Inclusive Design for New Employee Onboarding: Whose Job Is It Anyway? With Rubina Halwani

In this episode, Rubina Halwani shared her ideas about Inclusive Design for New Employee Onboarding. This is an important topic, and it's one we'll probably be returning to regularly at TLDC.

With so much happening in our world with job transition, and current social changes highlighting the importance of workplace inclusivity and diversity, Learning & Development is more important than ever. And one of the mission critical pieces  many of us touch is onboarding.

Is inclusivity prioritized in your onboarding? It should be. Give this episode with Rubina a listen, and hopefully it will inspire you to make sure you place priority in thinking about how you are building and managing your onboarding programs.

Rubina's Government Onboarding Process For New Hires

8 Virtual Onboarding Ideas to Welcome New Employees in 2021

Rubina's go-to link for understanding and using inclusive/diverse images.


Luis Malbas  
Hello everybody welcome to the training learning and development community thanks for joining us today we've got a nice group registrations for this already and yeah good morning cam Dawn is in Christiana catesol Darcy's here Christina, Brandon Leticia Kathy, Deseret Hey, Deseret Teresa and see nice to see all of you here. Um, I am very, very happy to be able to, to present to you Rubina helwani, who actually just added this one to the, it was gracious enough generous enough to add this one over to to the agenda to discuss and it kind of is along the lines of a theme that we're taking on a lot more here to DC which is di strategies. We have a an event taking place on November 19. website is almost done. We've got some speakers in play and stuff is getting built, actually have the air meet instance all ready to go. And I'll be announcing it later this week. But we've been is going to start things off talking about inclusive design for new employee onboarding. whose job is it anyway? And, you know, when I saw the title for that, I'm like, Whoa, that is good. That is it. Anyway...

Rubina Halwani  
We should

actually run a poll on that and see what people feel about it. whose job is it anyway, and here are a couple of options is that the l&d person like you like us as a product, petitioners and or let's just say stakeholder, it could be anybody. It could be your Smee or your project owner. Let's just keep it generic. But I really like to hear what what you guys think about it and then also share what what I think about it, too.

Luis Malbas  
So yeah, yeah,

altogether, like any any onboarding experience I've personally had, you know, there is no thought to inclusivity or anything like that associated with at least in my own my own experience and so so I really love this topic. I would love I don't know if you're gonna cover it at all, but I just wondering about remote workers, like how this even like kind of applies to it. And so just so you all know, I've got some questions that are in the ask the question area, the things that we've been going to talk about and kind of serve as chapter markers for this conversation. And I'm just going to kind of sit in the background that Rubina take care of it and then we'll be Now jump in if we've got any questions and stuff, okay.

Rubina Halwani  
Sure. Sounds good. At some point, I may want to pull in Deseret as well to just to get heard,

Luis Malbas  
I love it. I would love everybody to be Deseret. Amazing.

Rubina Halwani  
I will, I will. So I'll introduce her in a little bit. And then and then really talk about the remote experience, because she's the one actually doing that for us right now. Essentially, like going through that experience at work. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining me today and all of us here. I really am learning a lot about dei stuff this year, probably middle of last year to all of this year, really learning about things, shifting the way I operate as an l&d professional, I'm really trying to be inclusive, and then realizing where my inclusivity strengths are already as a designer. You know, I, I've been hearing lots of really good feedback from the folks that I work with on different projects, they're like Roubini, you're kind of an inclusive person. And I've been trying to explore what that means and how to define it, and just try and get some words in my, in my vocabulary of, of, Okay, that's great, but what does that really mean? And then to me, and then how is that that I can bring that forward to you guys as well to in your practitioner experience. So in this last year, of learning about stuff, just to frame it a little bit, um, you know, we we, we see a lot of things that are happening. Nationally, of course, I always use that demarcation of George Boyd really just kind of pushed us forward, kind of opened up our eyes and said, we really need to do something, anything to make life a little bit more inclusive, work a little bit more inclusive, personal rapport with each other, our neighbors, our friends, just everywhere across the board nationally, lots of things are happening. I know it's a polarization time in our lives.

