This week's episode of Automation Unplugged we’re bringing you a webinar we recorded in February 2025 called “Setting Your Team Members Up for Success: A Guide to Seamless Employee Integration.”

About this episode:

Hiring A-Players is only half the battle. Once you’ve found the right people, what happens next is just as critical to your long-term success. That’s why today’s webinar is all about the strategies and best practices you can use to ensure a smooth onboarding experience that helps new hires thrive from day one.

You’ll hear from Samantha Hodz, Director of Talent Acquisition Services at Amplify People, One Firefly’s hiring division, and myself, as we walk through the systems and strategies we use at One Firefly to set new team members up for long-term success — and how you can do the same in your business.

In this webinar, we’ll cover:

• What effective onboarding really looks like — and what it’s not.
• How to start creating a structured 30-60-90 day onboarding plan for new hires.
• And actionable tips for creating a welcoming environment and preparing your existing team and new hires for success.

SEE ALSO: AU #300: Lee Travis on Leadership, Lighting, and Longevity

Transcript

Ron:

Hello, Sam. How are you?

Samantha:

I am doing well today. How are you doing?

Ron:

I am doing super duper, excited to be here with you and our lovely audience. I see you all joining now. we're going to go ahead and get started today. We are here to talk about setting your team up for success, a guide to seamless employee integration. And that really has to do with this concept or principle that we practice here at One Firefly and that we're recommending that all of you also practice this. By definition, this is actually not products or services that we offer here, but rather us just trying to share with you best practices from what we've learned through our careers and our experiences and through the demonstration here at One Firefly. So I'm excited to be presenting here with my partner in crime, Sam, and we also have Rebecca for support. Rebecca, I don't know if you want to show your face and say hello to everybody? Rebecca: Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'm here to handle any thoughts or questions that might arise during this webinar. So feel free to drop them into the Q & A and I will make sure they all get answered at the end of this.

Ron:

Beautiful. All right. So just jumping right into it here. Again, my name's Ron Callis. I know many of you that are logged in here, so I'll keep my intro brief, but I will tell you that I believe our success at One Firefly is very much because of our approach to people, and finding the right people, and then ultimately retaining the right people. And a lot of that has to do with the strong, culture we've built here at One Firefly. And at Amplify People, our vision is really to help you all grow your companies with getting the right people that have the right skills, that have the right culture fit for what your company, who you are and the company that you're building. And one of the important elements is, once you actually go out and you find those people and you get them on board, how do you actually, what do you do immediately next? What do you do on day one? And then week one and then month one. And that's the dialogue that I'm very passionate about. I have a lot of conviction in that. Cause I, I'm going to tell you all, I did it the wrong way. And then I read the books and hired the consultants and listened to the thought leaders and we started to do it the right way and life got better. Very happy to be here with all of you. And Sam's going to introduce herself.

Samantha:

Thank you, Ron. And I agree with what you said. It's really exciting when you find somebody and you get that who you believe is the right person, but what happens next is equally important. And that's really what we're going to go through today. And for me, I know a number of you as well, but I came, I've been here since last May with Amplify People. And I came with more than 15 years in the talent space. And the reason that you'll see it say the talent space is because for me, it's always been more about, than just about finding somebody for a job. It's really about setting them up for success long term. And so I've partnered with hundreds of businesses throughout my career to help them understand the importance of not just finding somebody, but going through onboarding. How to welcome them in, greet them effectively, because I found they could keep those people longer. And we were getting off of that just ever going wheel of trying to refill and replace. So I'm really excited that we're going to have this discussion today with all of you.

Ron:

Awesome. We're going to have fun, Sam. We got a, we got an hour. Although folks, we're going to try not to fill that hour with Sam and I gabbing. We're going to try to fill that time or not exclusively gabbing, but we're going to try to fill that time with some of your questions that you might have around hiring or around onboarding. We just did intros. I'll give you a quick definition of what is onboarding. I think we'll make a pretty strong argument as to why it's a really good idea for you to focus on. And then we'll go through training and structure of how to ultimately develop an onboarding strategy for your business and for all the different types of roles in your business. So that is why we're here. If that is sounding exciting to you or interesting to you, then you're in the right place. And, if not, then maybe you want to stick around anyway. You might, maybe you'll learn something. I don't know. So what is onboarding? So here's a definition that we have constructed that feels pretty on target to us. Onboarding is the process of welcoming training and setting up a new employee for long term success in their role of the company. So what is onboarding not? Onboarding is not you hire somebody and the next day they're out on a job site. Or the next day they are in the accounting seat and immediately jumping into your QuickBooks, and you expect them to have your month reconciled in the coming weeks. We would argue that's not terribly fair to the new hire. And so onboarding is really thinking strategically, giving it a good deep think about what would need to be true if this new person knew these things that would ultimately better prepare them for success, both their personal success, but also the business's success. So this is a case where it's a really good idea to slow down before you speed up. And so slowing down is developing the onboarding game plan for all the different types of hires. As technology contractors, you guys have technicians and salespeople and project managers and designers and bookkeepers and office managers and warehouse managers and so on and so forth. And that means that all these different roles, theoretically would have a different onboard plan. There might be some elements that overlap and are repurposed. Maybe certain types of company introduction. Everyone that joins your company goes through those, but then others might be selective depending on the role. And I promise you, we won't generally go through this presentation. At least we're really going to try not to and try to read slides. but this con, I might do a little bit of it. I'm admitting that. And I'm, only saying that because Sam and Rebecca and myself, and actually Andrew behind the scenes, we've constructed this content for you guys. Because we do believe that it matters greatly to your success of your business. But this is also the one of one time that we presented this. Sam and I are going to do our best to knock it out of the park, but, we might not be totally fluid. So we'll see how it goes. so number one, understand their jobs and what's expected of them. You'd be surprised how many of you might have people on your teams right now. And if you said, what's your job description, It's actually not even written down. If you go into, if you do quarterly or annual reviews, and if I asked you, how would you be measuring that employee's success or lack of success in that role, or better yet, if I went to that member of your team and said, how will you, what criteria are you being expected to perform to what goals or metrics often that doesn't exist. And in onboarding, not only does that exist, but it's actually trained and, reviewed consistently. So there's absolute clarity between employer or manager and member of your team. you want them to get to know the member of your team. There's a lot of value in the interconnectivity, the interconnective tissue of an organization. And so if you have someone simply join your team and they're just set out and immediately put to work, there's a lack of that interconnectivity. And, it's worth perhaps slowing down a little bit and getting them fully acclimated to all the different people and departments, maybe even processes. You're ultimately gonna perform better as a team if that's true. And then there's all the different processes from, what's the process to get signed up for payroll? Hopefully your HR team's getting that squared away. How do they get signed up for your company's retirement program if you have one of those, and or how do they ask for time off or just and and and and... Your company has ways that it goes and operates its business. You should be training your new hire on all of those processes. Ideally, you have them documented and in a consistent way reviewed with your team and that way they're really set up for success. And then you want them to ultimately feel supported. At the end of the day, if you slow down and do this right, they are much more likely to stay with you for a long time. I'll share with you, at One Firefly, that everybody on our team has an onboarding plan, every single role. And that is because when I joined this industry, I got hired by a company called Lutron. You all know who Lutron is. And Lutron hired me out of college and Lutron put me through a six month onboarding. Now that was because I was a young and naive and maybe young and dumb college kid right out of school. And I didn't know what I didn't know about the professional workforce. So I'm not advocating that you all need a six month training program for any of your hires. I do think you need some sort of onboarding program with your hires, whether it's 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. Some sort of framework is going to increase the probability that they will be successful in their role. But to you as a business operator or manager, it means that you've increased your probability that this person will be successful and therefore they'll be able to perform the job function within the business that you, it's the reason you hired them, right? So it's a matter of thinking this through developing it and then ultimately coming up with that game plan. So it is proven that if you do this, your staff will stay longer. That's assuming they're the right type of people, that you've hired the right type of people with the right skills, and they fit right into your culture. And you want those people to stay with you for a long time. It's ultimately going to allow for that institutional knowledge to be ingrained and for the business to receive a better ROI over time because you brought that person onto your team. So some of the stats that Sam and I thought were pretty astounding. We went out there and said, it's not just because Ron and Sam think so, but who else is out there putting out thought leadership around this? I'm just going to read some of these stats. 50 percent increase in new hire retention at organizations with strong onboarding programs, 18 times greater commitment from employees who experience effective onboarding, and 20 percent employee turnover that occurs within the first 45 days, often due to poor onboarding. So what I would recommend you all do is give this a good critical think. What is the process that you currently give every new hire? And is your, I would ask you, are you bringing the right type of people into the business? I'll make the assumption for the sake of this training that everyone you bring in is the right type of person. What is the retention you have once they join you? And if you're looking to make a positive impact there, then that would be an argument to develop an onboarding strategy for the business. I do have a poll and I'm gonna, I'm gonna see if I can get technology to behave here. Somebody read the question. When a new hire starts your business, how much training do you provide before expecting them to start the, what I jokingly called the jobby job part of why you hired them? So whatever that thing you expect them to do in your business, how much time passes before you expect them to be 100 percent in their seat, performing that job for the business? Starting to see some results pop in here. I see a number of none's and, there you go. It looks like we're all over this. We've got a spectrum all over the place here. Alright, I'm gonna end the poll. And I'm going to share the results, Sam, what, do you think about these results?

Samantha:

I think that they're pretty much in line with where I expected. I expected to see a broad spectrum of answers, and that's okay. The reason you're joining us here today is you at least have an interest in it. So that's a step in a great direction. And whether that interest is to verify if you're doing it long enough, maybe, some of you that have none or one to 30, we could revisit that. Or if you're doing much more than, you should be and wanted to get a sense of that. I think that there's a good spectrum of results here and something for everybody.

