90 Days, 90 Ways

Alexia Vernon

Description

In today’s business environment of slim budgets and ever-increasing demand for demonstrable results and return-on-investment, bringing recently hired team members into your organization efficiently and successfully is one of the most challenging tasks you face as a manager. Emphasizing how to incorporate younger professionals—those in the “Generation Y” demographic that will make up the single largest generation in the workplace by 2016—into your existing company structure, Alexia Vernon’s 90 Days 90 Ways: Onboard Young Professionals to Peak Performance demonstrates how to achieve the goal of getting new employees oriented, integrated, and trained within the first 90 days of their employment so they can make significant contributions to your business.

90 Days 90 Ways is based on nine easy-to-digest strategies for growing your new hires into competent, accountable members of your organization. These strategies include:

how to successfully design the crucial first-day experience for your new young professional

how to identify and communicate the most important concepts required for success in your organization

how to integrate your new hires into your workplace culture

how to develop employees who communicate effectively for maximum impact

how to create employees who deliver results, grow from mistakes, and are accountable

how to keep young professionals focused on their top priorities

how to teach relationship-building and service-orientation within your organization

how to create a possibility-centered culture, encourage autonomy, and foster work-life integration

how to empower peak performance in your employees, and grow the next generation of leaders.

These fundamental strategies are supported by 90 corresponding, practical tactics to help ensure the bottom-line effectiveness of your new-hire training program. Utilizing objective facts and figures; pragmatic, experience-based insights and suggestions; case examples; and hands-on exercises for you and your employees, 90 Days 90 Ways is truly a comprehensive guide to developing new talent which will contribute to your organization’s success.

Sujets

• Efficacité professionnelle
• Efficacité
• Business
• Economics
• Training
• Employabilité, métiers et formations

Informations

• Publié par: Association for Talent Development
• Date de parution: 08 avril 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 5
• EAN13: 9781607286639
• Langue: English

Extrait

“Alexia has a keen understanding of the young professionals who are overwhelming the workforce. She is truly a master at developing their professional, communication, and leadership skills. Her intelligent coaching approach to understanding this segment of our workforce is timely and purposeful to the success of all sizes of companies. This wise, witty, and readable book should be required reading for everyone who is in HR or has management responsibility of young professionals. It is the definitive guide to onboarding and retaining young professionals in your company.”
Jille Bartolome, MCC, president of Inner Beauty Institute
“Alexia is revolutionizing how we prepare new nurses for the demands of the workplace in Nevada. In 90 Days 90 Ways, she shows she truly understands how to grow a new generation of ethical, high-impact communicators and leaders from day one. This will help employers increase efficiency while improving employee retention.”
Doug Geinzer, CEO of Southern Nevada Medical Industry Coalition
“Onboarding has been viewed for too long as an exercise in compliance versus an integral part of strategic planning. If you want to keep the talent you’ve worked so hard to attract, Alexia’s words should extend well beyond HR to the highest levels of management.”
Emily Bennington, author of Effective Immediately: How to Fit In, Stand Out, and Move Up at Your First Real Job
“Alexia Vernon has written a brilliant roadmap for onboarding success. 90 Days 90 Ways is definitely a go-to book for those looking to make the most out of their current onboarding process as well as for those looking to create one that can help anchor the knowledge, skills, and abilities of new hires. Alexia’s insight into both the needs of the employee and the needs of the organization are spot-on, and shows why Alexia is such a great thought leader in this area.”
Jason Gardner, CPLP, Owner of FlipChart This and President of ASTD Greater Las Vegas
“Alexia offers up a fluid, fun, and insanely useful conversation for all hiring managers, HR professionals, and trainers. Studies show that the connectivity created in an employee’s first 90 days is crucial, and this field guide for onboarding will help you ensure your practices set people up for success and satisfaction.”
Lisa Haneberg, author of 12 business books, including Coaching Up and Down the Generations