And it's been kind of that way and but nobody likes it, you know, and so how do we move forward, how do we get through all of these different challenges, we have COVID happening at the same time adding another layer of complexity and challenge. People are at home for a good part of of the year, if not more, I'm still at home just for my kids just distancing outside of being a remote worker, just still feeling like I've got to stay a little bit protected, just because I have two children that are under 12 and can't get vaccinated. So that's my, my experience personally. So what do I do about it? How do I feel included at work? How do I make others feel included at work? What does it mean, to me to still even be working in the space that I'm working, a lot of people are reevaluating that. Also, you've heard about the Exodus, the employee Exodus, people are getting tired of where they are, or burned out where they are, or just really evaluating what they want to do with their lives and careers based on either what happened with George fluid, or what happened with COVID. Or what's just, you know, monkey see, monkey do, hey, those people are leaving out and finding better jobs, maybe I can do that, too. Maybe now's a really good time for me to evaluate my career. So if people are leaving, because of the burnout, what's happening is that they're going to other places, and they're starting in other places. And they're getting onboarding training in some way, some fashion some form. Hopefully, I would say if they're not they should be if they're not, we should be leading that kind of charge to make sure that companies are being more inclusive with their onboarding. So that's why I thought this topic was kind of like, pretty, pretty interesting to discuss. A week ago, I put in a post on LinkedIn about who's doing inclusive inclusion in their onboarding training. And I got very, very, very little snippets back. Um, so I think it's one of those nebulous things. It's one of those things where we want to be more inclusive, we're not sure how, and a lot of companies are in that same spot. corporate companies, NGOs, nonprofits, they, they there is a huge push, I have seen that which is really nice to see, you know, target is putting inclusivity there a lot of Fortune 500 that are promoting inclusion, they're making a statement, at least on their website, it's going up to say they want to be more inclusive. How does that happen? Where does l&d fit in, right there in that onboarding seat, in that onboarding, training, trying to make sure that employees as they come on board, feel welcomed, feel a sense of belonging, feel a sense of empowerment, feel a sense of having resources that they need, and support that they need. So if you're designing that type of training, what I want to tell you is that do what you must try what you can do what you must keep your job, it's not about going to the employer and saying this training that you handed to me is not inclusive, and therefore we need to, but there are some, keep your job, keep your environment, keep keep things where they're at, however, um, either for this current place that you're at, or for your next one, try to establish yourself as an authority. When you take on the onboarding training project, or a revision of an old outdated onboarding project, which I've done many times to refresh and renew, and see where you can add in elements of welcome language, welcoming images, welcoming messaging, fine, those supports. One thing I found was fascinating when I was trying to

