Revitalize Employee Onboarding: How Agile Thinking Helps Low-Energy Programs Deliver Results

Jocelyn Allen: Bring out the talent. Bring out the talent.

Shauna Bona: Bring out the talent.

Narrator: Welcome to Bring out the Talent, a podcast featuring learning and development experts discussing innovative approaches and industry insights. Tune in to hear our talent help develop yours. Now, here are your hosts, TTA CEO and president Maria Melfa and talent manager Jocelyn Allen.

Jocelyn Allen: Maria, did you get a makeover? I did.

John Lavenger: What do you think?

Jocelyn Allen: Just kidding. Everybody, it's John Lavenger joining me again. John, how are you?

John Lavenger: I couldn't be better. Jocelyn, how are you?

Jocelyn Allen: I'm doing very well, thank you. And I couldn't be better either because I am, um, very excited not only to do an episode with my pal, but to also do an episode with another one of our pals who is a learning strategist that we've both worked very closely and love. Two absolute pieces who's going to talk to us a little bit more about employee onboarding and how to revitalize it, treat it the way it's supposed to be treated for an effective. For effective organizational development. John, know anything about that? How do you feel?

John Lavenger: Yeah, I may have heard something about that. No. So, so awesome to have you on Shauna. It's. It's been years and years now and many clients that we've helped. So very excited to get you introduced to the crowd.

Shauna Bona: Now let's do just that.

Jocelyn Allen: So, organizations invest heavily in recruiting top talent. We know that. But without effective onboarding, much of that investment is at risk. In fact, companies with strong onboarding programs improve new hire retention by up to 82% and boost productivity by over 70%. Huge numbers there. The good news? With the right approach, onboarding can become one of the most powerful drivers of culture and performance. In this episode of Bring out the Talent, we're joined by Shauna Bona, uh, a learning strategist and organizational development leader who has helped companies transform low energy onboarding into programs that truly deliver results. With deep expertise in designing experiences that blend strategy, adaptability and creativity, Shauna brings practical insights into how organizations can energize new hires. From day one, this conversation's all about how agile thinking can revitalize onboarding programs that feel stale or uninspired. From spotting the warning sides of a program that's lost momentum, to building in continuous feedback loops, to balancing consistency with adaptability. Shauna shares actionable strategies leaders can use to turn onboarding into a long term engine for engagement, productivity and success. So get ready for an insightful discussion that will leave you rethinking the role of onboarding and shaping employee experience and organizational outcomes. Welcome to the party, Shauna.

Shauna Bona: So glad to be here.

Jocelyn Allen: We're very, very, very excited to have you and as I said before, longtime TTA partner and I couldn't be more thrilled to talk to you today about a pat, a subject that you're so very passionate about and so very excellent at. So thank you again for joining us.

Shauna Bona: Thank you

John Lavenger: all. Uh, right, Shauna, well, let's, let's go ahead and kick it off. So countless reports have found that employees who have a strong office onboarding experience are significantly more likely to stay with the company long term and feel engaged in their role. Yet so many onboarding programs still fall flat. Why do you think this gap exists?

Shauna Bona: I think the real gap is between the ideal and the possible. It's not like HR and learning leaders don't know what good onboarding looks like. They do, but most of them are already operating at uh, capacity or beyond capacity and so they default back to the same old thing. I think that when the gap between what you want and what you have time for is really big, sometimes people just check out and they turn onboarding into just a series of boxes to be checked. And people know it's not great, but they just say this is what we can do. And I think the default is what is the must haves.

Jocelyn Allen: Right?

Shauna Bona: So people just do basic orientation or they get a set of off the shelf compliance wbt and they put their people in front of it. And usually it's the kind of web based training that gives web based training a bad name. It's not the greatest or they just fob the new person off like here Gladys, show them around and they put them in front of a series of a stack of materials or standard operating procedures. Everybody knows it's not what builds proficiency, it's not what builds belonging, but it is what's possible. And so that's what people accept. I, I think there's another thing too. If I, if I can also say, and I, I like, I kind of call it the tyranny of the expert. Expert. So we all have people in our organizations that have such a deep knowledge of the organization or of the subject matter, the product or the service. And they usually are powerful people who believe that new hires have to know everything all at once. And it's really hard sometimes for HR leaders and learning leaders to have the boldness they need to say no, not today, this isn't what they need now. And to help them see that there's a cadence of learning and that when you add too much, it does have a diminishing effect. It flattens the experience. It creates overwhelm. And especially that happens when we don't teach people things in the flow of work. We put them in a cube. It's. It's just. It falls flat and people think it's necessary. Experts often think it's necessary, but it's not. And it has a reverse impact.

