Tag Archives: Culture

How to Create a New Hire Welcome Letter

new hire welcome letter

Have you ever wondered how to send a new hire welcome letter to get the employment relationship started on the right foot? I started sending a letter to new hires last year, and I’ve tweaked it over time to cover more questions, beef up explanations, and pretty much share as much information as I possibly can with our new employees. I’ve included my version below, so if you’re considering adding this into your new hire process, feel free to borrow/use some of this. (If you want more help with onboarding and new hire orientation, check out the free new hire orientation eBook!)

The Pinnacle new hire welcome letter

Welcome, [Name]!

We are excited about your first day with Pinnacle. Be forewarned, you’ll have a lot of information thrown at you on the first day, and it probably won’t slow down for a while. A piece of advice: take notes!

We use the phrase “drinking from a fire hose” around here sometimes, and it’s an apt description for the pace of the work we do. Don’t let that worry you, though. Along with that work comes an amazing manager, a supportive team, and a group of leaders that really does care about you and your work.

We’re different from other companies. Other companies say that, but at Pinnacle, it’s true. We are just over four years old and fairly small (about 70 employees at this time). We are growing quickly, and that is as a direct result of our reputation for doing great work. We aren’t a 5,000 person company with dozens of locations. You aren’t a faceless number to us. We treat our people like adults, because you deserve that. We’re a small business doing big things (or “small, but mighty” as we like to put it!).

You have a lot of questions as the resident newbie. Don’t worry, we’ve all been there and it’s understandable. Here are some of the most common questions and answers to get you started. If you have something that isn’t answered below, your supervisor would be happy to assist!

A few things you need to know about your work

  • What do I wear? We have a casual atmosphere in the office. It’s business casual most days, and many of us wear jeans on Fridays. Remember, we’re more focused on the work than your clothes!
  • Who do I ask questions of if my manager isn’t present? We support each other, so you can get questions answered by anyone. The most common questions can go to [insert operations team description/focus areas].
  • What do I do if I have a computer problem? Send an email to [support address] describing your problem to open a trouble ticket.
  • What are the standard working hours? With your key, you can get into the building 24/7 if necessary. Some of the engineers work 6:00-3:00. Some of the operations staff work 8:00-5:00. Find something that is comfortable with you and communicate that with your supervisor.
  • Will I have to work overtime? Evenings? Weekends? At times we will have flurries of activity that require some overtime, but it’s not a regular/weekly occurrence.
  • Will I have to travel? How often? Who makes travel arrangements? Travel isn’t something we do often, but it’s not unheard of. If you are required to travel, speak with your manager about who is responsible for making your travel arrangements.
  • How flexible are my work hours? One thing we appreciate at Pinnacle is the person you are outside of work. We work hard to be flexible when work and life events conflict. During those times stay in close communication with your manager if possible. It’s more about fitting your work into your life than the other way around.

A few things you need to know about your department

  • Who will I be working with? First and foremost, you’ll be working closely with your manager. They will be able to answer most of your questions or point you in the right direction if they cannot. The rest of your team will be [short description of department].
  • Who are the “movers and shakers” in the organization and how can I become one of them? The neat part about Pinnacle is that we all have our unique roles and responsibilities, and we all have a time and place for to be the “mover and shaker.” Doing your work well is a surefire way to establish your credibility as a foundation for future professional and organizational growth.
  • If I have ideas, suggestions or concerns, what channels exist to share those concerns? If it’s an idea, we have a Big Ideas database on SharePoint that you can use as an outlet for sharing new, innovative ideas. If you have concerns, your manager or theirs will be the next likely step.
  • How do people prefer to communicate in this organization? (Face to face? By e-mail? Phone?) Depending on the topic, we use all of these methods. Inside the office, we use Windows Messenger chats for quick back-and-forth conversations. Because we have locations across the US, we use email to do much of our official communication. Phones are perfectly acceptable when you need a quick answer and email isn’t fast enough. And face-to-face conversations (or “huddles,” as we like to call them) are key to solving many of the issues we run into on a daily basis.

A few things you need to know about Pinnacle

  • Do we have a strategic plan? What does it entail? The strategic goals of the organization are developed and shared on an annual basis by the Leadership Team. The corporate goals/strategy for 2012:
    • [Goal A, B, C, Etc.]
  • What are employees rewarded and recognized for? As previously stated, doing your work well is the best way to go. It sounds simplistic, but many organizations don’t have the transparency and flatness of Pinnacle. You interact on a daily basis with everyone from the CEO to a customer site lead to the engineers at corporate. They can tell when you are doing your work well, and good news like that travels quickly.