Ron:

I agree. All right. Let me stop sharing that. Thank you all for your participation. You now see where some of you are that did participate. And again, I appreciate the participation. If you don't have an onboarding game plan and it's just trial by fire, you put the person on the team and put them in the seat and say, Hey, I expect, I hired you, you know these things, go do that job. It does result in faster turnover, which means you've then got to go restart that hiring process more quickly which, all of these elements, by the way, have a financial burden to your business. It means that they might be in their role but maybe they are, or are not, doing that job function the company way. The way that you want that job function performed. And if that is true, then there's just a high probability there's a lot of inefficiency in them doing that job. So it's, again, helpful to get them trained. And then if you have people in that job function doing that function with less efficiency, it's not only going to cause low morale for them, but also the other members of your team that look at this new hire is dragging them down. So it's just, it's a good idea to look at your whole company as a system and as a whole. And if you slow down, treat these people methodically, getting them fully indoctrinated into your company, then when they are being asked to do the jobby job at full speed, it's good for them and all of the people that are surrounding them and maybe relying on them to do a great job. So in terms of proactivity, what I want to get to here is this idea, for some of you, I'm going to be planting the seed of an idea. And that is, we would advocate that you have or develop what's called labor forecasting models. And that is if yeah, I'll tell you how it works. I'm going to speak about One Firefly. How does it work here? If we are designing sales goals for the business, across websites, and marketing, and Amplify People, and the different elements of our business. And if we achieve those outcomes, then we already know what type of person we need to hire and when we need to hire them. Now that's not a black and white rule because we may or may not achieve our objectives right on the front end of the business. So what you do, ideally, is you play with it. And you say, man, if we sell more, how would that impact our need for labor? If we sell less, or we have client churn, we're an agency, right? So if somebody leaves us for some reason, how does that affect labor? And that idea when you have that designed for your business, and when do you need designers, salespeople, installers, project managers, warehouse people, office people, all of those different folks. If your company is overachieving, at goal, or underachieving your performance metrics and you designed that labor forecast, I can tell you as an owner operator, it's going to give you a tremendous sigh of relief. Because you're going to feel you have the ability to look into the future and better understand what your needs are. So I'm going to now make the hypothesis that you have that in place. And if that is true, I want you to just think about this onboarding function. Because depending on the role, whether it's 30 day, 60 day, 90 days or more of onboarding for that role, you now have to design that into your labor model forecasting. Because if if you score this project, you're going to need two more technicians. You need to really look at, then, when do I bring those technicians into the company knowing that I also need to onboard them successfully? Because what I want, Sam and I want for you, is to get off the treadmill of putting out fires with your hiring and you need people right now. And in fact, as soon as you bring them in, they need to be on the job site or else. That's a really stressful place to live. It's a really stressful place to operate your business. And so implement labor forecasting, our recommendation, and then within that design your onboarding. That's now going to give you a time span from starting a hiring process, to onboarding people, to ultimately having productive members of your team helping your company push forward and achieve your goals. Hope that all makes sense. What we don't want you doing is hiring under fire. And so here's just a restatement on the screen of the general principle that I just stated. You want to be thinking ahead and in advance. So our goal for you today, through this conversation, is to provide actionable next steps to help you set new team members up for success. For long term success. You're going to set them up for success. And you're going to set your business up for success. This also becomes a really strong talking point in your conversation. After you've interviewed somebody, and you know that you want to hire them in what I would call best practices, now there's a next dialogue, a next conversation where you're going to hopefully convince them to join your company. And that is join your company versus all the other companies in your marketplace that maybe they would have the equal opportunity to join. Because let's face it, there's generally a labor shortage in our industry in the space. And so your company now needs to be different and I would argue better. And if you have onboarding game plans for your company in place, codified, not just bouncing around your head, but actually written down, and members of your leadership team know what that is and they know what to do when somebody comes on board, then you're going to be in a much better leveraged position to earn those new people joining your business and not walking down the street and joining your competitors. We are, this is a little fun token here. We're going to have a couple of things you might want to take screenshots, if you feel so compelled. This is now we're jumping over to you, Sam, right?

Samantha:

Yes, absolutely. And thank you so much. That was a really good overview in terms of why onboarding is important and what it means to onboard. But there's different parts of onboarding. And often when we think of onboarding, we think, what does it mean to the employee that we are bringing into our organization? But it also requires you preparing your current team to welcome somebody new into your company. And one thing that I really want to point out because it's often overlooked is when you start implementing new onboarding processes, it will likely cause a cultural shift within your team. So there are a couple of things or reasons why this could be the case. If you're introducing a new onboarding program that includes extensive training and introductions and a lot of the things that we're going to review today for a new hire, but that's not something that was available when your current team joined your organization, they may be looking and wondering why somebody else is getting something that they did not get. And the only way that you can combat that is by being upfront and transparent about it. We're bringing somebody new on. There's a new process. When we do that moving forward, this is the direction we're going in. Here is why we've decided to create this process. I understand that it's not something that was available to you, but you can even extend an olive branch. If there is any part of this process that you feel you would benefit from, even though you've been with us for a while, please let me know. And there will be people that raise their hands and get excited about that. And it will give you an indication of the buy in, and how welcoming your current team may be to a new team member. But again, everything starts, if you want to go to the next slide, Ron, with communicating with the team. So understanding who you're bringing on board, when you're bringing them on board, and why you're bringing them on board. I know we've spoken in previous webinars or previous education sessions, if you've had the opportunity to join us, about not catching anybody off guard. And that goes with letting your team know that you've hired someone or are in the process of hiring someone. Why you're bringing them into the organization. Is it for growth? Is it for another reason? Because what happens is, oftentimes, if you don't take this step to let the team know who, when, and why, they're not going to be welcoming when the person comes in. And a lot of times that's because of anxiety. Does this mean that my job is at risk? Are they my replacement? Is there something I don't know? You get all those questions out of the way if you just are up front about who you're bringing into the team. And the other thing that gets those questions out of the way is by letting the team know what your expectations are for this new hire. So explaining that this new person is coming in to do XYZ job, they will be reporting to whoever it is, so that you don't have people stepping on each other's toes, feeling like they need to step into a role that wasn't meant for them. Setting clear role expectations about what will be the new hire's responsibilities are going to allow for a much more seamless integration as you move through this process. Another big piece of the puzzle is explaining how this is going to benefit everybody, how bringing this person on board is going to help the company. And how they're going to fit into existing workflows. Again, what we want to avoid is people feeling like their jobs are at risk, if they welcome in this new person, they're being disloyal to either somebody that was there in the past or somebody that they're currently working with, for fear that there may be some overlap. Letting them know the expectation, who they will be reporting to, why they're joining the team again, and their purpose within the organization solves a lot of that. What comes across as disenfranchisement or attitude is really just anxiety and it takes that off the table. And so one actionable tip is to send out a new hire announcement. Send it to the entire company, who's joining, when they're joining, why they were hired. you can let them know in this announcement how they will be onboarded. And I always recommend ending it with this call for inclusivity and welcome. So again, reminding and asking for buy in from the team, please join me in welcoming David in this example. Letting them know that they are more than welcome to introduce themselves to this new hire, embrace them, and help them feel welcomed, at home. Whatever language fits best in your environment is what should be used here. Again, don't do something that is inauthentic to you in any onboarding process. So find what works for your organization. And so what you want to do is you want to communicate the roles and responsibilities effectively by defining and documenting a reporting and power structure. I know I mentioned this earlier, but one thing that tends to happen is, let's say you bring in a technician. And you've got a technician with the same job title that's been with you for two years at this point. They may feel like they're responsible. They're the boss. They've been here longer. They get to tell this person what to do. And that creates friction within an existing team. But by laying out this person, this technician is reporting to our lead tech, Patrick. Patrick is going to be having regular check ins with this person and is going to be responsible for making sure that they are held accountable for the reason that I shared with you. They're brought into the organization, that is going to take away that power, in the wrong hands. The other thing you want to make sure you're doing is letting leaders know what your ask is of them. Are they going to be responsible for doing a portion of this training? Are they going to be called on to be a part of this shadowing? What is it that you are going to be asking of them as we move forward in this process? And you will be surprised at the response that you get by that simple, clear communication up front. And so another actionable tip to help with this is assigning a new hire a dedicated peer mentor, or an onboarding buddy. So they have somebody to go to for questions and support. And we started this with saying, you need to notify your team who you're bringing on, why you're bringing them on. Looking who raises their hands when they know that there's going to need to be a peer mentor is going to be a good indicator for you about how many people are going along with this new process. Are they going along and understanding the culture shift that you are trying to build within your organization? Are they going to be a part of that long term solution? So it's really great to see when somebody raises their hand and volunteers for something like this. And it shows you, if we go to the next slide, again, that buy in for them. It helps you uncover that team sentiment. And it will let you know where everything is. Again, we talked a bit about anxiety. There can be a bit of resentment if somebody is being brought in from outside for a leadership role and somebody wasn't promoted from within. Are they going to welcome in this new person or is that going to create some sort of conflict long term? It's better to know before that person joins by having this conversation than letting them walk into a wasp nest. That way you can proactively address any concerns, and a great way that you can do this is if your team has a morning huddle, you can make it a topic of conversation. This is a great time to clarify the roles and responsibilities to prevent any friction. It's a great time to outline that reporting and training structure. And the key here is you've got to give an open floor. You've got to let them, give you feedback and address any concerns that they share head on. Again, before this person comes in, you want to make it as welcoming of an environment as possible. So all of those are tips to prepare your current team to welcome a new team member. I think, Ron, you're going to review the next step on how to prepare your new team member to join the team.