Jocelyn Allen: I couldn't agree with you more because I've not only seen the impacts of training and onboarding like that, but I've been part of it. And it really almost, I think now too, is more of a red flag in the beginning than it is kind of like that organized structure. Because I also think that bad onboarding can look good from the outside because there's a plan and there's a cadence. Right. But that word that you used, which I think resonates very well is the word stale, is that it's like it does. It kind of does nothing in the sense of making an impact and developing that kind of like, leadership capability within their role to hit the ground running the way that we want them to, that we think that that information dump is going to create. So when onboarding does miss the mark like that, that we. It's happened enough that we have an episode to talk about it. Right. What ripple effects do you really see? Or I think more consistently, uh, even examples of roles in which you've seen ripple effects affects things like culture, productivity, even talent retention. Because we know that, like you said, that affects the people's not only ability to produce, but how long that they stay.

Shauna Bona: Yeah, I mean, you guys, we teed this. Teed this conversation up with some really great statistics. I think those are from Brandon Hall. Gallup has great statistics about how good onboarding leads to, like, more than two and a half times of employee satisfaction. I mean, it's everywhere. We know that the impact of great onboarding is phenomenal, and we know the impact of, uh, stale onboarding and is that it loses that opportunity to connect. And that's what I would say the most immediate effect is. It's both cultural and it's interpersonal. I mean, onboarding that those early days, someone has made a decision to become part of your organization, and this is your chance for first impressions. And the biggest thing you want to do is create that sense of purpose and belonging, building on the pride in the organization that brought them there and their decision to join the team and showing your commitment to them as an individual. So I think when you miss that opportunity, it's really hard to regain it all of a sudden it's like showing up. It's showing up at a blind date, and it's like, not what you thought. It's really deflating, and it has a lasting impact. So this is your chance to show that you meant what you said during the recruiting process. I think the second effect is that you don't give the employees the knowledge and skills they need to deliver on your mission. And that one is all about productivity. You want people to have that sense that they are contributing just as soon as they possibly can. And for sure, it's for sure it's about productivity, for sure, it's about quality time to competency. But this has a compounding effect because if you can create early opportunities for success, you build confidence, and that it breeds on. It compounds, it breeds on itself. And so there's more success and more competence and more confidence. So it's really this chance to start out, right. And when you don't do it, you can't really. You can for sure come back and do with recognition programs and other, uh, cultural endeavors, but you really missed that beginning opportunity. Set your new hire off in the right direction. Is that kind of what you're getting at in the question?

Jocelyn Allen: Oh, absolutely. Is those things that I think, like, those things that you don't think about, you know what I mean? And, and going back to kind of how I introduced the question is that that might be the best identifier, right? Those things that you just mentioned of it being a poor onboarding program or a stale onboarding, um, program, you think you have something great in place. Again, because of the cadence, because of the schedule, because of the plan, it looks robust. Right. We love the, the fullness of it and kind of like getting, getting everything crammed in. Like you said, a lot of leaders feel like that's the right way, but that if, if that's the way that it's thought upon and we don't have. How do you know? How do you know that your program isn't. Isn't right? Well, here are the areas that you'll start to see, because those ripple effects are where it kind of opens up. So that definitely answers the question.

Shauna Bona: And I mean, I could build on that a little bit. I mean, there are warning signs, there are other flags, like, let's do it, go for it. People don't want to do it. Everybody's like, ah, you do the onboarding. Yeah, it's hard to get people to want to be the ones who signed up to do it. And then also for sure I've seen, I cannot tell you how many big spreadsheets, multiple tab spreadsheets I've seen for the onboarding experience. What's going to happen? Day one, week one, Just hundreds and hundreds of onboarding courses. But they start to diminish over time. People start. I think one flag is that people start shrinking it and saying, well, we're going to do less and less over time. But then also ballooning is another flag because when it's not giving the desired results, people, they react by adding. They add tabs, they add courses. They said, oh, you know what? We need this. We need to bring this part in and this part in and let's have another tour. So they balloon and they add because they're not really creating the impact that they want. I think the most important thing is what does it make you feel like? What does it make the people who are assigned to do it feel like? And what does it make the new employee feel like? If it's not feeling invigorating, it's. If it's not giving you a sense of pride, then something's missing.