set up onboarding training at work. I was looking for the actual experience based on me starting in as a new employee, and really thinking about what it is that I would like to have in order for me to operate. There's a difference between understanding orientation versus onboarding, orientation, job, acclamation, onboarding, should be something more. It shouldn't be just about the jobs and the tasks that employee has to do. If you've been given that project to do say, thank you very much. This is great for more orientation training. However, I thought we were going to be doing onboarding training and for onboarding training, I believe we're going to need this, this, this and this, have that discussion at the onset, try to get your stakeholders in the same place in time with you to be able to make sure that if they're committing to inclusion in their mission statement, vision statement, in their, in their in their changes, and you're seeing that, and they're saying that they want to be inclusive, they have to also show that in the work that you are doing, and you can definitely take authority and leadership in this space, I do know that I've been able to do that. And I've been successful with it. And so that's why I want to share that with you. I think if I would have gotten backlash to it, I probably wouldn't, you know, try to try to egg you on, so to speak, because I know there's some people that are open for inclusion, and some that are better not. So please, you know, do what you must try what you can, if you start getting pushback, then then reassess if you want to at this current space in time, but if you think you're going in a in a forward direction in the right way, and you're getting the right feedback, your sneeze are starting to say, Oh yeah, that's oh my gosh, that's awesome. Or they start thinking back to the times where they were going through onboarding or not even a lot of people are putting in onboarding training that have probably never had it, when they started 10 2030 years ago at the job. They know, they want onboarding training, they, they didn't have it, when they started, they have no idea how to even develop it. And so those are some of the experiences I've had. But when I brought in, hey, should we share how an employee can access HR benefits? Or flexibility benefits? or any of that stuff in the orientation? Wouldn't that be helpful? See what they said. And they go, Oh, yeah, I didn't, I didn't really think about that, you know, when you're given the assignment, review it, evaluate it, I do it all the time to figure out where the gaps are, where the missing pieces are, what it is that I need the employee to really have at their disposal. And every piece that you do add in positively, to give them resource to give them welcoming in the language, or the images that you add into your onboarding, training will up the retention rate at a new company. onboarding training is specifically related to ROI. So whatever company you're at, whatever NGO or nonprofit government, wherever you're at, there is an ROI attachment to how well a company welcomes you, gets you acclimated to the job a little bit plus the space, whatever space you're in, either in person or remotely. How well do they invite you into things welcome you into things, bring you in on, on on information, resources, support those first few days, just think about it when when you started a brand new job? Did you get any sort of onboarding or orientation yourself? Or if you didn't, what would you have wished to have had? What would you have wished to have had in order for you to feel that sense of belonging so that when you're making this training, you're able to put that forward? So yeah, rubina's

Luis Malbas  
Okay, if I jump in, I want to see if we can get to some specifics there because I have that as one of your questions like how do you project a welcoming atmosphere and psychologically safe space? Like when you are onboarding and employee

Rubina Halwani  
Yeah, so we so there are I'm I'm, I'm thinking about that carefully in terms of me as an elearning developer, having Deseret come on and into our space, so so I work for the state of Utah and Deseret works for the state of Utah. I came on board as a as a as an instructional designer first, and then we decided to go out we hired Deseret to a lot of that stuff that we wanted to do to make sure that we were being welcoming and having her feel a sense of belonging started even before hire. So I just want to share that some of that With you, you may have some control with it, you may not some of this stuff may belong in your seat, some of this stuff may be a little bit higher. But at least if you know this, you can maybe bring this discussion up, everything is always fair game. When you start off any training project, it's always fair game to have these kinds of discussions. Your smear stakeholder or project owner will either say yes or no, and then you'll have your answer. But at least ask them those questions and framing it a certain way, coming across as an authority versus an order taker. Please, please never feel like an order taker when you start these types of training. onboarding is a very, very important training, you want to do it right. So um, what we did was we there was a very intentional drive, and Deseret may or may not know this, to hire diversity. It was very much on the table from, you know, my boss, and from leadership top down, which is the way it kind of should be the goodness of wanting to hire diversity and wanting to adding inclusion based on that diversity. So step one, you want to reach inclusion, how do you do that you,

