Onboarding at Jobber is Fun?

Onboarding is a very common business experience. A room full of people sharing their values and trying to get you up to speed as soon as possible on the way they do work. It's nothing but slideshows, videos, whiteboards and values discussions with a snack if you're lucky. It’s a gruelling process that every company uses, but it can be better.

You might be the one onboarded, trying to keep your head above water and absorb all the information. You care about this job and are trying to be a sponge and absorb everything you can. Trying to get everything in your head so you can start to give back to this amazing company you've joined.

You might be the one onboarding, trying to shepherd a new and valued colleague through the process. You're so excited for this new coworker and all the potential they represent. You know that if you can teach them ten (thousand) things they'll be off to the races being a great member of the team!

Having been a member of more than a few onboardings over the years, I can tell you what works and what doesn't. Let's go over why the experience I had onboarding at Jobber was great, and what that means for your own processes. And to me that discussion starts with putting Everything in the Right Order.

Everything in the Right Order

At Jobber there is lots to learn: the company's values and focus on providing the best possible experience for our Service Providers (SPs) and their Service Customers (SCs). The different departments that make up the company. And even all the strange wonderfulness of the company Slack. That’s not unique at Jobber either: any long lived company will have lots to teach their new colleagues, and a limited time to do it.

The best thing you can start with is to make sure you have an organized approach to this information. If this information is a series of manuals, you can expect that they won't retain much of that info. At Jobber our consistency and structure comes from Welcome Mat, our onboarding plan. It's an amazing course that helps new Jobberinos learn everything they need to know about working here.

We break down everything you need to know into seven days of fun, exciting learning. You’re thrown together with a cohort of people across the company to learn about this new adventure you’re embarking upon. And our fantastic people team at Jobber provides all the context required on the edges of the course. Through the group meetings, sharing sessions and structured learning the focus is clear and concise. This makes it much more than a presentation read aloud by a host, because it's Interactive.

Make it Interactive

Presentations are effective at presenting information to a large group of people but they are bad at actually teaching. We all have memories of schools with some professor droning on about some arcane topic. You don’t want that in your classroom, and you don’t want it in your boardroom either.

Instead, move the focus from the presenter to those being presented to. Use breakout sessions and other group activities to keep your new hires engaged with the content. Rather than present answers to common questions, tell them how to find it on their own.

During Welcome Mat we challenge our new hires to build the skills they'll need to answer their own questions. How do I get in touch with the Success team? What if I have computer troubles, who do I reach out to? What benefits do I have? Rather than lay out the answers to these critical questions we ask them to go find them on their own. This teaches them not only the answer to those questions, but also, where to go if you have any questions.

It's fun and interactive but it's focused at the same time. Each day of the seven having its own theme and clear messaging on what you're expected to learn. Every day begins by setting expectations and ends with a recap and further info. This helps you dig more into anything you find particularly interesting. It’s never functional learning, never “this is how you do your job,” but at Jobber, each day focuses on the “Why.”

Focus on the Why

When I went through the seven days of Welcome Mat, the people team hosted activities that took me all over Jobber. The emphasis was not on the information but on why the information was necessary. You can teach someone about Sales (part of Day 4 - Customers!) but why not focus on the benefit of your services and the needs of your customers. That way, your new hires will go and search out all that information on their own!

At every stage I found the meetings and activities tightly organized and focused on the why. Before I had left I had an appreciation for all aspects of the company and how each part fit together. It was clear how all the departments interacted and how everything laddered up into Jobber's vision. For Jobber that vision starts with some guy named Graham.

Graham is the reason that I’m even talking to you today. He was Jobber's very first customer and learning about him is important enough that it happens on day one. Our beloved SPs are so valuable to us that the conversation starts and ends with them. We’re bringing people and technology together to build stronger communities. Our communities are built on the backs of small businesses, so when small businesses win, we all win.

When someone finishes your own welcome process, they should be able to articulate your company's vision just as clearly. This is your best chance to instill in your employees the Why that underpins why you do what you do. Onboarding represents a critical opportunity to start from the right spot, for the right reasons. It's much harder to adjust things once they're out of that first boardroom. For Jobber, that means making sure everyone knows why we want to help change the world for small business owners everywhere.

That All Sounds Amazing

It is amazing! It was a supportive, organized, wonderful experience. I did promise you some tips and tricks for your own onboardings, so I better live up to my promises and deliver! I have the following recommendations to make your onboarding as awesome as Jobber’s:

Organization - Make sure your onboarding focuses on teaching the right things. You’ve got a limited amount of time to onboard someone, make it count!
Keep It Interactive - Put your new hires in cohorts, have them learn about the company (and about each other!) together. This will help them engage with the work together, and teach them how to find the answers they’ll need.
Focus on the Why - If you teach someone with a power point, they’ll only remember the snacks on the table. If you instead focus on the why, and get them excited about learning they’ll learn it themselves!

That might seem like a lot of work to do, and it is! But think of it like an investment in your future employees. The better organized, interactive, and rooted in your company's vision your onboarding is, the more effective it will be. And let me tell you again, onboarding at Jobber is fun!