John Lavenger: So, Shauna, that's really helpful. And, you know, I've. I've been guilty of some of those spreadsheets myself over time, and it sounds like having that really, like, prescriptive. Here's exactly what we want to do this hour, this day, et cetera, is. Is not the ideal approach when it comes to onboarding. So sounds like it needs to be a little more agile than that and would like to get your thoughts on the best way. The best way to approach it.

Shauna Bona: Yeah, uh, I want to say I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with having in the background these spreadsheets. It's absolutely great to have a rich program. The, the challenge is that that that's not something that a new person can. Can navigate. So you can have that behind the scenes. But what you want to have are, uh, two things. One, you want to have a clear pathway for how I come in, how I get oriented, how I find out where I fit and how I start making a difference in this organization. So that should be simple and that should be clear, but also it does need to be flexible based on how the organization is evolving and responding to market conditions, and also how the individual's role is within your organization. And I think an agile framework is really a great way to keep that happening, which is we don't do onboarding once and then walk away and never look at it again. Of course, we don't want to iterate it forever, but we need to have a plan for continually improving it and being collaborative and being flexible. I think it's good to talk a little bit about Agile and I don't really know how all of the listeners are familiar with agile as a development model. I'll just quickly say for those who aren't as familiar that it came out of software development. It was really about instead of taking the time, a lot of time and effort to create detailed, documenting detailed requirements upfront for a software product, developers would work collaboratively with clients and with business people and they would develop in a way that focused on flexibility, continuous improvement and collaboration and they would iterate. And so bringing that idea into learning can be so super helpful. Obviously we're not always developing software. In fact, I hope we're hardly ever only developing software as an elearning. I hope we're thinking about a big blend, especially in um, onboarding. It needs to be people to people. But there are some processes and there are some principles in agile that I think are super helpful. I like to use what I call an agile informed addy model because I still believe in the power of addie and analyze, design, develop, implement and evaluate. I'll say it, I'm not ashamed of it, but I think it needs to be agile informed and not fall into that rigid linear development, but that we expand and create and contract these stages to make sense and we focus on being collaborative and iterative. So instead of taking a plodding approach to these phases, we take an agile approach. And when I say that, I mean we get all of our stakeholders together up front and we get aligned and we have a vision of what is onboarding going to look like for this organization. We decide at the beginning what we want to accomplish, what we want the customer experience to be. And I'll talk about that a little bit. We use proven templates and tools and we make a wireframe and we iterate, we, we fix it, we test, we solicit feedback and we modify. So I don't know that that's kind of the agile thinking and some of the principles that I think are really important. I think there's four of them. So the first one is that you start with client satisfaction and obviously the client for onboarding, the obvious one is the learner, the learner satisfaction. But the truth is that with onboarding you have a lot of clients and I think that's one of the things that people forget. So you have the new employee, you have the co workers that are going to be joining. You have the clients and coworkers and customers or however you call them that they're going to serve. You have the supervisors and leaders who are going to be accountable for their success. And then you have the organization as a whole. These are all clients in onboarding. And if you think about each one of those and what they need out of this onboarding experience, then you can start to think about what matters most and how you can peel away all of the things that aren't essential to focus on high impact messaging. And then of course, the second principle is that you don't wait to get everything just exactly right. You focus on the minimum viable product. You get something out there, you see how it works and then, and then you try it and then you iterate it. This usually happens with a wireframe. And I want to say that because sometimes that spreadsheet that I seem to disparage, that's your wireframe, that could be a wireframe. Like these are the courses we're going to cover as long as we think of it as a wireframe. That is not just about content, it's about experience. And that again is back to the agile thinking. We don't think about content, we think about customers, we think about learners and we think about what we want to accomplish with them. And you think about the use cases and how they do it and then you create something that matters and then the next one is collaborating and collaborating up front. And this is really important. So in agile for software development, they talk about having business people work with developers every day, like all the time they're working together. And I think in learning, especially when we're thinking about onboarding, not forever and ever, but we really want to think about bringing in all of those examples of customers. So you're not going to develop just with HR and just with the learning team and a couple of folks from business. You want to bring in operational people, supervisors, sample employees, employees that have done well, employees that have struggled. You want to have a mixed group of people that you're touching base with. What does this look like? How is it going? Getting their input is really, really important and getting it frequently. And so I want to make a case kind of here for the curmudgeon, if I can. Everybody always picks operational people to be part of these projects that are the gung ho people who really are upwardly, they're aspirational and they really believe in the mission and they want to come on board. I think it's super important to pick a, um, now uh, include a cynic, include somebody in your process and touch base with them at least a couple of times in the project. Bring them in because if you can win over those people, then you can have an onboarding that makes sense. And I think one of the things that happens in onboarding is that when you move from that ideal, that mythical corporate culture to the reality of your corporate culture, there can be a big drop off. We talk about the retirement cliff. There is an enchantment cliff and we all know it. We send our people through new employee orientation and onboarding and then we send them out into the field, we send them back to the, to the sale, to their sales office or out into the, out working on the construction site. And so often there is the person who says, yeah, yeah, that's what headquarters says, but that is not what we do. And it basically undoes uh, every single thing that you did for your onboarding. Agile can help with this. If you bring a diversity of clients into the process who understand business need, understand the needs on the ground and aren't always like drinking the Kool Aid and can help you make messages that they agree with too, you're going to have a better, better, uh, better solution. And then, and then the other piece of it is that, is that you, you basically get what you need done now. And most you, you get it out there, you try it and you decide up front, how often are we going to refresh this? You're not going. We are not software developers that are always working on the same product over and over again as if onboarding is all that learning or HR is doing. That's not the case, but you can decide quarterly we're going to look at this or every third cohort of new hires, we're going to look at it, we're going to bring somebody in and we're going to just evaluate, we're going to use what we know about learning, we're going to evaluate it, take that feedback and make tweaks so that it really reflects our true culture and, and it helps us deliver on our goals, which is purpose, belonging and confidence.