you may have to hire some diversity, not in terms of an actual skin color, its its diversity in terms of what is the makeup of the employee professional already in? And what can you add to it to make it more diverse. So it doesn't necessarily have to be a certain if you have three females, let's just say, perhaps the diversity that you need to have, so that you can have diversity of thought and innovation and design and creation, maybe another male just to see what they can offer. These are, these are beautiful things to have. So it doesn't necessarily mean skin color ethnicity, it really just means look at the makeup of your employee network. And then who do you need to add, we saw ours, we saw what we needed to add, they requested to have a female if possible, they requested to have somebody from an ethnic background, if possible, because we don't have a lot of that at the state. And so it was a very intentional thought to hire somebody from that background. Because of those two terminations, which was good. And I was ready to put in on that. Um, we looked at lots of different resumes, interviewed a lot of different people. And some of that in the hiring process was to find somebody that we would enjoy, including in not necessarily saying it's fit, I hate the word fit, fit kind of means, okay, it comes across as value fit. And that you already have a perceived value, when you're trying to be inclusive, and you're trying to hire for inclusivity inclusivity, you have to be open, you have to have that person come on in, and to be able to express their authentic self. And you have to build the culture together. whoever you're creating your training for. Those folks should also perhaps have supervisor training, or stakeholder training or something hand in hand, where it's not just given to that one person to figure out for themselves of how to do things. You're coming in as an instructional designer you're looking in as the word that we drop off sometimes as systems, instructional systems design, or the idea that that system is very, very still important, even though we shorten it up. You're looking at the whole system when you're hiring somebody new, that that person should be able to come in and be their whole self, be their own person, adding from their cultural perspective, expertise, perspective, experience, lived experience perspectives, and be able to share their opinions openly in a safe space in a safe environment. What you want to do is maybe work with the folks at the company, if they're saying we want to address inclusion, we do have a problem. We want to make sure we hire the right people and be more inclusive than you say. That's great. Let me show you how to do this. We're going to start with you first. And then see how that changes in your space. It really does have to be a systems change. I believe so strongly.

Luis Malbas  
So Rubina. Let me just get back to the projecting the welcoming atmosphere in the psychologically safe space. So you, you know it sounds like you've you build these in tensions and and now you're creating these systems and and so when you're talking about systems is that like specific to the welcoming atmosphere and the psychologically safe space? Or how do you define?

Rubina Halwani  
Oh, that's a good thing. So system, I'm thinking, What's the system that the employee is going to be working in? What's the actual work space that they're going to be in? And what is the culture already there? Hopefully, it's not a toxic environment, right? Good luck trying to figure out how to make that an inclusive space. But you want your folks to be open and receptive to hire somebody diverse and say we're going to learn new things from that person. And then also project welcoming in the training, I did two things with Deseret and she can come on anytime and we can talk about it but and she can share her experience to the the two things that we built in is that I talked about it with management to say, hey, what are the things that we want to be able to give Deseret so that she can feel acclimated to the space? Because she's coming in remotely? And how do we resources sharing resources, whatever resources we had, reiterating, HR benefits, reiterating, time and flexibility, that's important to not just know on paper, that's important to say. So we I had you know, we had our manager saying that speaking that language that makes a person feel they are welcomed, that they know who to go to when they feel X, Y, and Z, or if they need to get resources for X, Y, and Z. Like if they need to take time off if they need to talk to somebody about something if they need to check in

Luis Malbas  
Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and invite Deseret in now just so that we can follow up with that and then cool now let me ask you, I'll go through some of these questions just for the sake of time. Oh, hi, Deseret.

Rubina Halwani  
Hey, good morning. Oh, you look great. I told her I was like, are going to be camera ready today? Yes.

Luis Malbas  
Does or why don't you tell everybody a little bit about yourself and just for some background, planning the DI event the ideal 2021 event that we've got going next month. I was able to spend a little time talking to Rubina and Deseret and had absolutely fantastic conversation. It was just it was a real pleasure being able to talk to these two about it and and so I've met Deseret in the past but disagree, why don't you go ahead and just introduce yourself, tell us a little about who you are.

Dezirae Choi  
Yeah, so I'm sorry. And my name is Dezirae. I work with Rubina. Like she said she really has helped me through this onboarding process with the state where we work. My background has been in K 12 education, and then really transitioning from case well into instructional design. And then I also teach diversity and education at a university here in Utah where we live, so

Luis Malbas  
yeah, no, and it was I just incredibly useful conversation. We had some technical difficulties. just typing ferociously in chat. So why don't I go in and just ask you guys this next question about sharing employee resources for support Why or why not?

