Onboarding Class for Your New Job
I have worked a lot of places. A lot. And since I have clients instead of employers for many years now, I get to see how many other types of offices—on several continents—work as well. I have also done lots and lots of remote work, so have been doing this WFH thing, and video calling and screen sharing, not since early 2020, but for over a decade.
Corporate onboarding gets you your computer and a badge, but whether half a day or a week long is always a waste of time, as it doesn’t tell you how to be a useful, productive, and most of all not an annoyingly-bad member of the organization and the team.
So I started making my own list of onboarding tips almost 20 years ago — initially for actual employees of specific places I worked — and have updated it to be public, and more generalized (it doesn’t tell you how to make coffee here or where to put your food) since I moved to consulting instead. It is regularly updated as well when I remember something is not on the list, or someone else has a best practice we should all follow.
Here’s your manual on being a good Digital / Information / Office worker, at least in the West:
When you are on a conference call, mute the phone when not talking. Ideally you plan conference calls like you plan to attend a real, in-person meeting and you are awake, prepared, settled down with your coffee or water, on time and in a quiet place. But at least, mute so we don’t hear you typing (I have a loud keyboard), or your coworkers having a party behind you (happened), or dogs barking, or kids crying. Sure life happens, but the quicker we can get off calls, the better.
When someone asks “How are you?” I have eventually learned, no one really cares. Unless it will affect job performance in the immediate future, if you are sick or recently so and everyone knows, or you may have to leave to pick up a kid from school: when people ask how you are doing always say “fine,” or “great.” Also, try to follow up with “how are you?” but do not go overboard. Don’t greet people in any detail on a conference bridge, as you need to get on to the next person also.
Schedule meetings. Use the meeting organizer tool in the calendar. Fill out all the fields correctly. There’s a place for each thing. Don’t put the phone dial-in info or the room location in the title; you aren’t being helpful; as everyone is used to finding it in the correct field where location goes.
If your meeting happens periodically, use the recurring meeting function in the calendar. Don’t send out a meeting for each event. All these meeting systems always allow variations per meeting, so even if a different room each time, or a new agenda, use that to update the individual meeting instead of setting a whole bunch of meetings.
When you host a call, and open the line, do not yell “hellooo?” or any such variation. Announce yourself, by name: “This is Steven, who else is on?” Better, to prevent people stepping one each other, is as the organizer to look at who you actually invited, and conduct a real roll call, as well as greeting every new beep into the call: “This is Steven, who just joined?” Don’t greet people too much or your conversation stops the meeting and the other people trying to join and announce.
Never just say “Hi,” “Hello” or any other generic greeting when joining a conference call either. Announce yourself instead. I like to say “This is Steven.” Yes, on systems like Skype there’s a visual readout, but no one looks at it. And people often sound the same, so don’t assume anything.
When you announce yourself on a call, at least until everyone knows who you are, explain yourself. “This is Steven from Corporate UX.” Be able to introduce yourself without saying “oh, what is it I do, hahaha?!” The first meetings with a project team will need that. “Steven Hoober, I am a contract designer for all mobile apps here at [client]. I work for [pointing, if in the room] Carol, who runs the overall User Experience effort here.”
When you run a meeting, take notes. Distribute the notes to everyone else at the end.
When you attend a meeting, take notes. Do what people told you to do. Cross off stuff when you finish the task.
When your boss comes by your desk and tells you to do something, take notes. Do what you are told you to do. Cross off stuff when you finish the task.
Schedule your work. I don’t care if you put it on your calendar, make a to-do list or write it on the wall, but put all you work somewhere. Don’t forget to do it. And not eventually, but when it is due.
Tell everyone who cares about it when you finish your work. It’s not really finished until it’s delivered, and it’s not really delivered until everyone knows it’s on the share drive, or whatever. Email—and yes, even Slack—is not always noticed, so may not count as delivered either. Make sure people know.
Don’t steal other people’s chairs. Don’t be a thief in general, but we adjust our chairs to ourselves, and even if wobbly, get used to them. No, not all chairs are the same. Don’t steal chairs and if you need it for a sudden executive meeting, note where they go and put them back. For the record, I am not personally especially chair-picky, but some are and this will get you Lifetime Ire® or maybe even HR involvement (really!) from them.
Include subjects in the email subject line. Remember not everyone is on your project, and inboxes are sometimes narrow, so lead with something very short, like a project name abbreviation. Follow it with the briefest possible summary, and date it if you do this all the time so it’s a unique email thread. “CTX — Updated designs, 9 May,” yes, even though email has timestamps.
Learn project names. Use the same name and abbreviation as everyone else. If it varies, ask if everyone can pick one name and abbreviation.
Address emails in priority order. Put people who will care less as CC instead of TO. Some people (not me, but some) filter emails like this so do not read emails they are CC’d on.