Jocelyn Allen: Such thorough information in the, the agile speak of even like how you navigated that explanation. It's clear that it, it's the how much value that skill set of thinking is. I love that you said Agile Addie too, because when I was learning about like addie methodology and like agile methodology, the only time Addy made sense to me was when it was like in a circle diagram instead of like on a linear and I literally When I saw it in a circle, I was like, oh, okay. And then we keep going around and around and around because like it like that just made sense to me. So I think maybe that's just the evolution also of what you were saying. The most important customer is, is your learner. So I like that I heard things that you were touching on that made sense to me. I would love to hear maybe some examples that you have. Like was, was there an onboarding program? Excuse me, an onboarding program that you worked on or came into where it needed some revitalization and it was done so through Agile thinking. Like what, what was shifted and what results did you see from it?

Shauna Bona: Oh yeah, for sure. So I mean, it's hard, right? So many, so many examples. But I want to focus on one because it's so simple and I think people often think, oh boy, this has to be so complicated. But there was one that we did, uh, many years ago actually for it was about onboarding account executives, so sales folks at an employee engagement company. And the real big shift that Agile shift was from a focus on content to a focus on the learner. So originally when we came in, they had onboarding where they brought people, they brought people of course to headquarters and they were there for one to three days. And whether it was one day or whether it was three days depended on manager availability. And if the manager happened to be suddenly not available, then you would be basically put into a cubicle to read documents on the ISO directory. So ISO International Standards Organization, so you know, reading all the ISO standard document, standard docs, and that would be what happened. And so we flipped that, like, let's focus on that new salesperson. What do they need? What is preventing them from getting their, getting on the ground running and starting to be able to schedule appointments and make sales. And in the end we took all of that experience with all of that content and we created three simple modules. One, your industry and organization, Two, your approach to sales. And three, the third module was really specific to their kind of the scientific underpinnings of their solution. So that was all about like, who, what is the foundation for our organization? So everything in those modules was streamlined for relevance. We cut out everything that wasn't important in the first six months and then we updated it and then we augmented it for real world application. And it was a blended solution for sure. But the one thing that was really practical is a binder and, and please don't laugh, but it really was a binder because they were getting on an airplane and coming and what we did is because we had this tabbed binder for sessions and it had checklists in it. First there was a, uh, navigation so you could see what was going to happen. We said that it would happen in two trips and then what would happen is you had a binder, you had a binder and it had sections and so you could, we could still be very flexible about manager availability but you could go to the binder where you could meet them that time. There was self study in there, there were places to keep materials you were given and you could track your progress even if it had to ebb and flow. And it really, it really had a very big impact. It made a very big difference because people started seeing right away that they had things to do and they were meaningful things to do. It was very embedded in the flow of what they had to accomplish. We were actually, in addition to giving the binder to the account executives, we gave materials to the leaders so they could step in and make it meaningful and not just blather at them. And really we were able to help these executives gear up faster and get to success sooner. And the, there was a couple of kinds of ways that we measured success and the first one had to be anecdotal about satisfaction and the reason it had to be anecdotal. And this is very non agile. No one was measuring people's feedback. There