© 2012 the American Society for Training & Development
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
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ASTD Press is an internationally renowned source of insightful and practical information on workplace learning and performance topics, including training basics, evaluation and return on investment, instructional systems development, elearning, leadership, and career development. Visit us at www.astd.org/astdpress .
Ordering information: Books published by ASTD Press can be purchased by visiting our website at store.astd.org or by calling 800.628.2783 or 703.683.8100.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012934023
ISBN-10: 1-56286-816-0
ISBN-13: 978-1-56286-816-1
PDF e-book edition ISBN: 978-1-60728-663-9
2012-1
ASTD Press Editorial Staff:
Director: Anthony Allen
Senior Manager, Production & Editorial: Glenn Saltzman
Project Manager, Content Acquisition: Kristin Husak
Associate Editor: Heidi Smith
Indexing: Abella Publishing Services, LLC
Cover Design: Ana Ilieva Foreman
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1: Young Professional 411
Why the Focus on 90 Days
Habits to Keep
Balancing Multiple “Things”
Collaboration
Respect for Difference
Commitment to Learning
Recycle-the-Box™ Thinking
Habits to Reshape
All-Nighters
Senioritis
The What’s My Grade? Mentality
Success Is About the Individual
The Loudest One Wins
Chapter 2: Create a Knockout Day One
Begin Day One Prior to Day One
Orient Around an Engaging Task for the Day
Give Time to Customize the Workspace
Let Michael Scott Lead Your Office Tour
Make Nice With Information Technology (IT)
Set up a Lunch Date
Get to Relationship Building
Schedule a Quick Date With HR
Address Lingering Anxiety
Introduce the Focus for the Week
Tweet-Sized Takeaways
Chapter 3: Give Them What They Need to Know to Succeed
Articulate Role Responsibilities Clearly and Create Accountability
Share Company Vision, Mission, and Core Values Again and Again
Reveal Company and Team Short- and Long-Term Goals
Focus Training on What’s Relevant
Be Proactive and Teach Young Professionals Integral Systems and Procedures
Explain the Chain of Command
Be Transparent About the Promotion Channel
Co-Create a Career Development Plan
Have Young Professionals Identify Their SWOT
Provide Relevant Contact Information
Tweet-Sized Takeaways
Chapter 4: Integrate Them Into Your Workplace Culture
Hook Young Professionals Into Unique Cultural Features
Bring Your Company’s History Off the Web and Into Your Work
Demystify Company and Field Jargon
Match Young Professionals With a Peer Buddy
Set Up Meet and Greets With Key Contacts
Be Transparent About After-Hours
Give a Role at Meetings
Admit When You Have Egg on Your Face
Co-Create a Culture of Global Responsibility
Connect Book Knowledge to the Realities of the Workplace
Tweet-Sized Takeaways
Chapter 5: Build High-Impact Communicators
Exchange Communication Preferences and Styles
Keep Communication Audience-Appropriate
Illuminate Generational Preferences
Make Opinions Sub Vs. Main Arguments
Identify the Call to Action and Work Backward
Weed Out Vocalized Thinking
Take Your Audience With You
Curb People Pleasing and Puffing
Make Not Having an Answer an Acceptable Answer
Develop Strong and Succinct Presentation Skills
Tweet-Sized Takeaways
Chapter 6: Ensure a Return on Your Expectations
Be Transparent
Co-Create Means for Assessment
Find Your Employee’s Motivators
Create a Coaching Culture
Do it Early…and Often
Be Open to Coaching
Make Mistakes Teachable Moments
Uphold Consequences
Reward Outstanding Performance
If it’s Not a Fit, Let Them Go
Tweet-Sized Takeaways
Chapter 7: Keep Their Focus on Their Focus
Zero Tolerance for Triangulation
Always Have a Filter Question
Say Yes By Saying No
Use the Payoff as a Carrot
Keep an Eye on the Two Steps Ahead
Time Leadership Trumps Time Management
To Do or to Delegate…Know the Difference
Get of Your Own Way By Getting Out of Your Head
Encourage a Praxis Approach
Assign “Vice” Work
Tweet-Sized Takeaways
Chapter 8: Develop Impeccable Customer Service Skills
Frame Customer Service as a Form of Networking
Listen for What Is Being Said
Listen for What Is Not Being Said
Ask Questions From a Place of Curiosity
Mirror Back What You Observe
Make People Feel Validated
Let Everyone Get What They Need
Show Them How to “Hold the Beach Ball”
Give Authority to Make Low-Level Decisions
Administer Trial Runs
Tweet-Sized Takeaways
Chapter 9: Grow Employees Who Create Company Calm
Create Employees With a Possibility-Centered Mindset
Encourage People to Feel What They’re Feeling… for 90 Seconds
Develop Proactivity Over Reactivity
Zap Conflict
Bring in Some Old-Fashioned Forgiveness
Kill Fear Mongering
Get Them Organized Their Way
Be Mindful of the Learning Curve
Encourage Outside Interests
Value Privacy and “Off” Time
Tweet-Sized Takeaways
Chapter 10: Inspire Great Performance
Be a Mirror for What You Seek
Let Yourself Learn From Them
Make Yourself Accessible
Give the Gift of Trust
Push Young Professionals Outside Their Comfort Zones
Let Employees Have Input
Proselytize Mentorship
Invest in Their Learning and Development
Provide Opportunities to Lead
Your Tactic
Tweet-Sized Takeaways
Afterthought
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Index
Introduction

“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”
Sir Cecil Beaton
If you have freely chosen to pick up this book—which I hope you have, for forced learning just like forced therapy rarely yields good results—you most likely employ, supervise, train, or are in some way responsible for the success of new hires. A large percentage of these employees are likely young professionals—by which I mean employees between the ages of 18–30. (The generation of employees born between 1978–2000, typically referred to as Generation Y or Millennials, will be the largest generation in the workplace by 2016.)
Unlike picking up this book, you may not have a lot of choice in who these young professionals are, and yet you are tasked with getting them “on board” and to peak performance by the end of their probationary period. Most likely there are a lot of forces working against you successfully completing this mission: other employees with competing interests and needs, a laundry list of your own responsibilities, or unfulfilled professional dreams that make you daydream and Internet search more than you would care to admit. And then there’s the term “onboarding” itself. It’s yet another piece of jargon you’re supposed to care about.
So you’ve half-heartedly picked up tips wherever you could find them on this onboarding thing—which I’m defining as “getting new employees oriented, integrated, a