Naiman Labs Newsletter #18. Your first steps

👋 Hey there, friends! Welcome to another issue of our weekly newsletter.

Today, let's talk about the most exciting time of everyone’s work journey: your first steps at a new job.

The first couple of weeks at any new job are super important for both the company and the employee. As the saying goes, "first impressions matter" - and that still holds true in 2023.

🏢 Companies today may have different approaches for these first days at work:

• Some companies have compelling onboarding programs, including welcome sessions, meetings with various managers, and more.

• Some companies go one step further and implement quests and games for new hires, such as "find our gym area in the office."

• Some companies follow a buddy system, where a new hire is paired with an experienced team member who will guide them during their first weeks on the job.

Some of these approaches are more efficient than others, but when companies don't implement any onboarding programs, they miss a huge opportunity to improve employee experience, productivity, and engagement. However, we'll leave that up to them. Instead, let's focus on what we think are the most important steps for new hires to complete when starting a new job.

🎯 What are the objectives of your first few weeks?

1. Make a good impression.

2. Become efficient as quickly as possible.

3. Get comfortable working in this new environment.

Also, keep in mind that in the first few days on the job, your workload is usually light. This is a perfect time to prepare yourself.

Steps for new joiners to take:

🔭 Step 1: Familiarize yourself with all the existing relevant company policies and processes. Read what you can, prepare a set of questions you want to ask, and ask your manager, HR team, or admin team when you have a chance. Don't treat it as a formality - it's good to know the company's leave policies, mobility approach, security policy, career development approach, and more. We often overlook this and then miss some good opportunities to make our lives more comfortable.

👥 Step 2: Together with your manager, make a checklist of the most important people you need to meet with - from your team and from adjacent departments.

👥 Step 3: Add some more people to this list and make sure you meet at least some people from every team in your first month. You need to get a feeling for who does what in your company.

🎯 Step 4: Set your first objectives with your manager for your first 30 and 90 days. It will give you some clear guidance. Pro tip: Discuss the key skills you both think are important for you to develop and focus on them.

🖥️ Step 5: Set up your workplace - both physical and digital. Establish your profile in Slack, on the company intranet, or any internal systems. Don't overlook this - it's way more comfortable for everyone to know how their colleagues look and what they do.

🌍 Step 6: Understand your manager's and your team's agenda. This is always important, and please keep this question in mind for all of your one-on-one meetings with your manager and key stakeholders. But we highly recommend you start doing this in your first weeks on the job.

🙏 Step 7: Find a mentor. This is not for the first few weeks, but it's always a good thing to have a mentor at work - and later, even outside of work. After the first several weeks when you are more familiar with your team, you can find someone you can learn from. Communicate with them more, and they might become your mentor. It's always good to have someone you can learn from.

Bonus step: Don't ignore social events. Some people consider social events at work to be unnecessary and time-consuming without any additional value. However, it's super important to create bonds with your teammates, so don't ignore coffee invitations, invite people for a chat, and don't skip company-wide all-hands meetings, onboarding sessions, welcome drinks, or other events.

🙌 People management article of the week

Very easy read for this week! Consider this as a kind reminder for managers. Yes, productivity and performance of your team is extra important, but don’t forget to give something back (and no, the fact that you pay their salary doesn’t count).

⚙️Productivity tip of the week

Try 5-minute rule. When you struggle to start with some task, talk to yourself, negotiate that you’re going to work on this task for the first 5 minutes. There’s a very high probability that you’ll find yourself deeply working on this task 20 minutes and 30 minutes later. The hardest thing is to start working on the task. Try this hack and hack your resisting brain 🧠

Until next week! Vlad from Naiman Labs