Best Practices for Onboarding Staff with Belle Walker

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:36 — 21.6MB)

In this episode, Alay and Belle discuss:

Benefits of having a process map for onboarding staff.
How to document your processes and procedures.
The knowledge and expertise that is hidden in underdeveloped documentation.
Different ways of brainstorming for process maps with your team.

Key Takeaways:

Simple checklists are helpful for experienced staff. They are not the end-all-be-all for every process, especially in an industry as complex as law.
There should be at least three visual shapes for your process map to make different stages stand our clearly. For example: start, finish, tasks, etc.
Process mapping requires significant time to gather information and visually layout the process map.
Interviewing individuals alone rather than as a group is more effective due to the different points of view and information given.

Tweetable Moments:

“The only thing worse than onboarding new staff is having to terminate somebody. Unfortunately, if onboarding isn’t done right, oftentimes the logical next step is the person that either quits and leaves or you, as the owner, have to let them go. And we want to avoid those outcomes.” — Alay Yajnik
“A process map can literally be a map to help your staff navigate the different tasks and steps and activities that are needed to onboard a new client, to screen, to make sure there’s a fit, and to make sure that all of their information is tracked.” — Belle Walker
“The change was really manifested in the process map. By really ordering in that process, map how to approach those questions, they could filter down the most efficient path, or the most likely the efficient path, and also listen for keywords that they may not have known to listen for otherwise.” — Belle Walker
“The best place to get started is to think through where the expertise comes in for your staff.” — Belle Walker
“You could almost flow right through: the process map is when to do it, Loom is how to do it, the checklist is proof you did it.” — Belle Walker

Episode References:

Scribd: https://www.scribd.com/
Loom: https://www.loom.com/

About Belle Walker:

Belle Walker takes organizations from Friction to Function, recapturing lost efficiency and engagement by aligning structures and processes with strategic goals. Her clients span tech, professional services, nonprofits, and more.

Prior to consulting, Belle built several successful teams for HERE Technology, including one responsible for the quality of maps for autonomous vehicles, and received two patents. Belle began her career at Google, building a nationwide aerial photography operation. She has also built Product Management and Customer Service organizations.

Belle has a Mechanical Engineering degree from Harvard and a Systems Engineering master’s from USC where her research studied organizations as systems.