Question 1: If you could implement one HR initiative or policy in every organization, what would it be and why?
Answer: Yeah, great starting question. For me, I think the focus should be on ongoing feedback practices. While it may not be a specific policy, I’ve noticed that organizations that implement recurring feedback—whether through weekly one-on-ones, pulse check-ins, or similar methods—tend to thrive. In contrast, organizations that only provide feedback during performance reviews once or twice a year are missing the mark.
Real-time feedback is incredibly valuable, and I believe it’s something we emphasize a lot in business. Implementing the right processes or policies to support regular feedback, especially between managers and their direct reports, is a significant win for any organization.
Question 2: In your experience, what are the common pitfalls or misconceptions HR professionals often encounter? And what strategies have you found effective in overcoming or avoiding them?
Answer: Yeah, great question. Let’s tackle the first part, and you can follow up with me afterward to address the second. When we think about common pitfalls, one of the biggest issues I see is treating HR as separate from the business rather than integrating it into the business context. Whether you’ve spent your entire career in HR or, like me, transitioned into HR, you quickly realize the value of aligning HR closely with the business.
Any HR team or leader that tries to operate independently from the CEO and executive team will never achieve the same level of success as one that is deeply ingrained in the business’s operating principles. Ideally, HR should be a true partner to the business, working in tandem.
To avoid the pitfall of isolation, it’s crucial to ask the right questions, meet regularly with the CEO and executives, and understand their challenges. As an HR leader or team, your goal should be to support them effectively and be involved in day-to-day operations. One of the issues I see is when HR is only brought in to solve problems. This reactive approach limits HR’s potential to add value.
When HR is embedded in the daily operations and acts as a thought partner, whether it’s about future business structure or enabling managers to lead better, that’s when organizations truly benefit the most from their HR leaders and teams.
Question 3: As an HR leader, what trends are you noticing in employee onboarding strategies across industries?
Answer: Yeah, great question, and I’ll get to the answer in a moment. But first, I think it’s important to highlight something that’s often overlooked: onboarding is the first real interaction an employee has with a company. If it’s not done well, it can set things off on the wrong foot. You can hire the best talent out there, but if the organization doesn’t onboard them effectively, they may struggle to perform, not because they aren’t the right fit, but because they weren’t given the tools and support needed to succeed.
In terms of trends, one of the big ones I’ve noticed is hyper-personalization. This means moving away from a one-size-fits-all onboarding process and instead tailoring the experience to each individual’s needs and preferences. For example, some people prefer to wait until their first day or first week on the job to meet their manager and start receiving information, while others prefer to do this before they officially start. There’s no right or wrong way—it’s all about preference.
What I’ve seen is a growing trend toward asking new hires questions ahead of time and offering them more choices in how they want their onboarding experience to unfold.
Question 4: How should HR leaders ensure that the onboarding programs are effectively integrated into remote workplaces or remote employees?
Answer: Yeah, of course. At PolicyMe, we’re a remote-first company, so all of our onboarding is done remotely. The key here is frequent communication and consistent checkpoints. To explain our process, we start by asking for preferences and input before someone starts. Then we do two things: I have someone on my team who focuses on the employee, while I focus on the manager.
For the employee, we conduct check-ins at one week, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, six months, and one year. Someone from my team handles these check-ins. In parallel, I do 30, 60, and 90-day check-ins with the manager. This ensures the relationship is going well and allows us to catch any issues early. If there are problems, the first 30 to 90 days are crucial for addressing them and determining whether it’s an issue with our onboarding process, the employee’s learning progress, or if we may have hired someone into the wrong role.
These early moments are essential to ensure not only that we’ve hired the right person, but also that we’re providing them with the right tools and environment to succeed. Beyond the check-ins, we also conduct surveys. These surveys help us gather feedback from employees to determine whether they’re getting what they need, not only from the HR team but also from their managers and peers. We want to ensure that the experience aligns with what we promised during the hiring process.
The surveys are brief, but we conduct them on the same schedule as the check-ins, allowing us to collect information over time. We then use that feedback to improve our onboarding process with each new hire, continually refining our approach.
It’s not novel to say that asking for feedback is important, but the more you do it, the more you can build an onboarding process that truly works. One thing I often emphasize is the importance of distinguishing between what needs to involve a human touch and what can be automated with technology. There are many AI-enabled and tech tools available to assist with onboarding, but it’s crucial to remember that starting a new job can be overwhelming. Human connection and support during this time can have a significant impact. Especially in a remote setting, it’s important to carefully consider which aspects of the onboarding process should be tech-enabled and which require a personal, human touch.
Question 5: What do you do to ensure that the remote employees and the onboarding for all employees are well taken care of. And how do you measure the effectiveness of your organization’s onboarding efforts?
Answer: Yeah, good question. I think a lot of it ties back to what I mentioned earlier about our survey process. We ask key questions of every new hire and also gather feedback from managers about their experience. This helps us measure how well the onboarding process is going and identify areas where we need to make improvements.
Another important aspect of measurement is the first performance review cycle of a new hire. A key question we consider is whether the manager would hire this person again if given the chance. This can be a strong indicator of whether we hired the right person. However, I believe that question isn’t solely tied to onboarding because so much of onboarding is our responsibility as an organization.