Ron:

Absolutely. No. Thank you, Sam. Great job. So we want you to actually write down, you don't have to do it right now, maybe right after this meeting, or maybe in the coming days or weeks, if you haven't already done so, want you to write down all the different types of training or experiences that you would want an employee to have. Now, I said previously that some of these elements might be universal. They might be universally applied to all members of your team. So for example, going over your company's HR handbook, or going over your company's policies around vacation, or time off, or anything related to any of the paperwork with health insurance or paychecks or payroll, things like that. Maybe general training around just the history of the company. Maybe you've been around for 20 years and your company has a story. And you want every member of your team to understand your positioning in the marketplace so that, whether they're interacting with each other, interacting with people out in the wild, they understand your company's position and your company's place. We find that very important at One Firefly. All of our team go through training such as that so they understand our positioning within the custom integration space. So it's a matter of writing down everything and then ultimately coding that into what's priority for day one? And what is priority for week one? And what is priority for month one? And what's priority for subsequent months? Some of your roles, I'll just give you another for example. There are integrators that like to run new hires through all the different departments within the company. Where they'll actually spend some time in the office with the different people in accounting, people in the design department, people in project management, people in the warehouse, so on and so forth. So that they understand not only the people in those departments, but the processes in that those departments. Because odds are it's going to come up in their day to day life where they're going to need to know who to go to, to help solve a problem or to resolve some matter. Do you want them to be in the dark or do you want them to see the light? And understand that more quickly and more efficiently. And so a way to do that is to build out an onramp. Here at One Firefly, we actually do it in a way it's not terribly sophisticated. It's a Google sheet. So in that Google sheet are the listing of all of the different, I'll just say categories of training and experiences, and then who the member of team One Firefly that's actually going to be training that hire, reviewing that thing with them. The employee actually has the responsibility of stating whether that particular item is complete or not. And an approximation of how much time we expect them to be spending doing that thing. And then actual, maybe they had one hour with the design department, but because of the dialogue or the interactions, it led to two or three hours. As the hiring manager, and you'll get, we'll get to this in just a bit, cause we're going to want you talking to that new hire every day for a check in. You might have really fun, interesting conversations while you were planned for an hour, but it went to three hours. Why did it go to three hours? What questions did you have? What did you learn? And there's just really helpful dialogue, that benefits you as a hiring manager and benefits that, that individual. So that's what we recommend. You do it in your way. We're not telling you what software to use. We're not telling you the format. We will, at the end of this webinar, send you a very basic outline of a rubric of how to think about it. But that's, that's generally what we recommend. So this is a version of a template phase. You can think of that in days, weeks, or months. And then the key area of your team or department, what you would want to be if they go through that interaction, what's the objective of going through that interaction? Maybe you want them to go through some manufacturer training as a part of their onboarding, as an example. Or maybe you want them to go out and shadow some of your installation crews, even if it's someone that's going to be working in the office. If that's true, and they go out into the field, what's the objective you want them to accomplish by being in the field and observing the interactions of your team? It's always helpful if they know that in advance. That way, when they come back from that experience you now can go right to those objectives and you can now have a fruitful conversation from that. Employer actions, in other words, what sort of tasks need to happen from the hiring manager and any other sort of notes, very basic template. You need to populate this in a way that makes sense for your business and the individual role. And, and again, it doesn't have to be super fancy, folks. It's just a matter of writing it down and it needs to be accessible by your team. As a bonus tip, and that is set aside time on day one to review expectations and 30, 60, 90 day plan with your new hire. So you want to roll this full onboarding plan out with your hire right on day one. And that way they understand what's coming in front of them. It's not the nebulous, the scary unknown. They have pretty good clarity right out of the gate, right in their first hours with your business as to what they can expect in the coming weeks. It's going to put them at ease, reduce a lot of the friction. And then you want to schedule to connect with new hires, and key team members. So you actually want to assist in the blocking of time. If you want them to meet with different department heads or people throughout the company, helping them ultimately get that scheduled. As a hiring manager, we would challenge that you have an obligation to help make all of those meetings, help them get booked and scheduled. That new hire isn't going to know that person. If that person says they're busy, they're probably going to go, okay, I don't want to bother you. But as a hiring manager, you know you want that interaction to happen. And so you have a role there to assist. And then create a schedule for regular check ins. Our belief system is that new hires, there's a cadence in the first week and then maybe a different cadence in the first month, two months and three months. So I'll just go to the first week. I think it's super reasonable to think that hiring manager should have a check in with that individual daily. Typically at the end of the day, if that's possible, if not, maybe it's at the beginning of the day. If there's somebody that's going out on job sites and they would be able to talk about the preceding day and you would want a rubric or structure for that check in where, what did you do? What did you learn? What questions do you have? And you want to do that consistently every single day. And that way you're able to expedite the training and learning of that new hire into your company. So maybe in the first week, it's every day, maybe in the beyond week two to three, maybe it's every other day. You decide what's best for your business. Here at One Firefly, I want to say we do check in daily for the first month and then we scale it out in month two and in month three, so they're a little less frequently. And actual follow up is, let me just read with that. Yeah, sorry. I got my, doodly doo here, in the way. Yeah. Actional tip. Sorry. Calendar the first 90 days, calendar all of those meetings, your check ins and your in team meetings just to make it easy. Again, take any of that, that friction out of the way. And then you have an opportunity, again, to give this new hire an exceptional warm welcome. So why not put together a welcome kit? Maybe you've got a company hat, maybe you've got a company shirt, a little bit of swag, maybe a company coffee cup or something like that. Maybe they get a company tool bag. Hey, if they have an office job, maybe you get the new brand new plant, a new plant for their desk that they get to water. Something to make them feel welcome and appreciated. Maybe, if your organization is a little bit bigger and they might not have interactions with some of the senior leadership right out of the gate, maybe it's a letter from the owner or a letter from the president or CEO welcoming them into the company. Something to give them that really warm welcome. And you don't have them start and then start scrambling with HR to figure out how to put this welcome kit together. You have it ready to go right there on day one. It takes a little bit of pre planning, but that is, it just shows that your company is a little bit more sophisticated and has done that pre thought in advance. Again, it's going to elevate the positioning of your business in their eyes. And then send a pre start email with important first day information. So you can, whether a day or a week in advance of their start date, you can give them all of the things that you want them to be aware of on their day one. Maybe it's all the HR paperwork, payroll, paperwork, insurance, paperwork. Maybe you're going to give them a real basic outline of what to expect on day one or of week one, give that to them in advance. Again, if you aren't doing that and you've never done that, it's okay. We're talking about day one. So this, next week could be your day one, and this could be something you start implementing moving forward. In a welcome kit just, again, if you like some of these ideas, this is a bulleted list: branded swag, welcome letter, maybe you give them a tool bag and they get their own set of tools. You just you may or may not do that, we think that'd be a pretty cool idea if you did do that. Office supplies, small gift card, all of the basics. It does not have to be a lot of money people. It's really the thought that counts and it's helping them feel warm and welcomed as they join your business. So Sam is now going to take, talk about, we talked about prepping your team. We talked about prepping the employee. Now, how do you get them integrated together?

