Talent Onboarding High-Touch and High-Tech: The John Deere Story

October 06, 2009

Since effective onboarding drives talent engagement, there were three target audiences for John Deere’s onboarding initiative.

For external new hires at the senior manager and executive levels, the goal of onboarding was to accelerate their integration into the organization, shorten their learning curve, enhance their awareness of company culture, and enable relationship building essential for these leaders’ future success. The onboarding approach used for these executives was designed to be comprehensive and very “high touch.” The success of onboarding new executives led to an adaptation for onboarding a second leadership group when it was requested by newly promoted leaders from within the company.

The third talent group at John Deere that receives onboarding is new salaried employees. This onboarding program is called the New Employee Integration (NEI) process. The onboarding experience for new salaried talent was designed to feel like high touch onboarding, but it relies heavily on technology for execution. NEI goals are to ensure new hires have information and tools needed to succeed in the workplace, and to integrate this talent within their first 12 months, so they have an exceptional understanding of the company and its culture.

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