Ultimately, it’s a mix of factors. The surveys are our most effective tool for understanding the onboarding experience, alongside ongoing conversations with new hires and their managers. These discussions provide valuable feedback on where we can improve and how to enhance the overall process.
Question 6: What particular metrics do you look at while you do this analysis?
Answer: Yeah, so what we’re essentially trying to determine is how quickly people are onboarding effectively. One of the key questions we ask is, “Do you feel like you have everything you need to do your job well?” In the first week, we don’t usually expect a high level of readiness—most people don’t feel fully equipped at that stage. But by the second month, we want to see that employees have what they need to perform their job well.
When it comes to measuring the effectiveness of onboarding, asking this type of question at various points in the process can help us understand whether people are actually getting what they need. After all, ensuring that employees are prepared and equipped to do their jobs well is the ultimate goal of onboarding.
Question 7: From your experience, how must HR leaders address the challenge of onboarding employees from diverse backgrounds?
Answer: Yeah, I think this really ties back to the importance of personalization. It’s about asking questions to get to know the individuals you’re hiring and understanding what’s important to them. For example, if there’s a religious holiday coming up, you need to consider how that fits into their onboarding plan to ensure it’s respected and accounted for. This also applies to any other significant events or needs they may have in their lives.
The key is to ask those essential questions: What do you need? How can we make this experience the best it can be for you? It’s about focusing on the human aspect of onboarding. Once they start, especially if it’s someone from a background you’ve never hired before, it’s crucial to check in regularly to see how they’re doing and how their experience is going.
However, this approach should apply to everyone onboarding, not just those from diverse backgrounds. Singling someone out because they’re more diverse isn’t the right approach and could feel awkward or alienating. Instead, it’s about figuring out how to personalize the experience, asking the right questions, and giving them the space to communicate their needs. The worst thing we can do is ask, “How can we make this the best experience for you?” and then fail to offer the support they need.
Question 8: How do you ensure that the onboarding process remains agile and adaptable to changing circumstances?
Answer: Yeah, for us, a lot of this comes down to feedback. We’ve touched on this before, but maintaining open communication with new hires, managers, and teams is crucial. I always emphasize that, especially in smaller companies or startups, the role of the HR team should be to offer structure that enables rather than imposes rigid processes.
While we do provide processes, insisting that they must be followed in a specific way because “this is how we’ve set it up” isn’t the most effective approach, particularly in a smaller organization. Instead, our role should be to build the infrastructure, provide the necessary tools, and then collaborate with managers and employees to make the onboarding experience as effective and positive as possible. This approach keeps the process more flexible and adaptable, which is key in a dynamic environment.
Question 9: How can HR leaders utilize AI and automation to streamline the onboarding process and enhance efficiency?
Answer: Yeah, good question. There’s a lot of discussion happening right now around AI in HR. What I always emphasize is the importance of distinguishing between what should be a human moment and what can be a technology-enabled moment. It’s about identifying where the human touch is essential for a successful onboarding experience.
At PolicyMe, we use technology and AI in several ways. For example, we leverage AI to help draft our job descriptions, getting the initial versions ready before refining them. We’ve also partnered with an organization called Kindo to create repeatable workflows, particularly for our 30, 60, and 90-day plans. We’ve trained this tool with our company values and our approach to onboarding, so when we input a job description, it generates a draft of the plan. We then provide this draft to managers, who can customize it to better fit the needs of the new employee.
AI is incredibly helpful for creating first drafts, especially for written materials. However, while technology can streamline these processes, it’s crucial to remember that human interaction is still vital, especially when someone is joining a company. Those human moments are what make the onboarding experience truly effective.
Question 10: In what ways do you see these emerging technologies transforming the future of employee onboarding?
Answer: I think it’s a great question. In my field, it’s not as relevant because we’re a tech company, and even with in-office onboarding, it would still be desk-based work on computers. However, I’ve seen some promising applications in other industries, like aviation. There, virtual technologies and augmented reality can be used to train people on tasks such as flying a plane, enabling a form of remote onboarding that wasn’t possible before.
For example, VR goggles sent to someone’s home can help them start their onboarding experience remotely, providing them with a better understanding of their tasks before they even step into the office. There’s definitely a lot of potential for these technologies, but it’s important to assess whether they fit your industry and organization’s needs.
Question 11: Any piece of literature, book, documentary, movie, anything that comes to your mind that has really shaped your leadership journey and has impacted the kind of HR leader that you have evolved into.
Answer: Yeah, when you sent this question in advance, I gave it some thought. There’s a lot I could share, but one book that I highly recommend is Atomic Habits by James Clear. Have you heard of it?
Pulkit: Yes, by James Clear.
Vanesa: Exactly. The book emphasizes the power of starting small to build habits and how making tiny, consistent changes can significantly improve our lives.
For roles like HR, where there’s often so much to do with limited time and resources, adopting this approach can be very effective.
Instead of attempting major overhauls, which can be challenging due to change management and people’s tolerance for change, focusing on small, incremental improvements can make a substantial difference.
This approach allows us to make meaningful progress without overwhelming ourselves or our organizations.