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16 Practical, Effective Ways Tech Leaders Can Support New Team Members

Forbes Technology Council

The first few days at a new job can be confusing and even a little scary—especially now, when many new employees are working remotely from day one. With the speed and the impact of the work, learning the ropes as a new tech team member is a challenge whether you’re in the office or on your own, so it’s important for tech leaders to make sure that newcomers have all the support they need.

From making sure they know who to go to with questions to introducing them to company culture, helping a new tech team member become a fully integrated, effective and happy team member takes more than sending over their login credentials. Below, 16 leaders from Forbes Technology Council each share one practice they always follow to support new tech team members and why this method works so well.

1. Get To Know Them Personally

Get to know new hires on a personal level—what excites them, what they’re looking forward to, their strengths and their challenges. One of my biggest responsibilities is making jobs easier, whether that’s by encouraging quick decisions, investing in automation or simply demonstrating service leadership by rolling up my sleeves and digging in. All of that only happens when there is open communication. - Neil Lampton, TIAG®

2. Pair Them With A Buddy

We pair new tech team members with buddies. Buddies help new members familiarize themselves with organizational processes and help them settle into their roles quickly. Also, we often engage new team members in planning exercises, such as a 30/60/90-day plan that helps them break their goals down into more achievable monthly chunks. As a human-centered business, the fun factor is equally important! - Premal Vyas, Cloud SynApps


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3. Make Sure They Understand The Challenges They Will Be Facing

The experience with your company starts when the candidate applies, not when they join the company. Candidates must have a thorough and transparent understanding of the challenges they will face so they don’t have an “expectation gap” when they start. This understanding, accompanied by all the support they need at the pace they need it, is much appreciated by new team members. - Soledad Alvarez del Sel, Baufest

4. Hold Regular Meetings Focused On Vision And Mission

To drive innovation and initiative throughout the company, it’s important to inspire, excite and drive passion among all new team members. I enjoy setting up regular meetings within the company to focus strictly on the vision and mission of the company, including highlighting our customers and offering team members insights into what is driving their priorities. - Martin Basiri, ApplyBoard

5. Let Them Know Exactly Why You Chose Them

When people start, we make a point to tell them specifically why we hired them. Highlighting the strengths we discovered during the interview process begins to build trust with our new team members and provides a big confidence boost for them right off the bat—at a time when it’s often needed most. - Dave Merkel, Expel

6. Tell A Story About Them When Introducing Them To The Team

As a remote-first company, we must make sure every team member, no matter where they work, feels like they are part of the team. When introducing a new team member in Slack, we tell a short story about their interests, prior work experience and quirks, which instantly spawns a conversation and helps them find a work buddy faster. - Konstantin Klyagin, Redwerk

7. Learn Their Interests And Work Style

I have found that being aware of people’s interests is a practice so simple that it can be overlooked. I continuously search for opportunities to engage my team and foster a curiosity that will feed their interests over the long term. Knowing how people prefer to work and continuing to surface new challenges and opportunities for them are the keys to giving your team new things to explore. - Velia Carboni, VF Corporation

8. Have Them Meet One-On-One With Each Member Of The Team

Introduce the new hire to each member of the team, and have them spend an hour in a one-to-one session with each member (where possible). This practice fosters quicker integration within the team and a better understanding of where to find help, how the organization functions and where everything is in the company. It also facilitates quicker immersion into the company culture. - Nikolay Chernavsky, ISSQUARED Inc

9. Accept Mistakes As Part Of The Learning Process

Foster a culture where failures are not considered taboo and making mistakes is merely a step in the learning process for new members. Environments that thrive on such values allow new members to experiment, accelerate their onboarding process, instill a sense of responsibility for owning mistakes and addressing them, and foster trust instead of fear of being penalized for genuine effort. - Amit Verma, Neuron7.ai

10. Provide Access To Educational Resources

At Mphasis, we make it a point to give our new employees access to educational technologies and tools so they have all the resources they need. This helps them learn about the tech industry and adapt to the company culture faster. - Nitin Rakesh, Mphasis Limited

11. Create A Library Of Training Materials About The Company

Provide new associates with the time to really get familiar with the company’s culture, “why” statement and the business knowledge they need. We have a whole library of webinars, documentation and training videos that we use for this purpose. We hire for attitude and skill. What makes a team member successful is understanding the business, the processes and the strategy that drives their work. - Akhilesh Agarwal, apex analytix

12. Set Up A Meeting With The CIO

One practice that always pays off is to ensure each new team member meets with the CIO for an hour during their first week. I want them to feel seen and heard by the top leader in the department. I also want to ensure they understand that belonging to the team is a given on day one, and there is nothing for them to prove. - Elaine Montilla, The Graduate Center, CUNY

13. Make Sure They See A Path To Career Growth

Show them a vision for their career growth. Everything cannot be about the company’s growth; if the aspirations of a new team member do not coincide with the company’s, the hand-in-hand path is limited. Motivate for “us,” not “I.” - Bhavna Juneja, Infinity, a Stamford Technology Company

14. Include Some Hands-On Learning

Traditional onboarding methods of training around the platform and team practices help, but nothing beats hands-on learning. Working on bug triage is a way to learn how teams prioritize and execute on issues while enabling customer empathy. An extension to that is spending a week in product support to learn the skill of collaborating with customers and teams to solve their problems. - Pratik Bhadra, Bluecore

15. Share Past Interactions With Customers

We rely heavily on video and documentation to bring our new tech team members up to speed on what we’re building and how we do things at Rocketlane. We share videos of demos and discoveries with customers that help new team members quickly learn what problems we are solving for our customers and which aspects of our offering are resonating with customers. - Srikrishnan Ganesan, Rocketlane Corp

16. Have Them Give A Presentation About Themselves

We host a quarterly event called “New Hire Happy Hour,” where we ask each new person to give a presentation on themselves. It’s purposefully structured to give new team members the opportunity to walk us through their work history and all they’ve learned within a personal context. We’ve found this helps break down walls and fosters connection, accelerating their on ramp into our company. - Mark Griffis, Aviture

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