“You had me at hello”- Executive Engagement through Effective Onboarding

April 01, 2009

For organizations who measure time to productivity, onboarding milestones correlate with performance and development goals and impact achieved in the first year. Of course all this success depends on coordination amongst multiple stakeholders. In a webcast poll conducted by the Human Capital Institute, 18% of respondents said their senior HR leader was responsible for executive onboarding; 14% responded this responsibility rested with the senior leader for each line of business, but 55% responded that both the Senior HR leader and the leader of the line of business were responsible for the effective assimilation of a new or re-deployed executive.

A related webcast poll revealed that 87% of respondents’ organizations do not track ramp up time to competency for executives. Yet, secondary research benchmarks suggest that 47% of companies who transfer internal executives find the executive takes three to six months to come up to speed in their new role, and external hires take three months longer. Why do 40% of executives fail within the first two years in a new position? EMC decided to examine the underlying executive transition issues.

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