Write emails for the least-informed member of the team. Don’t assume everyone knows what you know about the project, that everyone understands all acronyms and abbreviations, or that everyone on the email went to the last meeting.
Use the return key. Break email (and Slack, and WhatsApp…) messages into easily digestible pieces. At least paragraphs, but no matter what Tufte says, bullet points help to organize thoughts and make email easier to read.
Pull out tasks for individuals if you have them in the message. “John, I need you to…” but since it’s rare that everyone must take action, don’t (usually) put ACTION REQUIRED in the subject line.
Have a sigline. Really. For every email. In threads, it’s hard to tell who wrote what without it, and often we don’t know who you are anyway, or how to get ahold of you. Put your name, title, department, email, phone.
Reply properly. Use reply-all almost always. Unless you know the team hates conversations going on and on, copy everyone on the original email on the full conversation.
Reply with context. Copy the part you are replying to into your email, make it “quote” style or (if unavailable) make it gray and italics or something to make that clear, then put your reply under it. Do this point by point. Use color if needed to make it clear. Copy! Do not do your reply IN the earlier email as some email systems or clients hide previous responses so you are sending a blank message to them. “See below” is not a good solution, and people will miss it. Copy the text into the actual email you are sending!
Put your vacations, doctor’s appointments, etc on the calendar. Then, everyone knows you are not there and don’t book meetings over times you are not there. You can just say “Busy” or “OOO” as the subject so no one knows what you are doing if it’s private and you have shared calendars, but it is blocked off time.
Include travel time in your offsite meetings. Don’t just be late, assume it’s covered, etc. but if it will take half an hour to drive to the factory, make a half hour appointment on each end that no one else can take as a meeting then. You are busy there.
Look at other people’s calendars. You never need to send an email or call someone or take time on a call to say “what’s a good time for everyone?” If they didn’t update their calendar, that’s their fault. Corporate meeting creation allows seeing availability of others. Use it.
How much do you need to complain about food, really? If the last three times you asked them to order vegetarian you didn’t like it, can you instead just bring something, or suffer like we all do? We non-picky meat eaters also mostly all hate the pizza or sandwiches anyway, so you aren’t unique. It’s meeting food. It sucks.
Bring a pen. Pad of paper. Your computer. Your phone. A cup of water. The charger. Cables to project. Be prepared for meetings. Don’t spend time during the meeting going out to get stuff.
Know how company equipment works. If presenting, show up early, or the day before, or ask someone else how the projector works, for example.
Get help. In a meeting, if you are showing off some work, have someone else take notes so you can focus on presenting, running the meeting, etc. and they don’t all sit around staring at you slowly writing.
Sharing your screen on a Skype (or WebEx, or live in a room, or whatever), don’t check your email. Turn off your IM, etc. I like to actually quit programs I don’t need, so reminders don’t pop up.
Understand people are human. Don’t schedule meetings over lunch without feeding, or a reasonable break so they can feed themselves. Don’t have 3+ hour meetings, on the phone or in person, without bathroom breaks.
Tell people about meeting logistics in the appointment. Don’t make them assume or ask about location, food, breaks, travel, or anything else they might need to know.
Never take the last [thing] from the fridge, snack basket, etc. I mean, unless you are hypoglycemic or pregnant, etc. then you totally get a pass. Likewise, if present in your office, change the water bottle if you run it out, make more coffee if you have a group carafe and use it all, re-stock the pop from the cabinet if it’s low in the fridge, and so on.
Same for everything else you use up. Paper in the printer, for example.
Find out who orders office supplies. Be nice to them. Tell them when things are out. Actually, they often know or feel they should so don’t tell, ask. “You know we don’t seem to have any 11x17 paper, right?”In big enough offices, you have a mail slot. Probably near the break room. Yes, you do everything on email or Slack, but some day, something critically important will arrive there. Get used to glancing at it daily just in case.
Travel well, if you travel as a group. Never be exceptionally slow or annoying. Any trip under 3 days, for anyone at all, should not involve personal checked luggage. (Personal: equipment, samples, etc. may need to be checked; yes, medical equipment and so on are exceptions as well).
If you drive, pretend you are hosting a meeting. Schedule, arrange, tell. The car is your conference room. Make it neat and organized, drive for the passengers. Take breaks, schedule food stops, tell everyone the plan.
Your corporate processes are stupid. Filling out the timesheet before the end of the month is nonsensical and maybe unethical or illegal. Who cares? Do it anyway so the whole team or department doesn’t get an email that you’ve failed to fill out your time sheet.
First, do your work. Lunch with the team, leaving early for happy hour, going to the car show on the corporate campus, etc. is never a good excuse to miss a meeting or not get your work done that day.
If you can’t do your work and have a life, for an extended period, complain. When they ignore you — and they will — start looking for a new job.
