Transboarding: It’s the Key to Building More Successful, Engaged Employees

With more organizations taking a people-centric approach to managing their business, there has been an intense focus as of late on how to best integrate new employees to a team, and more specifically, how organizations can ensure these same employees can quickly become fully productive and engaged.

What hasn’t received nearly as much attention, but is very similar to onboarding and just as important is transboarding – moving people into new roles within the organization, or “recruiting from within.”

The term transboarding may sound a little like sci-fi, but make no mistake, it is very much based on earthly reality and something organizations and employees the world over are experiencing every day, to the advantage of both employer and employee.

Why? Because transboarding is a great way for employers to keep good employees motivated and challenged by new opportunities and projects that are available at their current organization, rather than having to look elsewhere.

That said, not all organizations do transboarding well, and when they don’t, they run the risk of losing talented individuals to the competition. If we’re being really honest, most don’t do onboarding well, so how can we expect them to get transboarding right?

That begs the question: How does an organization help employees successfully navigate their new role and responsibilities, ensuring a successful transition? It starts with building the appropriate connections, facilitating clear communication, and developing a comprehensive yet flexible framework for workforce engagement.

5 Ways to Build a Better Transboarding Experience

If you’re thinking about transboarding, here are a five (5) things you should do:

1. Gain leadership buy-in. Transboarding represents a leadership opportunity requiring both a commitment to people and a keen understanding of workplace culture. Make sure your leaders understand the significance of a good employee experience and the potential it represents.
2. Give employees access to the right resources to succeed. By resources, I mean technology to help them do their job effectively. And, access to people — such as team members and mentors — who may have experience in the position and who can guide them on new processes, projects, and collaborate as needed.
3. Provide clear communication. Set expectations about what success looks like from the very beginning. Make sure employees fully understand their new role and responsibilities, your expectations, the development plan, and so forth. They need to know what their short term and long term goals are and how their new position is different from the one they previously held.
4. Make individuals feel welcome to the team. Here’s how to do it: Make introductions; invite them to meetings; add them to email distribution lists right away so they are in the loop from Day 1; and, plan engagements with team members to help them feel connected more quickly.
5. For those who have moved into leadership roles, provide the education needed to effectively manage and lead a diverse workforce. This includes developing skills on how to manage a disparate workforce, and how to lead individuals with different strengths. Make sure you hold leaders accountable for the overall experience and engagement of employees.

How HCM Technology Can Help

The above suggestions are fundamental, however Human Capital Management Technology (HCM) should also be considered as a means to facilitate employee role transitions – mainly through connectivity, communication, and collaboration. For instance:

• Understanding individual and team relatability can help individuals new to the team (if not the organization) figure out how best to work with others to drive higher levels of effective interaction between managers and employees. This will ultimately drive results.
• HCM technology can also provide a channel of communication – informing employees of how their new job will impact the organization while helping formally reset goals and objectives in association with their new role, and, help to establish a performance development program.
• Updated people, pay and other pertinent employee information can be automatically transferred into all HCM processes when using HCM technology. This type of automation can help ensure accuracy, efficiency, and productivity, making for a “seamless” employee experience.

Having said all this, companies need to seriously embrace good transboarding practices. With people switching jobs more often than in the past, growing employees internally through new roles, responsibilities, and functions is a fantastic way to retain talent and build new leaders.

Conversely, a poor transboarding experience can lead to low morale and a loss of top talent, so getting it right is essential. When the transboarding experience is successful, there is a strong likelihood the employee will be successful sooner in their new role.

This is what transboarding can do: Through the combination of people, technology and programs, employers can optimize their internal talent pipeline to fuel engagement, increase retention, and ultimately, improve their bottom line.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lisa Sterling is the Chief People Officer at Ceridian, focused on executing the organization’s global people strategy combined with leading the vision on the Dayforce Talent Management offering. She joined Ceridian in June 2015 as Vice President of Dayforce Talent Management, responsible for global product strategy for Talent technologies. With over 17 years of experience in people, process and software design and execution, her broad range of expertise covers the entire people experience as well as talent management technology.

By Lisa Sterling

Lisa Sterling is the Chief People Officer at Ceridian, focused on executing the organization’s global people strategy combined with leading the vision on the Dayforce Talent Management offering. Lisa joined Ceridian in June 2015 as Vice President of Dayforce Talent Management, responsible for global product strategy for Talent technologies. With over 17 years of experience in people, process and software design and execution, her broad range of expertise covers the entire people experience as well as talent management technology. Prior to Ceridian, Lisa ran the Talent Technology Solutions organization for Mercer. A recognized thought leader in the market and to Ceridian’s clientele, Lisa has a true passion for people and products and uses all available avenues to influence and promote new ways of bringing the two together in a way that drives business outcomes. Lisa earned a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Management from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.