Questions? 

———–

Again, this is just one piece of a new hire process that touches on our culture in multiple ways. Anyone else use a similar tool with new hires? Care to share what sort of content you cover in this “welcome” document? Here’s an example of one of the welcome letters to new employees that has stuck in my mind for years.

Field Tested-Recruiting, Managing, and Retaining Veterans (Book Review)

I work for a government contractor in the defense industry. We have a large number of veterans working for us, so I am always looking for ways to understand them better. Recently I received a review copy of this book, and I was really excited to dig in. As usual, I read with an eye on the corporate culture aspects, and I thought the author, Emily King, did a great job of addressing those. Here are my top 4 “Aha!” moments while reading Field Tested-Recruiting, Managing, and Retaining Veterans.

#1 Put yourself in their shoes

This was the single best explanation for how a veteran must feel when they join the private sector that I’ve ever come across. Basically, the author asks you to imagine that you take a job in a private employer and work there  for twenty years. Then, you retire from that company and go to work for the military. Imagine the chaos and difficulty of trying to navigate the landscape of an entirely different organization and culture. That is how veterans feel when they come to work for us after completing a military career. Continue reading →

Cash wrapped in bacon (and other recruiting goodies)

baconIt was true in 2011 and it’s going to be true in 2012 as well. Companies are realizing competitive pay isn’t enough and that they need to compete on culture. That’s why I was drawn to this old CNET post detailing how one company offered these special goodies as a hiring bonus:

A briefcase filled with $11,000 in bacon-wrapped cash. A year’s supply of Dos Equis. An oil painting of yourself. Those are just a few of the hiring lures Los Angeles-based Scopely has bestowed upon “the most interesting engineer in the world.”

While software engineering isn’t in my future, I wouldn’t mind the briefcase. Or the bacon. Or the cash.

Faulty logic

One part of the article seemed to be based on faulty reasoning.

Startups spend lots of time looking for engineers because most of the ones looking for work aren’t the ones startups want.

“If an engineer has submitted a resume, I know it’s no good,” says Adam Pisoni, co-founder and CTO of Yammer, an internal social network for companies.

If someone applies to your company, you ignore them as a candidate? Seriously?

The article goes on to talk about how the company’s recruiters instead try to poach talent from other companies. Honestly, how is looking for a hotshot employee at Company A going to help support and grow the culture of Company B? How is that in any way different from posting jobs for people to apply at your company and sorting through those candidates?

We often look for solid candidates who will fit into and help grow our culture. We don’t exclusively seek out superstars who are so self-consumed that they could easily diverge from the carefully cultivated culture. It’s not just us, either. Looking only for experienced candidates flies in the face of the “candidates wanted: experience not preferred” mentality that companies like Chipotle believe in.

Companies that take the time to focus on how their culture differentiates them from the competition will be able to recruit and retain better talent over the long haul. Now about that money/bacon…

Does your culture suck? Here’s how to fix it…

Finding the Right Cultural Fit

Tough fitEver play Tetris before? The goal is to line up geometric figures in complete lines to earn points. Making things fit is the name of the game.

The image on the left is a joke, because it’s simply not possible to complete a line with the rounded bottom.

In other words, success is impossible.

As recruiters and HR pros, we do our best to get people into our organizations that fit our culture. Sometimes it’s extremely frustrating when you find someone who looks like an all star but isn’t the right cultural fit for your business.

Trying to force a fit in this situation isn’t going to make things work. And that isn’t necessarily your fault.

Sometimes people just won’t fit.

But it’s not necessarily a bad thing. That’s what separates Zappos from Wal-Mart. Keep that in mind.

Image credit: XKCD

Originally written as a guest post for Chris Ferdinandi over at RenegadeHR.net.

Fitting the job to the person

I’ve been talking a lot about Pinnacle lately, but there are so many neat things we can do as a smaller company that I’ve never even considered in the past. A great example of that is the tendency to fit the job to the person on our Operations Team. Instead of rigidly defining what the position requires and recruiting for an exact fit, we define the minimum education/experience level, find a great culture fit, and find out how to customize the job to fit them.

It takes a great manager

The Operations Manager at Pinnacle holds a philosophy similar to Marcus Buckingham, which basically means giving people work they are really good at and letting others do the other tasks that they are uniquely suited for. The Ops Manager works hard to define what each team member likes and does well and strives to give them more of that kind of work. They’ll do it better than someone else, and it makes them happy. Tough to beat that kind of attitude when it comes to teamwork!