Rubina Halwani  
Yeah, Deseret and I'm open for you to for you to interject anytime I think you know, what I tried to do with you. I remember that the I spoke with with our folks, our managers and stuff like that in our ID team, our little small ID team. I'm like, What do we need to give Deseret and let's go ahead and do that. And then I remember we made this Trello board to kind of map out like, not just the first days but up to like, I think a month out and so that we weren't giving everything to you all at once like a dump. Hopefully, I think it probably still was, but anyway, but like gradually over time to like, okay, let's just make sure she's got this and this and this, to try and make it as easy as possible, given that we're in a remote space. So you could you could talk to like your experience from that and and politely judge it that's

Dezirae Choi  
up to you. And I think it really speaks towards that psychological safe space as well. So it really kind of covers both of those questions. So I worked remotely and virtually full time before COVID and everything kind of forced people. So I had done virtual onboarding in 2018 for my job, and it was a very different process than what Rubina had set up for him. Coming into the state. And so kind of comparing those for the previous company This was working with it was extremely from a fire hose we're gonna give it to you all just do what you can here's your point of contact, ask questions when you have questions. And the benefit of that was like, Okay, I had a strong point of contact it built culture because I had to ask questions. But the weakness of that is, you don't know what to ask if you don't know what to ask. You don't know

Rubina Halwani  
what you know, I remember. Yes. You don't know what you don't know. So yeah, yeah, on the

Dezirae Choi  
other side, with revealing coming in, and she had Trello board set up, which had talking points, it had all the resources. So it was able, it was really easy for me to see where we're going. If we touched base on something, and I was like, I am not ready to deal with that right now. I could go back and look at it. And then I wasn't dependent on rubina's schedule, either. She had stuff to do, she was in the middle of projects, she was setting up one on ones with me, I could reach out to her at any moment. But I could also like, okay, we're gonna talk at 10am, I'm gonna figure this out on my own. I've got these resources, from eight to 10, I can do that. And then when we talk, I can feel more prepared, which made me feel like I wasn't. It gave me some autonomy and made me feel successful from my very first day with the team instead of feeling very dependent and unsure from the beginning. Yeah,

Rubina Halwani  
yeah. Thank you. Thank you. That's like, makes me feel better. Yeah. And so just

Luis Malbas  
right, I do have a question. Sorry. Um, did you have any expectations? I mean, you know, I absolutely hate that drinking from a firehose term. You know, like, you know, or throwing people in the, in the deep end of the pool, like, I hate that, like, it's just so absolutely abhorrent to me that, you know, that people think that it's okay to like, do that to employees, but as somebody who has actually studied, you know, diversity, equity and inclusion, did you have any expectations coming into the, your, you know, your employment working with with Rubina, and, you know, did things was, were you pleasantly surprised that things went the way that they did? Or, you know, was your expectation?

Dezirae Choi  
Yeah, I was, um, as far as diversity and inclusion, I was pleasantly surprised from the very beginning, I think. I mean, even in the interview process, the introductions were, you know, individuals were including their pronouns, they were asking questions about my experience with diversity and inclusion and with others who maybe challenged my own perceptions or my own biases, which was not something that always comes up in interview questions. So from that perspective, it showed me, you know, even if they're not implementing practices, they're thinking about it from the very beginning. So walking in, I'm not sure I had an expectation of like, oh, wow, they're pushing the envelope, because I know, there's limitations no matter what entity you're entering into. But I could see that they at least this team was thinking about these things.

Luis Malbas  
Okay, thanks. Thanks for answering that. And I want to mention everyone, there is a poll question asking about onboarding and whether or not you're responsible for it, so feel free to answer. I mean, it looks like there's already a couple people that say that they're not, most people say that they are. And so ravina, if possible, like for, you know, what we've got left in this broadcast. Maybe just, if we can talk more specific about l&d and the onboarding process and inclusivity. I'd love to hear more about that.