Samantha:

Absolutely. Thank you, Ron. And I think it's really important that you create opportunities for bonding between the new team members and existing team members. One thing that we do at One Firefly, this is an example from a couple of weeks ago, is we publicly welcome on social media new team members. Whether it's social media or something more local to your organization, if you've got an office bulletin board, whatever the case may be, you want to make sure that they are greeted in a public manner to feel welcome and nobody that way feels caught off guard. They walked by the Jessica starting today poster in the break room or they saw it on your social media. Everybody knows what's happening. And one thing that I always recommend is it's really important to plan a casual activity. I know some people do this, some people don't, but it gets everybody's guard down up front. My recommendation as you do it within the first week, again, let everybody's guard down. It does not have to be fancy. It doesn't mean that you're taking everybody to a pricey dinner or a pricey lunch. It could be bringing something into the office. It could be coffee and donuts. If that team member isn't local, it could be a virtual meet and greet. It could be having snacks at your stand up meeting that you're doing on a regular basis every morning. Whatever it is okay. It just, we recommend it be something that takes everybody out of the this is business mode and into the I'd like to hear more about you mode and have that go both ways. A great way to break the ice, again, this is an actionable tip, is have new hires complete a get to know you form. This is something we do at One Firefly. And honestly, it's fantastic. I receive one every time somebody joins the team. I filled one out when I joined the team. And it's just a fun fact. This is not anybody sharing their resume or trying to justify why they got the job. What's your favorite go to karaoke song? What's your favorite food? You can do a favorite color, whatever the silly questions are that you want to ask that fit in well with your environment, I recommend asking them. Again, it's all customizable to your team and where you are and where you're trying to go. If asking a language question or asking a favorite meal question is not something that would generally be talked about in your team, switch out the questions. It's whatever works well for your team. So I recommend getting started with that. That being said, I do want to, as Ron promised and I promised in the beginning, give some time to answer any questions that you may have. So we are here.

Ron:

Just gonna to ask for Rebecca to join us.

Samantha:

Yep. Rebecca is going to hop in and give us any of the questions that have come through. Rebecca: Yes. Yeah, guys, drop them please in the Q & A, I will make sure that they get in front of Sam and Ron. Just had one come in. Do you have a hiring question for test? Hire the right people for the job.

Samantha:

That's a great question. I know in some of our previous webinars, we have gone through how to create a list that's really custom to your organization. And the reason is we can give categories, we can give suggestions, but our belief here at One Firefly and Amplify People is really that hiring is very individual to your organization because it's not just about can they do the job. It's about can they do the job effectively in your environment? Are they the right culture fit? So yes, you can absolutely create a list of questions to try to get to the right people. But it's very specific to you and your organization because of that cultural component.