Don’t quit in a huff the first time you are sad. I don’t hire people who change jobs every three months. Look for a new job while you work. No one really knows what you are up to anyway, so you can slack off a bit and they won’t notice. It keeps your options open, as the current job may get cool in the months it takes to find something better.
When hosting a meeting where you’ll be presenting, be at the front of the room, by the projector screen or TV, off to one side of course. You look at the team and they can shift their gaze from you talking, gesturing, demoing, to the screen as you show off items. You can get up and point at the screen, or go to the whiteboard, and being in their eyeline they will follow you.
When you are gonna be out of the office for a notable amount of time (vacation, miss the morning for a doctor), it is good to tell your team… who will forget. Give them a reminder on the calendar but do NOT invite them to your event. Instead, make a brief meeting first thing in the morning, say 6–6:15 saying “Steven — OOO,” with no reminder. Then it shows up when they get in, but doesn’t get in the way.
State when deliverables are actually due. “Immediately” is not a time. When do you really need it?
Define end of day (EOD), or end of week (EOW) times. I always define end of day as “before they get into the office in the morning.” Unless otherwise stated, I assume end of week is before 8 am local on Monday. Now be sure to read close, as “before EOD” means before 5 pm, that same day.
Don’t automatically get a meeting room for all meetings. If everyone works from home, or the workforce is spread all over town/campus so half of them won’t show anyway, you are just needlessly segregating the info. In-room conversations will leave out the remote folks. Do it all online unless basically everyone is in person.
Online meetings are online. Like everything online, they don’t have to emulate in-person meetings. Video does NOT have to be on by default, and there’s data that it is counter-productive to look at talking heads instead of just listening. Use audio, use the meeting room features like chat to share links and so on, and use screen sharing to show off documents, designs, or even just the notes being taken so everyone can see what has been documented and decided upon.
Don’t overdo synchronous methods. Phone calls, IMs, Slack (which is just an IM system putting on airs) take away the recipient’s consent, and break their concentration. They are also transient, so info is easily lost and forgotten. Use email, use shared documents (wikis, sharepoint, OneNote, Dropbox, Google Sheets, Basecamp…) and more to record and share incidental, respond-whenever, or to-be-pemanently-kept info, for everyone.
As an organizer, believe people’s human needs. If they say they need a minute to write down their task before you move on, give it to them and don’t have a side conversation. If someone says “hey, can we have a break now?” don’t poll the room or try to persuade them to push on to the next planned one; you can probably just make that the break time.
Respect privacy. One thing that is very different about online meetings is that side channels are an active part of it. You can be individually messaged through the tool, or use email, IM, SMS, etc. and unlike in a room, no one knows. That last part is the important one. Keep your side conversations to the side. Be CAREFUL what you send or open when someone is sharing the screen. And listen, act on info (whether project or logistics stuff like breaktime), but don’t share that someone said it unless they want to be outed.
Especially when it’s the same day, minutes later, more emails is not generally a reminder or notification. If something urgent is happening, try another channel. IM, SMS, Slack, call, or go by their desk.
Try not to change meeting details like room, time, or call/share info once scheduled. If you do, then be absolutely sure that everyone has he information. Late change for a big meeting? Better have someone in the other room (virtual or otherwise) at the original time to make sure anyone who shows up the wrong place gets the updated information.
Include links to where project files are stored, references to third party standards, or whatever. Yes, even if it’s the 305th email with the same format and the share drive never moves. The email or slack message or whatever is what people are looking at, so don’t make them search, find the right bookmark but let them click.
Clean. Your. Camera. If you are a group that shares video of everyone at their desk when on Skype/Slack/Zoom/GoTo meetings, then clean your lens. More than anything else like cleaning the room or making sure your hair is normal, a dirty or dusty lens will make the image unbearable. Use Windex or glasses spray or whatever, wipe and see. Generally: test and see how you look at least daily to make sure the lens is clean and you are centered, etc.
Your booked meeting time is not magically the proper amount of time to have a meeting. If you schedule an hour on a call or in a room, and the issue is resolved entirely in 23 minutes: meeting over. Do not find some other topic “while everyone is here.” Meetings are always the least productive part of the day, so let everyone get back to work
Don’t schedule same day meetings. It’s very simple, just don’t. Give them a few days to notice the meeting request and make sure their schedule works, and they are prepared. Really don’t schedule meetings for less than an hour away.
Do not miss deadlines. But also emphasize to everyone that deadlines only count when you have agreed to them. We don't generally build stuff to avoid meteor impacts; deadlines are not laws of nature so if you can't do the work in time, and do it properly, appropriately, well, and without ruining your life, then push back and offer a realistic deadline.
If you are going to miss a schedule, tell everyone as soon as you know. Don't miss it then apologize, but predict it. Even hours early helps teams plan for changing circumstances. Sometimes, that also lets you negotiate; maybe you can deliver partially?
What did I miss?