was no feedback that we could compare to. So we did do surveys after the fact to measure satisfaction and people were very satisfied. And the supervisors and report and um, managers who were there, they could report, yeah, this, people are asking you fewer questions, they seem to have less confusion, they seem to know what they're doing. But we couldn't compare satisfaction to the past, but we could in the future. And so that as often happens in my life and maybe in yours as well, we can provide the instruments for evaluation, we can encourage the benchmarking, we get to see the initial results, we get to set them up. And so we get the initial like, yeah, this looks good, this looks like it's going to drive success. We're satisfied, we're happier. Fewer questions, hitting the ground, running faster. Whether it actually moved the needle on sales is something that I never knew. But I can say the head of sales thought it would. That's all I can really say. We got that value on investment message strong. And I want to also say there was a side benefit on this one. And I want to say this because it's a side benefit. Um, every agile project that I've ever worked on whether it's onboarding or not because we're getting those stakeholders together up front because we're having alignment conversations and getting iterative feedback. We always identify misalignment between internal and external messaging and between messaging and materials. We figure out that the company is not being consistent in their messaging, which is confusing to new hires and leads to that disenchantment and cynicism. And we are always, always able to, to provide alignment value on investment. And I think agile is part of what makes that happen.

John Lavenger: That's great. So Shauna, we, we have clients all the time. They're trying to figure out how effective was our learning or that we've created and it's evaluations a whole nother world. However, specifically speaking around onboarding programs, what are some typical outcomes or metrics that you think organizations should prioritize if they want to prove their onboarding program, um, was successful? It's delivering.

Shauna Bona: Absolutely. And, and I never ever talk to people without talking about metrics and outcomes and begging them to get the benchmarks they need to have really solid data. And so it's just a, it's just built into our DNA of what to do. So some of those are time to competence. And then you have to have your stakeholders, you have to find out what does competence look like, what is the gap between competent people and people who are struggling. So it can, and there's productivity. So productivity can look like widgets. Created sales quotas hit. There's avoiding negative audit results. That is a definite one because that often happens. That's another metric. Reducing waste, fewer errors, fewer safety incidents. Hitting sales quotas. I already said fewer customer complaints, better NPS scores, enabling behaviors like setting certain number of appointments or reducing time on calls and call centers. So there's all kinds of metrics. There's so many metrics that you can put in place if you take the time to benchmark and compare it from cohort to cohort and then as you make adjustments, look again, boy, this obviously I want, I want to say that one reason people don't always take the time to do this is because they think, well, there's so many factors that affect it. But begin, begin to measure, begin to take the data and start. And then, um, the other one that I left off that is really big for onboarding is employee engagement. And the reason I kind of put it at the end is that there is so obviously so much that affects employee engagement. But again, you should, you usually have 360 findings in most organizations nowadays you usually have engagement scores. And so you can look at them and then you can look at them over time as you make tweaks to your onboarding program and you can start to see patterns and then you can start to say, boy, um, on onboarding. Cannot fix a bad manager. Cannot. Okay, there's lots of things that can't fix. But if you start to look at, if you use your onboarding program as a way of looking at, of helping your organization define what success looks like, what results look like, and putting those measures in place and looking at them, then you can start to identify other areas where your organization needs help.