Ron:

I would add just to that, Sam, we've, you, Sam, and different partners and collaborators have produced a number of webinars already in advance around all aspects of recruiting and hiring, for making your business more attractive to those candidates to ultimately running through that interview set of processes. And then trying to filter and determine who's the right fit. So if you haven't watched some of those webinars, I would recommend checking those out again. It's all free content up on our website, no strings attached. And then of course, Amplify People exists as a service to our industry to, for a fee, to ultimately help you hire those right talent and culture fit persons for your team. So we're, always ready to engage in any of those conversations. You can consume the free education, or if you want to look at how we could perhaps partner or collaborate together, we're happy to do that as well. Rebecca: Thank you. Another good question came in. What are the top traits you look for in a candidate beyond technical skills and how do you assess them during the hiring process?

Samantha:

Great question. For me, one of the top traits that I look for, and it does not matter what the role is, is going to be engagement in the process. Are they coming prepared? Are they asking questions that you feel are valid within your organization? For us, it's really about understanding, again, the personality type of who you're looking for. Can somebody do the job is not the answer. Can somebody do the job well isn't even the question to ask. Can somebody do the job effectively in your environment? Fit in with your existing team. Come in without bringing in ego. Feel like they don't have all of the answers because your organization already exists, but they want to be a part of the solution. They can list ways that they have been a part of the solution in the past. I think that's really what I look for in any interview in terms of that. Ego, engagement and preparation. I'd narrow it down to those three. Rebecca: What is the most common hiring mistake companies make and how can they avoid it?

Ron:

I'm going to attempt that, Sam, and then maybe...

Samantha:

Go for it.

Ron:

Tell me what I, what you want to add more. I'm going to say people undervalue the significance of the type of people they hire beyond what the skills of the people they hire are. So I'm just going to, I'll say, many of our clients are trying to hire technicians, for sure. And so maybe they need a control for system engineer slash installer, and they can also program. And voila, that needle in a haystack, that person surfaces. Many would immediately hire them assuming the salary's right and they have the skills. If you think about this being a stool and you want to sit on this stool, one of the legs is, do they have the skills? One of the legs is the compensation, right? But one of the super important legs of that stool is culture fit for your organization. Your company has a culture, whether it's written down or not, you believe certain things, you operate certain ways, the people on your team demonstrate certain values. And I would say it's undervaluing the importance of having steps in your process to filter for those people that are likely the best fit is often underappreciated or underpracticed. And it's often because you really need somebody right now, or you really needed them six months ago, and now you're just desperate. And so you're ultimately conducting interviews with people as they randomly fill them out on your website, and your process, your hiring process is probably a bit random and a bit chaotic. That's my first impression, Sam. What would, would you add anything to that?

Samantha:

You hit the nail on the head. I think we even mentioned that earlier on in this presentation. Hiring under fire when you feel like the ground is burning and if you don't have it right now, so you're willing to take anybody. Probably overlook something that you should have dug deeper on. that would be the most common pitfall that I see.

Ron:

Yeah. I'd say hire slow, fire, fast. Any toxicity, they're out the door. But you need to hire slow. You need to be super methodical to get those awesome people onto your team. And if you get those awesome people, here's a little secret, talk about this and other webinars, is those awesome people will be more fun to work with every day and they will be more productive than the others you've been randomly hiring. And so it's simply better for your business to be slow and methodical to get those people on board, which is why we wanted to do this onboarding webinar. Cause then now that you hired those awesome people we need you to keep those awesome people, which means we need you to be a better place where they want to stay and build a career. And onboarding isn't the answer. It's just a piece of the answer. It's one of those building blocks of building a better company. Rebecca: We have some good comments in here as well, Sean said, hire quality people, not experienced people, I think that ties in, and then he wants to know, but where do we find all of these awesome people?

Ron:

Yeah, I'll just maybe preface that, Sam, then you could give the magic formula of where to find them. We believe at One Firefly, and this is through proper, I don't know if I should use the word proper. I would say consistent dialogue with our customers and industry over the last two, three years around what are your most what are your biggest pain points in your business? And, the resounding answer, we did surveys, didn't we, Rebecca? And it was like in the 90th percentile of answers were based on people, like people challenges, finding people, retaining people. And so it was actually out of that data collection and out of our passion for people at One Firefly and just the process of finding great people and then keeping them that Amplify People was even born as a business. So it was a connecting problems with solutions and then trying to engineer that set of service and solution offerings to all of you so that we could bring something to you that was valuable and helped ease some of the pain. Not pretending we've solved the pain, but we just want to be part of that solution to try to help you, ultimately, more easily find people. Go through thorough processes to filter through the talent to then land at the people that are likely going to stick with your organization for years to come. But Sam, where do you find the people? Is there any magic answer?

