clients. So really focus on those first 100 hours as your opportunity to get things headed in the right direction. If you get too far off track, [00:27:00] is it possible to still recover?
Absolutely. But it’s a whole lot easier if you get those first couple of weeks correct. So now as we think about onboarding on an ongoing basis, how should we be thinking about that? Because it’s, this is not as, as as natural for most people to think of onboarding as something that frankly, most people think about it as just the first week or so.
I’ve already taken you now into the two to three week timeframe, but what happens after that?
So as we go beyond that and we think about onboarding as an ongoing process, the first thing that we need to remember is that as leaders, as managers within our agencies, we all need to lead by example. And so part of the concept of onboarding is that people who do not understand the system or do not know all the players, they will look at others to see how they’re behaving, what they’re doing, how they’re speaking, how they’re communicating via email, how they conduct zooms.
All of that goes [00:28:00] into the overall experience that tells them this is how I should behave within this agency. And that’s a critical part of the ongoing onboarding. But anyone who listens to me regularly knows that. I think the most important thing for any agency employee, and it’s part of the, the ongoing onboarding, but it’s just part of general performance and it’s part of the overall health of the agency as well, which is to have a, without fail, a weekly one-on-one with every one of your direct reports.
And so if you’ve got a new hire, make sure that you’re starting right out of the gate with weekly one-on-ones with them. And I don’t care if you’ve been talking to them every day anyway, because you should be doing those daily check-ins in those first 100 hours that we talked about. Just, and maybe in most cases, just a quick, how’s it going? What can we do? Do you need any help with anything? But you need to have that weekly one-on-one from the, from the out of the gate because it’s the opportunity for you to signal to the, the new hire [00:29:00] that they are valued, that they have an opportunity to meet with you as the, the owner, if you’re their direct manager or whatever direct manager they have, where they can raise their ongoing questions, concerns, they can provide feedback.
One-on-ones are driven by the employee themselves. One-on-ones are that opportunity for them to flag things that might be an issue they wouldn’t schedule a separate phone call or meeting to discuss. So if you want to have really good employee performance and you want to respect an ongoing onboarding practice, you need to have these one-on-ones starting from day one.
And if you do that, and if you’re communicating not just in those one-on-ones, but more generally with the individual, with the team. They will know what to expect. They won’t see a lot of surprises. People hate surprises, even good surprises, most people are a little bit anxious about because they’re never quite sure.
So make sure that you are as much as possible signaling how you see the [00:30:00] future playing out for them, for the business, for the clients. Communicate. And once you think you’ve communicated enough, communicate some more. Try to be as transparent as possible. All of this contributes to that ongoing onboarding because onboarding is about taking on that knowledge and taking on the culture of the agency.
And the only way to do that is if you’re communicating to them and helping them to build their knowledge. Because no employee will ever have the same level of knowledge about your business or about the industries that you serve or the services you provide as you do. In pockets, they may, but in the total package they won’t.
So that’s why you’re always onboarding, because onboarding is that continuous effort to get them to be as knowledgeable, as capable as you and the rest of your team are. And so that’s a, that’s a continuum that will never end until they leave the agency. And you need to make sure that as part of onboarding, it’s, it’s a, it’s a two-way [00:31:00] street.
You should be providing constructive feedback of them or to them. And they should be providing constructive feedback to you. We all have room to grow as leaders, as owners, as managers. Our team always has opportunities to grow in their performance, and the more that we’re able to honestly share with each other how we can improve, the better the results will be for everybody.
Excuse me.
But it also gives us an opportunity to continue to identify ways that we can grow the business. We can grow the business through different kinds of service, through new hires, through different kinds of clients that we might pursue. And so this mutual process of sharing feedback can be very beneficial.
So I would encourage you to be doing that, and you really, again, going back to the virtual versus in-person, if you’re doing things [00:32:00] virtually, you really need to focus on that, even more. Because those are the kinds of things that, that again, typically happen through those casual conversations. And so you need to find ways, whether it’s through the one-on-one or other opportunities to have that chance to be sharing things, to make sure that your new hires, even when they’re a new hire and they’ve been there for six months, nine months, 12 months, that they have the opportunity to share with other team members.
And so that information will start to percolate throughout. So make sure that you’re taking advantage of every opportunity to communicate, to get and give feedback, and to really bring in those new hires as part of your team. So as we tie things up with a bow here, the the important things for you to take away from this onboarding conversation before we move to q and a is that you need to be thinking about onboarding from the very first interaction that you have with a prospective hire.
And then you need to work on that [00:33:00] continuum throughout. And focus on communication, focus on giving a good mix of information and learning and doing for that new hire so that they feel like they’re becoming part of the team. They have an exciting role. They feel like it’s interesting and challenging, but not overwhelming.
And as you do more of that with the individual and you work to tailor it to that individual’s needs and style, you will be in a much better place to ensure that you’re getting the results for the agency and for its clients, that you’ll be having the best odds to retain that employee over time, and that you will also be building a culture that can translate to other new hires as they come down the road.
So hopefully this gives you some good perspective on the onboarding process and some insights on the kinds of things that you should be looking at as you bring a new hire into the fold. And so with that, that will end the prepared presentation portion of the [00:34:00] webinar. So this is where the replay itself will end, but will move on to the q and a.
For those of you who are participating live, if you have a question, feel free to use the q and a function on Zoom to do that. And if you are watching this on replay and would like to ask a question, just email chip@smallagencygrowth.com. Of course, if you’re here live and you have a question you’d like to ask, but you don’t want it to be shared with the group, you can also email me and I will try to answer that in a timely fashion as well.
So again, thank you for all of you who are watching on replay. This concludes the replay, and in a moment we will start with the q and a.