Our accounting team is a great example. We have two part time accountants working a job-share situation. They both do different pieces of the work, but they are a great fit for each other and for the type of work they do. Some companies would have turned them away because they wanted to work fluid, ever-changing part time schedules, but we found a synergy there that vastly outpaces what a single accountant could accomplish.

But you’re small!

I know, I know. We are a small company so we can bend the rules. However, if you have noticed, I used the example of one team/department, not the whole organization. And it’s certainly possible for one subset of employees to follow this model if their manager is willing to spend the time on it. I keep hammering culture fit and attitude. If you have two similarly qualified individuals, but one has enthusiasm and passion for the position, then harness that to make your team, department, and company better.

Have you ever managed a team and tried to fit the jobs to the people? Does your manager do it for you? 

Competitive pay isn’t enough

Think offering competitive pay to candidates is a winning strategy? Think again. Sure, it might get someone in the door, but it won’t keep them for long if you don’t have a work environment that appeals to them on some level (more on what motivates employees from Daniel Pink).

As compensation budgets tighten and perks get cut across the board for many employers, the only differentiator many can turn to is their culture.

Competing on pay is a losing game. Compete on culture.

I’ve heard it said that candidates take the job for the money and stay for the culture. Anyone else think that’s true?

Company corporate culture-14 ways to research as a job candidate

My friend and I were talking recently about how to determine company corporate culture before you start working there. In the past we’ve both been burned by companies that looked good on the surface but eventually turned out to have a terrible culture of one sort or another.

company corporate culture

Take a peek at the culture

Honestly, if it was foolproof, people wouldn’t be suckered into it as often as they do. And since my friend and I (and others) actually work in HR/recruiting, we should know better than anyone how to unearth this stuff, right?

Mindset change required

All too often when we’re looking for a new job we become blinded to the negative and would move over even if the hiring manager promised to kick us in the kidneys four times a day. I understand when you have no job that it’s important to take what you can get, but never settle for working at an organization with a poor company corporate culture (or if the culture really isn’t “wrong,” but you just don’t fit in anyway). You’re giving them skills and experience that they can’t get from other candidates, and they’re trading that for money. Don’t forget that employment is a two way street!

Think about it. For many of the questions below, there are no “right” answers. Everyone appreciates different things about specific working environments, and what may appeal to you actually repulses others. Consider what the ideal company corporate culture would be for you, and filter the responses through that. Oh, and several of these methods will require you to ask unorthodox questions of the hiring manager or recruiter, but it’s the price you pay if you’re going to be serious about finding the right company corporate culture fit for you.

14 Ways to determine the culture

  1. Ask to interview an employee or two on what they enjoy about working there
  2. Ask for a walkthrough of the office-listen for laughs and look for smiles; that says a lot about the work environment
  3. Ask about previous people who held the position if you are replacing someone-find out what they did right and what they could’ve done better
  4. Look at sites like Glassdoor.com for reviews by current or former employees
  5. Keep in mind that there are “pockets” of culture within individual departments, so the overall company culture could differ from your specific work area-that’s why it’s important to try to do things like #1 and #2 above
  6. Ask what sorts of behavior are rewarded and which are punished
  7. Ask how (or if) news that affects the company is shared-does everyone learn of it at once or is it distributed to managers to trickle down to employees? Are they transparent?
  8. Find out what sort of events the company holds for employees-is it a once a year Christmas party or are there monthly opportunities to celebrate with coworkers?
  9. Ask if there are known slackers in the office and try to find out why they are still around (good luck with this one, but if you get a straight answer, you will have a leg up)
  10. Ask about how difficult it is to get attention or funding for new ideas and initiatives-are they a “we’ve always done it that way” type of company?
  11. Ask what the company’s overall mission/vision is. If a random employee can tell you (at least in general terms) it could signify a strong, unified workforce.
  12. Ask about the dress code and other abrasive policies/details that, while palatable at first, can end up chafing you down the line
  13. Find out if the company offers any sort of reimbursement or support for training, seminars, or college tuition. If they value smart employees who work to better themselves, they probably will.
  14. Ask how previous employees who committed ethics violations were held accountable (general terms are fine to protect any guilty parties, but do they even care about ethics in the first place?)

So, what other ways do you know of that a candidate can use to discern a company’s corporate culture before deciding to take a job?