Jocelyn Allen: That's a very great answer because I think that it's when you start exploring these types of things, learning initiatives in general, I guess, is that it can be so overwhelming to understand what the investment financially time wise, is going to produce for you. So not only is that a question in the beginning, but like what the heck are you supposed to do to even figure that out? Right? You think buying the thing does the thing. It's not exactly how it works. Not so cut and dry, a little bit more long term, little bit more consistent in that nature. Which kind of leads into my next question because in the beginning you were talking about this kind of like information dump, right. That's really kind of consistent sometimes in onboarding programs. Right. But there's also, I think a lot of times we hear like a 30 day timeline too, right? So, so if we're thinking about those things, that that's maybe the mindset of a lot of leaders in that sense, because it's what they know. Let's talk beyond that. 30 days, right? So let's, let's say that we're overhauling a program where we've changed a program and we have those 30 days in place according to really strong and productive onboarding would be for an organization after that first month. How are we sustaining the momentum that was created from that time and financial investment? Right. So that they, not only do we get the metrics that we want that you just talked about, but you see it in the employees too. They're energized, they're. They're with it, they are maintaining the momentum, they're giving input, they want to participate. All of a sudden that curmudgeon is a bright and shiny unicorn. Like I'm talking change, Shauna. Okay, so where, how do we get beyond where. What happens after that?

Shauna Bona: For sure. And I also think, and what I love about that question is that if you're really thinking upfront about how much belongs in onboarding and how much doesn't and how much comes later. You've automatically begun thinking. Pathway. You've already begun thinking, okay, this is the first 30 days and that now this is the second six month period and you've already begun thinking. When in someone's career pathway do they need what or under what circumstances will this set of knowledge concepts and these skills become relevant? So you have the basic ingredients of a skills and knowledge pathway or a career pathway that you can also begin filling in over time. Sometimes what comes out of thinking this way is you might decide, okay, we're going to have some basic orientation and onboarding and then we're going to have maybe yearly boot camps or we're going to send people with a really deep skill set. They're still learning, they're still relatively new. Now they're going to go to say an auditing boot camp or a structures, uh, boot camp and construction, whatever that deep knowledge or that next step training becomes. You can start creating those or you can have academies, or you can have continuing education or resource libraries or performance support tools. All of these things are ways that you can think about how you're going to equip people after the fact to consider themselves continuous learners and that they have been supported in the organization. But the other thing that I have to say is you help their leaders, you gotta help their leaders. You need to equip the leaders with onboarding guides for that first six months so they know what it is they're supposed to be doing, handbooks, whatever you want to call it. But then you need to equip them for continuous improvement. So you need to have connections between your onboarding program and however you, whether if you have still have performance management or if you have other ways that you help career guidance, you need to have connections with those. Give your leaders one on one guides, give them huddle tools, make sure you have a recognition program, create all these connectors that can continue the momentum that you've established. Because if you don't, if you don't make connectors and you don't provide ongoing support for managers and leaders, then your investment can really go to waste.

Jocelyn Allen: You mentioned boot camps and academies in your experience or did uh, do you end up recommending or implementing those kinds of things a lot? Because like I, uh, the word boot camp always gets to be like, I don't know, I just think it sounds cool to just like dive into something for a week and not in the sense of like a bad onboarding program. I'VE listened to you shot. Okay. We don't want a stale onboarding program but I'm talking about like a very structured skills development. Something like do you see those a lot and do you recommend them a lot more recently?

Shauna Bona: I guess, yeah, uh, definitely. Well, they kind of like I said boot camp and academies because it feels like different cultures go one way or the other. There's the culture that wants to go like retreat boot camp, you know what I mean? That and then there's a culture that wants to go academy institute and those are different cultural. And it's not like one company can't have both. But yeah, I do see it more and more and I guess I think it's for three reasons. Like first off, boot camp, it's about messaging. It's about having it feel like an experience where you're really going to get skills. Some if you can think about how do we message this thing, how do we construct it so it feels like fun and unique and, and so just using the term boot camp is just in a way a marketing thing. And I, and I don't, I don't, I don't say that in a bad way. I really think we need to think about how does this make people feel Marketing is a part of learning. And then the second is that boot camp is an all encompassing experience. It's not, not that there's anything wrong, not that, not that dribbled learning and in bite sized learning doesn't have its place. But a boot camp you are sequestering yourself and you're focusing on equipping yourself with really great and important and awesome skills. And so it implies that it's not five minutes in the morning every day. And so it's an investment in you as, as the person, as the leader. And so there's no, there's no interruptions. And then the third one is really about, I think this is where you get into tailoring because everybody doesn't need a boot camp, right? Every employee that you have doesn't need to go to a boot camp. They may. It just depends on you know what I mean? Usually when the boot camp comes in it's really deep skills like how to. For one example of a recent one was teaching new auditors how to value companies. How to value an organization is super duper hard and it's got math and it's got business knowledge and it's really, really difficult. And so that's a boot camp. In that same organization they're, they're not going to have a boot Camp for every single person. They could, for many of them, but it's just not always. It's really tending to be towards something where you have a really deep, difficult skill that you need to master. But whatever you do, I really think. And whether you're talking like I think, I think terms like this matter. Boot camps, academies, pathways, your net, career navigator, these kinds of words that help people make sense, have clarity and engagement. The most important thing I think about your onboarding is how it makes people feel. It's about how it makes people feel. Not in a superficial way, but in a way about deep. If you commit to my skills, you're committing to me and that matters.

