As a startup grows, one of the fascinating things is to see how the onboarding program evolves.

A great onboarding program has a very straightforward purpose: to ensure the success of new hires through:

1. Meaningful knowledge transfer
2. Acclimation to the environment
3. Clearly defined purpose

When an organization is small, doing this can be relatively easy because there are few formal systems. But, as an organization grows, effectively onboarding people becomes more complex.

So, how can you design an onboarding program that effectively adapts?

You do it through a scaffolding approach, meaning that it is easy to ‘build onto’ over time.

You approach your onboarding as a series of Lego pieces. They can be swapped out for larger pieces, different colors, hooked onto each other and connected in all sorts of ways.

More thoughts to come….