Rubina Halwani  
Sure, sure, sure, there are some specific things that we were able to do so as I said that Deseret had two parts of onboarding, there was one that I designed for our department because we didn't have onboarding training. So that was one of the first trainings that I actually made probably about like, three, three or six months ago before Deseret started in so she ended up doing that that's a department wide onboarding. And I actually think it's just more like at orientation. If we if we are now defining the two separate it's more of the job tasks, the job duties, the the some of the job resources and things like that, that you need. And then in there, I try to make that inclusive and Deseret and I were talking about this yesterday, when we were prepping for this, like I had this little when I was designing that training as an asynchronous elearning training in storyline for onboarding. How do I make new employees that I have no idea what their specific job is going to be because it was a departure Am I training? How do I make those folks feel welcomed in this self paced asynchronous style and then Deseret? Can you tell me what you think what you remember, I should say, of how it felt inclusive in any way.

Dezirae Choi  
Yeah, so I, I liked the character, we were talking about that. But she made this be that was very fitting into our, the, the B is like the state to be very important to the state. So please, it wasn't just a random character. And she uses honeycomb and the hexagon shapes throughout the training, so it fits the theme. But the B is kind of, I believe, the B's name, is it be great. Is that correct?

Rubina Halwani  
I think we had to be now Yeah, here we go. And then this was my I just looked at this because it was on my desk, and I just had it. And that's what gave me the inspiration for the thing, because I was trying to figure out what to actually put in the actually thinking of the actual visual design of this, that I knew that I was going to be deploying an onboarding training and a person's not going to be there. How do you get through that training module? It was about an hour or two, it could be broken down, it was self paced, but you could do it as you need it. But how, like, what do I put in there and instead of a person, if I pick one person, I'm never gonna, I'm always gonna get dinged up, that person wasn't the right person. It wasn't the right, you know, ethnicity or culture or the disability or it didn't, it didn't address any of those points. And so then I'm like, okay, not a person, maybe a caricature, what do I do? We're Utah. It's a beehive state. And then that just what that's just like, this is here, it's a bee. Nobody hates to be so

Dezirae Choi  
appropriate. It didn't feel weird or out of context, when the bee came up and was like, Hey, I'm the one that's gonna walk you through this training. It didn't feel like Oh, that's a different audience than I expected. It still felt very appropriate. But it did feel like Okay, cool. I've got this character. Maybe it's like, Maybe it comes from the paperclip from the Microsoft days where it used to like, things, but I was like, yeah, this I'm with this, this help. So

Rubina Halwani  
yeah, I remember the paperclip. Oh, that's fun. So and then I tried that. Yeah. So you know, for my boss, he came in about 20 years ago, there was nothing, it was firehose you go in, you start the job, you get these assignments directly thrown at you. And that's what he was saying he absolutely didn't want and that when we started our training program at the department, it was very intentional to want to do something that or do something different. And so you know, that that training has been received very well, which was really nice for all these little touches and elements. And so whatever aspect of onboarding training that you're able to work on, whatever the project is, just try with intention of how can I make this inclusive? How can I make this welcoming? How can I make somebody feel like they belong here, you're going to start identifying gaps in the training, think about your own experience coming into the job, and how to make that in. At the end of the cast. I know, I typed this in the chat. I'll share actual resources that Deseret found in that I found as we've been doing more DIY projects at work, of how to have inclusive language, how to have inclusive images, and where to find those resources and stuff like that. And I'll put those into the chat when we're when we're done with us here. We really did. Step through and and, and time it and piece it so that an employee can get through all of the onboarding things and feel like they were resourced with who to go to which person or which authority, or which department for what type of resource in onboarding, definitely move it shifted, throw away the old way of doing it of just task list, have it be a friendly, welcoming, safe space. And you can definitely do this with design. There's, there's there's beautiful ways to do it. And to not give you guys too much because I know that you can do this yourselves as well. Visually, adding in images of diversity, adding in images of the employees that are there on the site, so that the new employee can see that If you're doing an in person live training, make sure you include some of the folks that the employee has to meet, or work with, to come and say hello. So when you're looking at onboarding, ask all those questions. And if some of that stuff is already out there, perfect, let them answer those questions. But go ahead and ask it. I knew where my limitations stopped of designing the onboarding training, we also had our HR folks, they did some things to some minor things and stuff like that. So then I would just point to those things that I would just say, during your onboarding experience, or during the first couple of weeks, you'll be asked to do this type of documentation from these type of people, just so that you're aware, just so that you know, and then that's it. Maybe have their manager including the training a check in point at the first week to see how the employee is doing a check in point at the second or third, or at certain specific intervals, where you're including the other folks on the team to really get involved with knowing the employee. Make sure the employees included in on different meetings, make sure the employee knows who to report to have, and time and all of the things that you would also like to have to feel like you can do your job, getting all of that stuff.