Samantha:

There's no magic answer, but there are a few answers that I will tell you. One actually speaks to what you said just a few minutes ago, Ron. When you find amazing people for your organization, they tend to attract other amazing people. So the more steps you take to bring in the right people and retain them, the more naturally within their networks and going out, they will attract other people. The other thing I will tell you is, especially at Amplify People, we are looking at ways to not just attract talent to organizations that are already in the this industry, it's about getting creative and exploring other avenues. It's about looking for people who are the right culture fit and have the aptitude that are coachable and can do what you do. And so whether that is from an adjacent industry, somebody that is perhaps leaving the military. Somebody who is coming out of college or high school, whatever it may be. There are a lot of different avenues and places that you can go to uncover some really hidden gems. And that's what, when Ron talks about being part of the solution, that's one thing we're really trying to bring into this space and be part of the solution is to help it, help make it a little bit easier to find the right people.

Ron:

I want to give a different side of that answer. And that is, whenever a problem faces me personally or professionally, rather than looking externally and saying, whose fault is it? Or where's the blame? I always look in the mirror and say, what can I do differently or better? What's within my ability to control to affect the outcome? And I think for all of you that are still with us here watching and listening, I think one of the things that you have the most power to affect is the ability for you to be an attractive workplace. For you to be a place that people would want to go out of their way to join because of the company you are, the culture you have, the way that you treat your people, the quality and level of expectations that you demand of everyone on your team. If you're an exceptional place to work, then you will be magnetically drawing exceptional talent. It is unfair of you to demand exceptional talent if you are purely a mediocre workplace. And in fact, you're being naive and you're fooling yourself if you think that'll happen with any consistency. I don't care whether you hire Amplify People or another recruiter or other people in the marketplace to help you with hiring, like start with you. What can you do to improve your business? So that when that person ultimately starts to engage in an interview process, and they are out there in the wild doing their research, maybe they're inquiring about your business through different chat forums. And we all know those rooms exist, whether on Facebook or LinkedIn or other, RemoteCentral, different places where people are doing their homework on you and your business. What are people saying about you as a workplace? And if you control that narrative by being exceptional, and maybe you're not exceptional today and that's okay, but starting to walk down the road of being exceptional. Like what's one thing you could do in the next week or the next month or the next quarter to make your workplace a better place to work? And if you focus on that and that's entirely in your control, and if you do that, then I can promise you something magical happens. Word gets out. And you start to attract this talent and then the flywheel of growth really starts to speed up. Rebecca: We did have someone ask if, is Amplify People going to replace a platform like Indeed for our industry?

Ron:

Let Sam take that.

Samantha:

Yeah, I think that right now, Amplify People's goal today is to really find, again, creative avenues. Right now we're using resources available, but what I will say is, because this is the space that we work in and the space that we know, we are engaging with a vast number of people. We're building a referral network. We are building a resume database that should give us the ability to help integrators longterm. Now, whether that database transitions into a job board replacement, a job board of its own, that's yet to be determined right now. We're really trying to just get out there and do what we can to help with the need right now. And as we continue to build that database and build those connections with talent in this space, see where it can take us. Rebecca: Thank you, Ron. Have a very important question for you. Harry wants to know how your shoulder is.

Ron:

Harry, that is so thoughtful. I, genuinely appreciate you asking. It's doing very well. So for those of you who don't know, I won't bore you, but I had shoulder surgery and officially four weeks ago and I'm doing great. In fact, I'm going to announce it. So it's going to be ingrained for posterity. I was cleared yesterday by my doctor to start running. And so I went for a 5k run this morning and I felt great. So it's, I'm healing quickly. I'm very thankful. I'm very blessed that's true, but thanks for asking. And anyone that's curious is this, are these questions planted? You're not going to get a random question like that, that we're going to plant for ourselves. I promise. So these are, there's a long list of questions that are coming in here. Rebecca: I believe we've reached the end of questions and we are four minutes past the hour. if anybody else has any questions, please, you can reach out to us at, our, email address This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or through our website. We're happy to respond to you with answers that way.

Ron:

Awesome. Then we'll close. I'm going to say thank you to all of you that tuned in. Hopefully this was fun. Sean, Chris, I saw your comment there. Great ideas. We love doing this, sharing with all of you, education and content. We're very busy having a very talented team here and Rebecca and Sam and all the people behind the scenes at One Firefly and Amplify People working hard to help you all grow your businesses. So thank you for joining. Sam, thank you so much as our partner in crime here, my cohost. And Rebecca, thank you for all your efforts getting this put together and scheduled. And of course, all the followup that you're also going to do as soon as this thing wraps. So thank you team.

Samantha:

Thank you, everyone.

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Ron Callis is the CEO of One Firefly, LLC, a digital marketing agency based out of South Florida and creator of Automation Unplugged. Founded in 2007, One Firefly has quickly became the leading marketing firm specializing in the integrated technology and security space. The One Firefly team work hard to create innovative solutions to help Integrators boost their online presence, such as the elite website solution, Mercury Pro.

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Resources and links from the interview:

• Amplify People Website
• Amplify People Webinars

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