Episode 8: The First Steps of Onboarding New Recruits for your Practice
So, once you've acted fast and hired slowly, and found the right team member for your firm, what's next? How do you introduce that person to the culture and workflow of your firm?
In this episode of The Wize Guys, Brenton Ward, and Jamie Johns talk through a few onboarding approaches to effectively integrate with your new recruits for your accounting firm.
Timestamps:
0:35 - How to onboard new recruits
1:29 - Why introducing new members is the first thing to do
2:21 - The idea of giving a ‘Welcome Letter’
3:20 - How to figure out your firm’s guarantee
3:53 - Why you should create an employee handbook
Quotations:
“..it's all about the people. So introduce them to the team. That'd be the first thing.” - Jamie Johns
“One that is really long, a lot to do and I've often shared with these, what I call the firm's guarantee. So what's your firm's guarantee? Another way to word it is what's your firm's unique selling proposition?” - Jamie Johns
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Download the full transcript here.
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“One that is really long, a lot to do and I've often shared with these, what I call the firm's guarantee. So what's your firm's guarantee? Another way to word it is what's your firm's unique selling proposition?” - Jamie Johns
Brenton Ward: Where do we start, Jamie? We've acted fast. We've hired slow. We've acted fast. We've taken with the political process in terms of recruiting. Take us through your approach on how important it is to hone in on this investment in onboarding and training from the data of a new team member.
Jamie Johns: Just a recap, you really want to know, like the steps if someone starting tomorrow after you've been through the recruiting process, what does the next 30 to 90 days look like?
Brenton Ward: Yeah. And then I'd like to dive in to start with what your focus is, whether they are finding one or a grinder when they come in the door. How do you approach onboarding?
Jamie Johns: Yeah. So look, there are different idiosyncrasies there, whether they're obviously offshore or onshore, then there are also common traits that you'll have between both. To start off really the first thing you want to do as part of the recruitment process. So I step back a little bit is essential, ‘Who are they going to report to? Who is the senior client manager on their team? Who is the senior production manager?’ You will need to introduce them to both those people. So one of the first things you'd want to do from day one. If they're in the Philippines get on a call and welcome them to the firm, introducing them to the whole thing to work with. And the key people there as the senior client manager, often call them the three stable terminals in your pocket, the assistant client manager, and the senior production manager. Introduce them to those main people and then obviously introduce them to the rest of the team because while we do tax and bookkeeping and all that, like, we're just a PayPal business, it's all about the people. So introduce them to the team. That'd be the first thing.
The other thing that we do is then I really liked to give them a letter from myself as the owner or the founder or the CEO, whatever you want to call it. And we do have a, like a sample letter in the Wize vault about this and that that letter really should set the scene around the culture of the firm and has a really good example. I think the Chan and Naylor dailies, we've just modified it, used that. Things that you want to talk about in that letter and go through that introduction with the senior client manager and with the person are things about the culture of the firm. One of the things that the responsiveness to your team members and some of the time, depending on who you hire responsiveness to the clients as well. And that's a really critical one.
And the other one that you can cover as well in that is it's probably more softy. So to touch people, talk about mission, vision, and values. So you can talk about what's the vision or mission of your firm as well in that introduction. One that is really long a lot to do. And I've often shared with this is what I call the firm’s guarantee. So what's your firm's guarantee. Another way to word it is ‘What's your firm's unique selling proposition. What is it about your firm that is different from every other firm?’ So I call that the firm's guarantee and are really loud, whether it's a firm, a monitor, I've grown to love everyone to know what that is. I don't expect them to know that the firm does need to know that off by heart, because one of the first questions a new client will have as well. ‘Why should we come to canvass our accountants?’ And so they need to know that off by heart.
The other thing I would want to give Brenton is an employee handbook that I think there's a sample of dining in the vault. The employee handbook can have any myriad of things in their head or apply for annually. And then backed onto that employee handbook is a list of videos that you want that person to watch as well. Then some of those videos, we'll just reference that to the Wize vault and they can have a look at some of those videos as well. And then not only that, it's all your internal videos, so your how-to videos as well that you've got on your own internet.