This is a follow up from our last post about how culture and hiring go hand in hand. Here we talk about Clarity’s culture and how we have revamped our onboarding process to set our new employees up for success for the long term! Our people are the core of our company’s culture, how we welcome and onboard our new employees is critical; our new onboarding process sets the tone and expectation for a successful career ahead at Clarity.
A bit about Clarity’s culture:
Building and maintaining a strong company culture is crucial for any company, especially for a smaller company like Clarity, we are a team of 16 (and growing)! Every person on the team plays a vital role and is directly responsible for the company’s success. As we continue to grow our team, it’s our goal to not only find people who will add to our culture, but also ensure that they are set up for a successful career at Clarity for the long term. Internally, we would describe Clarity’s culture as collaborative yet entrepreneurial. We can only be successful in what we do if we work together – as the saying goes, teamwork makes the dream work…cheesy but true! We also look for each employee to bring their own ideas to the table and think outside the box to add to our battle tested practices. Since we are in growth mode, it was time that we took a bit of a deep dive into our culture and current onboarding process. While going through this process, we realized there were areas for improvement.
And what we found…is that there was a discrepancy between what our existing employees say about Clarity’s culture and how new hires perceive it. If we pride ourselves on our our open-minded, transparent, and collaborative culture and feel that it’s what sets us apart from other workplaces, then that should be evident from day 1 in the onboarding process. Because of this, we’ve recently instituted some changes to our onboarding process so that new employees know what we are about and how they can contribute from the start.
Clarity’s (revamped) onboarding process:
Our onboarding process starts before someone even gets a job offer. We make every potential new hire feel welcomed from the minute they walk through Clarity’s doors.
In the interview process we have each potential new hire meet several people at Clarity across different functions because we value the opinion of all of our employees and it gives the applicant an opportunity to see how dynamic and unique each and every person is at Clarity.
Once an offer is made, the team reaches out to congratulate and welcome our new Clarity employee. Coming into a small office like ours is like entering into a family, and we want every new person walking in already feeling a part of it. In addition, our Office Manager and HR Guru, Jenny Park, reaches out before the first day to provide a rundown of Day 1 to ensure new employees know what to expect and don’t walk in nervous.
The first day is a chance for our new hire to really get to know Clarity and for us to get to know them! We start the day off with a welcome breakfast (NY style!) and a fun icebreaker that the whole office participates in – this has proved to be a fun and creative way to ease our newbie in and for us all to learn more about each other, even if we’ve been working together for years! When we did this last week with our newest member, Kolt, and I learned that my colleague Erica had been slimed at Nickelodeon Studios in front of a live studio audience (and thinks slim is just green applesauce) – who knew? It usually becomes evident to our newbies that we’re definitely NOT an “all work and no play” environment (which you can probably tell from our over-sharing of food pictures on Instagram on what we call, “Tasty Tuesdays” in front of our bar, “The Watercooler”). We like to have fun and laugh at ourselves, while working super hard to make an impact in others lives! We also have all new employees to fill out a first day questionnaire about some of their favorite things to do, places to go, foods to eat, and how they like to be celebrated. We take a personalized approach to every team member and we want everyone to feel welcomed to be themselves. We spend a lot of time with each other and we want everyone to feel at home!
Continuing on…I sit down with each new hire on the first day to go over Clarity’s history, people, and processes that make Clarity what it is. We have an amazing entrepreneurial story and before our new employees just jump right and begin to represent us, it’s super important for our newbies to know who we are as a women-owned business and how we got to where we are today!
I outline how every new person can hit the ground running and we put goals and a plan in place together to set each person up for success. From there, we lay out the training schedule, our goals for the next couple of months, and plan for multiple check-ins so that we can provide feedback (and receive feedback!) throughout the process. This allows us to provide a tailored onboarding experience to each employee. Learning the in’s and out’s of the job is the focus for the first few weeks, but we want all employees to feel like an important part of Clarity from Day 1!
Hiring and retaining outstanding talent has always been a priority for the team and I at Clarity and it’s vital to maintain and evolve our culture especially as we focus on growth and hiring great new people. We are so excited to welcome more people into this family! If you’re interested in applying to work at Clarity, we’d love to speak with you! We are open to different professional backgrounds as we have found it can provide fresh ideas and practices. To apply, email your resume to me at colleen@claritystaffing.com. We can’t wait to hear from you!