Even even though it may be a lot to inhale on the first few weeks, at least knowing where to go to to find those resources, makes you feel a lot more empowered. And that really does affect the retention rate in a lot of spaces that if employees have those resources and know who to go to. They feel that they like where they're at, if they if they don't, and they have to ask the question by the Deseret was saying if she asked, she had to ask questions, if you have to ask the question. If the employee has to ask the question, then you need to redesign the training or included in or add something on or tack something in. And then remember that employee training, onboarding training doesn't have to be one minute, one hour, one day, it should be something that you really should touch back upon that whole first year of inviting new employees in. Try, I've seen some things in the chat about like 90 days and stuff like that, really, really plan it out for longer. And your employee may say, I don't have that time for that. Yeah, but you only have to do like five minutes without really, you have to just be there for this check in at this meeting at this point and whatnot. Or you only have to talk about this type of thing, include the other employees to talk about certain aspects of the job, so that everybody gets a touch point with that new employee, and gets a chance to talk them as well. Um, I know with Deseret, I was able to talk to her about design stuff. And, and some needs analysis things for the actual job of instructional design. And then we have other folks who could talk to her about, okay, this is how implementation works. And then if you have any questions on implementation, this is how you do it. If you have any questions on authoring, this is how you do it. And then if you have any questions on evaluation, here's another person on our team that can step you through that. So that made it a little bit more welcoming, feel, knowing that it's not just hearing from me that she's hearing from everybody else around in the team also, too.

Luis Malbas  
He will be in a Can I ask you some logistical questions? So are you talking about when when you're talking about onboarding Currently, the the systems that you designed? Is it specifically for within your department?

Rubina Halwani  
Yeah, so the one that I've designed most recently is the one that I'm talking about the one for the department, I've, I can I can, I can talk about other other places where I've made onboarding training where it hasn't been this robust, right? I've learned along the way of like, hitting Miss mistakes, orientation versus on boarding. A lot of it was this is what you need to do in your job, and you're going to take a 40 hour training about all the tasks that you have to do on your job. Nothing had anything about resources and support. Right? Yeah, I think that's Yes, that's a huge mess.

Luis Malbas  
No, cuz I'm wondering I mean, I'm thinking about I think it's Gabby who, who's in the chat today. I think we had a conversation with her about onboarding. And if I remember correctly, it was kind of like a larger facility like manufacturing or something. onboard a ton of people, like the scale was much larger. And so, you know, I know that for that type of scenario, it sounds like you know, the ideal is being able to almost customize for like a unique situation like Deseret coming in and helping her feel welcome and psychologically safe and all that. But if you have any ideas or tips and tricks for like, larger situations, because I feel like that is the general you know, sort of thing is to do the drink from the fire hose, you know, kind of scenario or drop them in the deep end of the pool stuff is terrible. But, yeah, I just wanted to throw that out there.