John Lavenger: So we've shared. Well, you've shared a ton of knowledge around onboarding and so many considerations for those that are building or updating onboarding programs to, to take in and uh, utilize. So I'm just. From a hypothetical perspective, I think it's, it's reasonable that a percentage of our listeners probably are aware they have an onboarding program at their organization that's outdated or feels like it might be overwhelming for the people that are going through it. And if you were to just give them one starting point to consider, where should they begin?

Shauna Bona: Yeah, well, I mean we talked a lot about success metrics and so this is going to seem weird, but it's going to go back to what I just said. If you, if you're overwhelmed and you don't think that you can do that much, you know it's a problem. But you can just do one thing. Go back to what I just said. Focus on how it makes people feel. Think of a way to make it more welcoming. If you can do just one thing, then do that. Figure out how you can make a welcoming experience. It's not going to sound very metricy with everything I just said, but honestly, have a human connection, have little things matter, A sign that welcomes them on your board when they walk in, a gift at their desk, a leader lunch, something that they can take home to their family that first night, that kind of human connection and that warmth, those little things. If that's the only thing you can do, think of something personal and figure out a way to have that, that, that connection and identify one individual in your organization per each employee who can be their mentor, their guide, their coach, whatever in your, in the way that you're flavoring your onboarding, whatever that looks like. Give them a person, a human being who is their go to guide.

Jocelyn Allen: Like that.

Shauna Bona: If that's all you can do, do that but now let's. Now let. Now let me say something that sounds more like myself, which is ask. If you don't know where to start, you need to ask. And that goes back to the A in Addie. In this analysis, it's do a survey, do a focus group. Ask the people that were. That when the supervisors, the managers, the people on the ground, the people who went through onboarding six months ago, and ask them what was. What was the one thing that would have made the difference for you people? People don't ask. They sit. We sit and we talk about our learning theory. We talk and we sometimes forget that if you don't know what the biggest thing that you can do to make a difference is, you need to ask what's causing our high turnover? What is the one thing that we can do to have the biggest impact on our organization? What is the thing that scared you the most and made you think that you made a mistake when you signed on? Ask, find out. And then you'll know where to start, because you talk to the clients. You talk to the people who mattered.

Jocelyn Allen: I love that. I think we need to ask more questions and create spaces where they are welcomed. Right? Because we need answers. But people need to know the type of questions that could be. Could be out there that they're not thinking of too. So I love that answers or that answer. Speaking of questions and answers, there's another part of this podcast that we have to get to now, Shauna. Our, uh, fun little segment called the TTA 10.

Speaker E: Okay. Ah,

Narrator: it's the TTA 10. 10 final questions for our guest.

Jocelyn Allen: Oh, David. We are back on track with our timing. My brother. That was perfection. All right, Shauna. Right.

Shauna Bona: Butter.

Jocelyn Allen: All right. Um, Shauna, so you know about the TTA 10. This is all fun and games, literally. I have a list of questions that I'm gonna ask you that you're just gonna answer, you know, playfully. The first thing that comes to mind, and the goal is, is to answer in under 90 seconds, and then we will celebrate you at the end for all of your achievements. So are you ready? Okay. Okay. Ready, David?

Narrator: Yes. Hurry up, Jocelyn. 90 seconds on the TTA 10 clock, beginning now.

Jocelyn Allen: All right, Shawna, if your career had a theme song, what would it be?

Shauna Bona: Um. Don't rain on my parade. Okay.

Jocelyn Allen: Are you a coffee, tea, or neither drinker?

Shauna Bona: Coffee.

