RC Onboarding: trying to perfect an imperfect process

A Management Report by Michael Wilbourn

Overview
In the fall of 2014 I found it to be in my best interest to switch careers. While
teaching had always been a very rewarding career it was time to try something new.
After multiple companies and a lengthy interview process I found a new home at
RingCentral. For the sake of this project I will refer to the company as RC. RC is the
largest fully hosted internet phone service provider in the world. My role at RC is to
develop potential business clients through prospecting and lead generation.
Immediately my manager saw how successful I was able to transition into my new
role and discussed the potential idea of onboarding new hires after only being in the
department for three months.
Context, Setting and Problem
RC is a fast paced technology company that has high level demands and could be
considered to be a high stress situation. With new technology and an internet driven
work-world RC has been in a perpetual state of growth for the last three years.
Because of that growth we are constantly hiring and onboarding new hires. As a
result of always hiring and needing to not only maintain but grow business each
department has been charged with training new employees. In my department in
particular the system was very broken and lacked clarity and vision. Employees
typically just shadowed other employees and had to learn through on the job
training.
Issues and Requirements
When I inherited the training responsibilities I was given a clean slate to create a
new process as there had never traditionally been a process in place. Given full
responsibility I wanted to break the issue down to a 6 day training cycle that
focused on certifications that would act as exit tickets for each task learned. By
changing the way we train my goal is to instill the idea people who feel good about
themselves produce good results (Blanchard, 1981, pg. 19)
There would be no budget for the project and I was given a three month window to
create, implement, and revise the training program. My manager gave me full
autonomy to create the project as long as he could oversee and give advice, if
necessary. We decided we would have check-in every other week for 30 minutes to
see how the project was developing.

My Role and Participation

1 RC Onboarding: trying to perfect an imperfect process

The department I work for has 20 employees. Of those 20 employees we have four
segments within our department. My position works on the down market team
which consists of 6 people. Our department works with companies under 50
employees. The department has two team leads and one manager. My title is Sales
and Business Development Representative. Prior to starting this internship I was
also identified as the segment Trainer.
I report to my team lead who reports to the department manager. My manager
reports to the department director. The director reports directly to the World-wide
Vice President of sales.

Team Lead

World Wide, VP

Director Manager

Sales
Developtment
Rep
Business
Development
Rep

Timeframe
The timeframe for the project was determined to be the three months, taking place
between February and April of 2015. Within the timeframe I would spend between
5-20 hours each week training and onboarding our new hires, while still maintaining
and fulfilling my position and a full quota.
Below you will find tasks and responsibilities for each month:
February

Learn the responsibilities of the segment trainer

Review current process
Maintain my position and full quota
Identify best practices
Work with manager to create playbook
Onboard new hires
Review and critique playbook
Meet with manager once every other week

March
Onboard new hires
Check in with old new hires to identify areas of improvement
2 RC Onboarding: trying to perfect an imperfect process

Review and critique playbook

Meet with manager once every other week

April

Onboard new hires

Check in with second and third round of new hires to identify areas of
improvement
Review and critique playbook
Meet with manager once every other week
Wrap up project and submit

Goals and Outcomes

My specific goals are to improve the onboarding process of new hires by creating a
6 day work cycle that will have specific learning outcomes and designed results. The
long term goals consist of creating a specific training regimen that the department
will implement as standard practice. Short term goals include improving efficiencies;
identify process, and having tangible outcomes for each days work during the
training cycle.
More specifically my short terms goals were to identify problems that existed in the
current process. Being that there was not a process in place it was easy to achieve
this goal.
Work Processes
Working with my manager I created a schedule to identify how to implement the
new training procedures. We identified attitudes that were needed to onboard new
hires and Enthusiasm attracts more passengers and energizes them during the
ride (Gordon, 2007, pg. 106) I worked with my HR department and my manager to
identify a timeframe to learn when our new hires would start. After learning the
timeline I was able to backwards design the most important aspects of our
segments responsibilities and identify best practices. These best practices were
identified with my manager in a brainstorming session in the week of 2/9/2015. To
identify best practice we utilized our conference room to brain storm on the white
boards and streamline the desired results of the six day cycle and the specific
outcomes for each work day. Taking the information learned from our brainstorming
session I was able to identify and create our playbook. After creating the
playbook we could implement the processes with the new hires starting the
following week. Following the six day cycle we would check back in with the new
3 RC Onboarding: trying to perfect an imperfect process

hires and identify areas of strength and opportunities for improvement in our
curriculum and their experiences in the department. This way I would be able to
improve our process for the next round of new hires.
Outcomes of the project
I was able to create a 6 day training cycle that focused on tailored areas of my role.
By identifying the most important processes, creating documents to support these
processes, and holding individuals accountable to information learned, I was able to
shorten the amount of time it takes to onboard a new hire and focus on the
important aspects of transitioning into the role. During the three months of working
on the project I successfully on boarded three new hires into the role using the
newly designed format. We used their percentage to quota as a guide to see how
fast someone was able to pick up the job using the new procedure. The results
identified individuals were able to fulfill their job responsibilities in a timelier manner
then prior hires. After each cycle of new hires I was able to progress and tweak
small areas of the playbook to improve our onboarding process.
Recommendation for future action:
To further the improvement of the onboarding process I plan to revise the playbook
as we develop new best practices and garner new technologies. My manager and I
have setup a once a month 30 minute meeting to review and incorporate updates.

Meet once a month with manager to identify areas of improvement

Identify new best practices and technologies used by team
Work with team and upper segments to see how new hires are meeting their
expectations
Identify segment reps to help onboard all departments segments

Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe this was a very successful project that served an important
purpose for a departmental need. By creating and improving our onboarding
strategies our department is able to spend more time developing and creating more
business for our company which ultimately drives the bottom dollar for our
company. By not spending as much time training new hires and teaching best
practice before bad habits can form we have learned our employees are much more
adept to being ready to tackle a fast-paced, high stress level work environment. In
respect to continuing education continually honing and expanding the mind is vital
mental renewal. Sometimes that involves the external discipline of the classroom or
systematized study programs. Proactive people can figure out many ways to
educate themselves. (Covey, 1989, pg. 295) If I were to participate in something
like this again I would have included a team member from each segment to identify
best practices for onboarding. What is best practice for one segment may not be
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best practice for a larger segment. For the purpose of this internship I was only
onboarding individuals in my segment. Since the conclusion of the project I have
been tasked with onboarding all segments as I myself have moved to a larger
segment within our department. I enjoyed developing the curriculum, meeting with
team members and my manager, and more specifically working with all the new
hires to improve the onboarding process. While I may have switched careers as a
traditional teacher I do believe I have been able to use my skillset to equip my
teammates with the right tools to be successful in a fast-paced work environment.

References
Blanchard, K., & Johnson, S. (1982). The one minute manager (p. 19). New York: Morrow.
Covey, S. (1989). The seven habits of highly effective people: Restoring the character ethic(p. 295).
New York: Simon and Schuster.
Gordon, J. (2007). The energy bus 10 rules to fuel your life, work, and team with positive energy (p.
106). Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons.

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