Rubina Halwani  
No, that's, that's a great question. That's a great thing. Um, I, in my repertoire, I can't honestly remember if I've made an onboarding training for that, well, I want to say, one of my one of my clients was wider, I would say about 3000, folks, but they were all coming on board for financial financial training for their job function. So that was the largest that I had had to work with. Um, if for something like manufacturing, again, I would give checklists, I would make checklists for the manager, I would make checklists for the supervisor and I would make checklists for the employee, I think that's a really fabulous way to do it. Meaning that you have the supervisor go through and figure out what it is that they need to be able to give to the employee to know what to do on the job, but then how to how to get those contact, contact points and resources and have those discussions, you build it, you give it to them. This is what is going to make your employee like working here want to work here and stay working here. Because what everybody hates is turnover. And the investment of time that you put in onboarding, if you do a not so great job with it or not. So poll and holistic job and not adding these resources and things like that. They're going to walk away not feeling like they know what they're doing know who to go to. The last thing you want somebody to feel this siloed isolated alone, that's just not where the culture is shifting towards today. And the managers need to know this. The supervisors need to know this. Places where you're going to have roundabout turnover, the doors just always revolving. And actually doors like this. It's not like those anyway. The door's always revolving, people are going to want to pay attention to that you're the l&d professional, you can definitely perform site visits, you can definitely ask questions about what's happening on site to employees, you can definitely ask managers and supervisors those means, how is onboarding when you came on? How would you have liked for it to be? And how would you like for your legacy to be going forward? What is it that you want to give the company to be able to make these new people feel like your succession planning in a way cuz you will be?

Luis Malbas  
I love it. You know, Gabby, just like sort of, right? Right? When you start talking about he says, partnering with threes to create the checks, checklists to create the checklist is essential. So perfectly timed. And but one thing I do, what do you think as far as the duration of the onboarding process? Do you have an opinion as to like what is ideal or what to go for?

Rubina Halwani  
Well, okay, so first, you want some sort of quick and easy in the first couple of weeks, make sure the person knows a little bit about what they need to do and a little bit about the contact points that they need to reach right. And then do have some kind of tracking at the 30 days, 60 day 90 day Mark from different people that Smee has to check in whoever wanted your training, the stakeholders need to check in their supervisors need to check in with the employees got to be a part of there. And every every job is different. So every type of job is different. Every every onboarding time might be different. So I don't want to give an like it should definitely be a year, well know if it's not that kind of a thing. So check out in your space, what onboarding looks like right now. See if there's any gaps or if you're starting it off, then start off in the right way with at least a 30 6090 day check in. If you're doing those check ins, it really does help that person go, Oh, that's the time when I can talk about how I feel and how things are going and then I can get whatever additional help in Support I need to feel empowered welcome safe and belong. Yeah,

Luis Malbas  
love it Rubina thank you so much for for sharing all this I'm gonna have to wrap it up because we've we've hit our time yeah do you have any last things to add to this one

Rubina Halwani  
not please try this let me know how you guys feel about it please give me some feedback I would love to see that like in the in the slack group and stuff if you're going to be working on our onboarding let me know if you're able to try some of this tips let me know I would love to hear from you. And then after we're done, I will post it in here, some snapshots of what our Trello boards and what our onboarding look like so that you can see it and some resource links. So right and

Luis Malbas  
I do totally believe the onboarding process is a critical piece of like an organization success nowadays, especially now the turnover rate is crazy, you know, it's the great resignation, people are leaving their jobs. They're trying everyone is you know, like reassessing, wanting to sort of find what's right for them. And, and onboarding is massively critical to that. And so I don't think this is another conversation that we should we should continue to discuss because I feel like it's going to become more and more it's going to highlight lmds role more and more and going forward. And so kudos to you for bringing it up and yeah, let's schedule another one for some time and we could have Deseret

Rubina Halwani  
and then here's some other other folks if they're doing it too if they're actually doing it please please share with us and and come on board and share your experience

Luis Malbas  
love it Yeah, this is a nice group all the folks that have registered for this one maybe we should use like almost a sub community here that we There you go. Alright, everyone, thanks a lot. And don't forget we've got let's see, I guess after I wrap everything up, I'll put the link to the to the air made for the event that ideal 21 that's happening on November 19. So I'm getting the speakers rallied for that one. It's going to be an excellent event. Very excited about it rubina's helping out helping advise and produce that one is there, many of the folks here in chat but keep an eye out for that and we'll see you next time. Thanks, everybody.

Rubina Halwani  
Thank you. Thank you.

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