Jocelyn Allen: What's one word your co workers would use to describe you?

Shauna Bona: Dogged.

Jocelyn Allen: Okay. If you could instantly master a new skill today, what would it be?

Shauna Bona: Singing.

Jocelyn Allen: What would you say is your secret weapon? As a strategist.

Shauna Bona: Empathy.

Jocelyn Allen: I love that. What's your go to snack in the middle of your workday?

Shauna Bona: Chocolate. Like Almond Joys.

Jocelyn Allen: Oh, Almond joys are so good. Um, what's the weirdest project that you ever worked on?

Shauna Bona: Oh, my gosh. Weirdest. Um, I would say, um, helping a. Ah, helping. Uh, um, collections. Letters. Helping with collections.

Jocelyn Allen: What's a small thing that makes a big difference in your day when you make time to do it?

Shauna Bona: Stretching.

Jocelyn Allen: What's your favorite color?

Shauna Bona: Purple.

Jocelyn Allen: What's one piece of advice that you received that you just cannot forget?

John Lavenger: Um.

Jocelyn Allen: Breathe. Who inspires you professionally?

Shauna Bona: Oh, my gosh. There's so many people. I would say my business partner, Kate.

Jocelyn Allen: And what is your desert island item?

Shauna Bona: Um, a book.

Jocelyn Allen: A book.

John Lavenger: Oh.

Jocelyn Allen: My kind of people. Shawna. All right, David, that was 10. I think Shauna did a really, really great job. So give her the verdict.

John Lavenger: All right.

Narrator: With the time of 1 minute and 16 seconds, Shauna is well under the threshold of 90 seconds, and thus she is a TTA 10 champion. And as such, we have a special salute to Shauna. Her name's really easy to rhyme with. So the song. The song just came naturally.

Speaker E: Now, uh, when she was a young gal uh, she never thought she'd be Shauna Bona Helping teams align through learning she. Strategy how you get so clever how you make it flow now. If I know she'd help the pros at, uh, IBM Sh. Uh, I taken all my budget and handed it to them she ain't no phony she serves no baloney from Michigan, not Minnesota Wrote the playbook for you. She makes your work worth while she gave us life for learning PowerPoint yearning she's communicating. Sh. Now when I teach don't think I'm a clone I want her consultation so my words sound like my owner. She's clearly bonafide not from Minnesota. It's great just to know you.

Narrator: Sh. And there you go.

Shauna Bona: I appreciate that so much. That was Shauna.

Jocelyn Allen: When I tell you that every time I call you now, I'm going to sing your name like that.

Narrator: It's kind of infectious, isn't it?

Speaker E: So good.

Shauna Bona: My eighth grade shop teacher. Uh, it's the 80s, so he'd always sing Shawna Bona to my Sharona Bona.

Narrator: Oh, I can't believe I didn't think of that.

Shauna Bona: No, I was so. That was, uh. Yours was so much better and did not. I am so. So do we get to have a copy of that?

Jocelyn Allen: You sure do. It's your consolation prize. Absolutely, my friend.

Shauna Bona: That. See, now wouldn't that be a fun thing to give people when they onboard?

John Lavenger: Right.

Jocelyn Allen: See, there you go.

Shauna Bona: We see.

Jocelyn Allen: You can add it copyright. You can add it to the program. Right?

Shauna Bona: There you go. It's awesome.

Speaker E: That was.

John Lavenger: How did it make you feel, Shauna?

Shauna Bona: It made. I can't, uh, my jaw hurts from smiling and laughing. It made me feel great. It uplifted me.

John Lavenger: Sounds like a successful onboarding then. That's good.

Shauna Bona: Totally was. Thank you, guys.

Jocelyn Allen: Very fun. Sha, thank you so much for joining us and for participating, really. I mean, I can't even count the amount of snippets that we probably have of really good, like, onboarding piece meals. Thank you again, Sha. We'll talk to you very soon. Okay?

Shauna Bona: Okay.

Narrator: Take care.

John Lavenger: Thanks, Shaa.

Narrator: Great job.

John Lavenger: See you.

Jocelyn Allen: Bye.

Shauna Bona: Bye.

Jocelyn Allen: For more information on revitalizing your employee onboarding, um, program and how agile thinking can help, Visit us at thetrainingassociates.com we'll see you later, Shawna Boner.