Focus Magazine - Summer 2015 - 20

COVERSTORY

Onboarding Review
Working together on new trainer onboarding at Bristol-Myers Squibb are, from left,
mentor Ryan Nepomuceno, new trainer Joanne Cesario, program owner Dona Bone
and manager Frank Vitiello.

e key was making sure an organized
structure was in place and was designed in
such a way that it could be used by multiple
roles, including the trainers, the leaders and
the peer mentors. e material needed to
serve multiple purposes; for example, as
instructional material, a reference, a job aid
and a coaching guide. Providing one
document to be used by everyone prevented
version control issues and diﬃculties finding
documents. is simplified structure now
makes it easy to communicate what the
program is about and what the key functions
are, to make available the right tools and job
aids and to consolidate content.

Managers and Mentors

e emphasis of the new onboarding
To address the problem, we pulled together a task force
program is on trainers and their managers and mentors. A
of trainers, training managers, project managers, and
single project manager is responsible for initiating the
leadership development managers to try to understand
program with each new team member, scheduling and
perceptions and gaps of the onboarding program. As the
facilitating live training events and following up with
benchmarking revealed the problem, it didn't provide a
managers to ensure pull-through. e project manager is
broader understanding of how we
also responsible for tracking trainers'
compared to our peers; therefore, we
progress through the program and
Training material must not
enlisted the assistance of the
providing regular updates to the
only be perceived as valuable, executive director, who reinforces the
consulting firm Campbell Alliance
Learning Solutions to provide that
it must also be concise, structured
importance of a positive onboarding
broader view, diagnose the problem,
experience with his leadership team.
and executable.
devise a solution and develop the
While having the central program
content.
manager in place to initiate and pull together the managers,

Time & Accountability
Aer assessing the problem, the focus group determined
that the issue came down to time and accountability. Given
their daily workload and the rush to put new trainers on to
existing work streams, the training managers were not
prioritizing trainer onboarding and pulling it through, and
the trainers were not taking the time for their own
development by completing the program. It was clear that
training material must not only be perceived as valuable, it
must also be concise, structured and executable.
e decision was made to focus on the key behaviors that
trainers need to exhibit and group the nine competencies
into three buckets: Collaborative leadership behaviors,
organizational behaviors and technical training behaviors. It
was then necessary to take the existing content and
programs and map them back to this new framework. Some
material was subsequently eliminated, some new material
was created and some material was simply refocused in
terms of where it would sit within the new framework.

20

mentors and trainers is a critical diﬀerentiator of this
program and an important key to its success, ultimately the
pull through on the manager's part is the most important
element.
e peer mentor involvement is another important
diﬀerentiator of our onboarding process under the revised
Bristol-Myers Squibb training mentor Bob Romano works with new
trainer Christy McDade.

Mentor

FOCUS | SUMMER 2015 | www.L-TEN.org
http://www.L-TEN.org
Focus Magazine - Summer 2015

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