Blog | Inside Out LMS

The Manager’s Role in Onboarding

How to keep all the balls in the air

We’ve already seen what the employee should do during the onboarding process, but now it’s time to turn our attention to the manager’s role in onboarding. While each manager’s role may be different within your company, what is always true is that managers have a lot of different balls that they are juggling, which means that they can only devote some of their attention to the onboarding process. The rest of their energy will be spent keeping everything else running smoothly. Here, then, are the 5 aspects of the manager’s role in onboarding.
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The Employee’s Role in Onboarding

How the Employee Can Increase the Efficiency of the Onboarding Process

Every story has a cast of characters. Some are supporting characters who contribute to the story and keep the action moving forward. But then there are the protagonists, those around whom the entire story revolves. The same is true of your company’s onboarding system. There is a supporting cast who implements and tweaks the system, but in the end, it is the employee to be trained who is the star of the story. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the employee’s role in onboarding.

The Five Secrets to an Effective Training Video

And no, none of them involve being on VHS

One of the easiest and most frequently used methods of sharing information with new employees is to have them watch a training video. However, as most new employees will tell you, those videos can differ significantly in their actual helpfulness. Creating a successful training video is more than just filming someone talking about the job, but it doesn’t need to be complicated. Here are five easy secrets to making an effective training video.

Training to Maximize Retention

How two simple practices can make all the difference in the efficiency of a training system

There is one line that is common in movies about a character’s heroic quest, a line spoken by the mentor character, whether that is Dom Cobb in Inception, Lieutenant Willy in Starship Troopers, or Patches O’Houlihan in Dodgeball, that highlights the importance of training to maximize retention. What is that line?

“Remember your training.” Read more…

Onboarding and Training

How a little difference makes a big difference

At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between onboarding and training. Both involve sharing information with employees, particularly new ones, to help them perform their job better and meet goals. However, to really understand the difference between onboarding and training, we need to take a brief detour to think about cake. Read more…

In-Describable Onboarding: Individualized Onboarding

Why Onboarding Should Be Less Like a Hat and More Like Shoes

There are two basic approaches to training new employees, and I think of them kind of like how I think of buying either a new hat or new shoes. Much like finding a hat, employee onboarding is often treated as a one-size-fits-all process. However, when thought of in this way, it isn’t able to provide each new employee with what she needs, and in the long run, the company is worse off because of it. Instead, the company should aim for individualized onboarding that resembles buying new shoes. This will enable it to fit with each employee’s experience and background and also provide the necessary support and tools needed to perform the tasks expected of her. Read more…

Employee Onboarding Checklist

How WATER is the blueprint for an Employee Onboarding Checklist

A company’s onboarding solution is an employee’s first opportunity to really understand their new position and to learn their place within the organization. However, it can be daunting to try to develop a new system, especially when trying to ensure it provides all the information and support that the new employee might need. But don’t worry, we’ve put together this checklist to help you keep everything in sight. We’ll provide a little more detail on each section below, but if you just want the nitty-gritty, click here to download a printer-friendly PDF of the checklist. For now, here is the breakdown of our employee onboarding checklist, which we call the WATER method: Read more…

In-Describable Onboarding: Involved Onboarding

Why an Effective Onboarding System Must Involve its Trainees in the Training Process

There’s an old adage attributed to Benjamin Franklin that, as you might expect, contains a lot of wisdom in just a few words and can help us understand the importance of an involved onboarding process. It is:

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”

As it turns out, this saying is almost certainly not one of Franklin’s. He may have said it at some point, but its origins likely go back to early Confucian philosopher Xunzi. Nonetheless, there is still much to learn from this simple triad. Read more…

In-Describable Onboarding: Onboarding as Investment

Each Employee is a Beautiful Flower- And that Saves You Money

Have you ever spent time gardening? I have just recently started the habit, and it takes a lot of practice to learn the finer details, like exactly how much water each flower needs. I’ve noticed a couple drastically different schools of landscaping, and they have made me think about onboarding as investment. It may seem like a bit of a jump, but bear with me. Basically, the two schools can be described like this: Read more…

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