E022 - Creating Belonging and Aligning Values in Remote Onboarding (w/ Maxine Dorkin)

Join us on this episode of the Employee Onboarding Podcast as we welcome Maxine Dorkin, an HR expert with a diverse background in social work and youth employment. Maxine shares her innovative approaches to designing and implementing onboarding programs that emphasize strong remote onboarding values. 

Discover how aligning personal and organizational values, creating a sense of belonging, and personalizing the onboarding experience can lead to higher engagement and retention, even in a remote work environment. Maxine's insights are invaluable for HR practitioners looking to enhance their remote onboarding practices and build cohesive, motivated teams.

Transcript

Maxine (00:00.624)
doggy here. I can't really put her anywhere so I hope she doesn't make a noise but yes that's the one little person that's with me here. She generally sits very quietly but you may hear a little bark and I'll try then to find another room but now she's been following me everywhere so I can't really knock her out.

Erin Rice (00:05.07)
Yeah.

Erin Rice (00:11.406)
Okay.

Erin Rice (00:18.19)
Yeah.

No worries at all. Yeah, no, I get it. That's fine. Awesome. Well, welcome to the Employee Onboarding Podcast where we are unpacking great onboarding ideas and best practices from the world's top HR practitioners and thought leaders. At Process Street, that starts with our mission to make work fun, fast, and faultless for teams everywhere. My name is Erin Rice and I'm the People and Operations Coordinator here at Process Street. Today, I'm joined by Maxine Dorkin.

Maxine is in her final year of her PhD at the University of Vits in South Africa. Her research explores marginalized youth's transition to work. She has extensive experience in the youth employment sector, where she managed work readiness programs for five years, which have reached up to 5 ,000 unemployed youth. Wow, that's impressive. Maxine is a licensed occupational social worker and a business coach with certifications in team management profile, best year yet.

time to think team and other coaching methodologies. Her master's thesis at Wits University explored the topic of coaching as an innovative methodology for social workers. She has extensive experience conducting leadership and workplace interventions from leadership teams. Maxine has experience in the nonprofit sector and has served on the board of nonprofits. For the last five years, she has pivoted into an HR role in the technology space, working for San Technology where she

has worked in people experience, responsible for designing and facilitating onboarding programs for several hundred employees. Maxine currently works as a people operations and, oh, excuse me. I already said that part. We'll cut that out. Sorry about that. Wow, I can't wait to dive into this. Thank you so much for joining us today, Maxine.

Maxine (02:07.568)
Well, thank you for having me, Erin. It's such a lovely pleasure to be with you and to be a part of this awesome Process Street conversation.

Erin Rice (02:16.942)
Yeah, so before we dive in, I'd like to ask an icebreaker. What is a sauce, condiment, or dressing that you cannot live without?

Maxine (02:26.8)
I'm so happy you mentioned that because I love me some sauces so kitchen Fridge is not like complete if it doesn't have some hot chili sauce It needs to be homemade with garlic and parsley and sort of crushed chilies And I use it on everything so it's not only a condiment, but also uses to cook so yeah I'm a chili garlic kind of girl and I I tend to like

take a bottle with me on holiday. So I'm that kind of person.

Erin Rice (02:58.99)
That's amazing. At the grocery store, I recently saw to -go hot sauces, and I was like, people bring their hot sauce with them on vacation. I'm sure they do. That's amazing. Awesome. Well, you'll have to share that recipe.

Maxine (03:08.784)
Yeah. I'll do that for sure. Yeah, but I love it. I'm like, I feel like, you know, something's missing if I can't get a little bit of it on whatever I cook or eat.

Erin Rice (03:22.862)
Awesome, great. Well now what we really came here for employee onboarding, what a dynamic background. I'm so excited to hear a little bit more about how your passions have evolved and sort of landed you into this HR space.

Maxine (03:28.144)
Yeah.

Maxine (03:37.52)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess for myself, it's always been around people development. And so, you know, for as long as I can remember, kind of in the people space, just whether it was working in NPOs and working in the child welfare sector and sort of as a social worker, I've always been interested in people development. But there came a point just after my masters where I really got to see a gap in the market and in the...

sort of HR space around bespoke workplace interventions. And so occupational social work and looking at how to design and implement workplace interventions, particularly for, you know, at risk populations became something that was of real interest. And so I began studying and reading and working, you know, towards that, you know, through my masters and looking at how to develop that.

But the role that I'm currently in to answer your question really is a combination of those things. It looks to how we can utilize highly engaging interventions to be able to make an impact and also to be able to really just drive employee engagement. So yeah, I feel like there's a thread from all parts of my kind of background that have landed me here. But ultimately, it's about being able to really like...

be a part of impact -driven work that's meaningful, that really keeps me motivated.

Erin Rice (05:08.91)
Yeah, that's amazing. And tell me how employee onboarding kind of folds into all of that.

Maxine (05:16.496)
Yeah, good question. So I would say like I started really in the people experience space is what we called it. And I know there's a number of different names for that. But when I started, it was actually just before COVID. And so it was a new kind of role. And I think we as an organization got to see just the value of being able to be intentional around.

designing interventions remotely for our employees. So I had the privilege of being able to lead that team and kind of get it kickstarted, if you like, but also just look at the value that it can add to the business. So I think people operations has always traditionally been a real part of sort of setting up core systems, if you like, HR, IES and all of this. And the people experience was almost like a nice to have, but during COVID that almost changed.

And I think the value around belonging and culture and looking at onboarding experiences that really moved beyond just the onboarding space, but affected retention and affected employee engagement, that became a focus. So that team has grown and there's a big chunk of how we can see the success as a business owing to really solid.

onboarding programs and onboarding processes.

Erin Rice (06:45.262)
Yeah, onboarding is so important. What would you say is sort of the key pieces to making a successful onboarding experience?

Maxine (06:53.136)
Yeah, so I think I like to look at the kind of building blocks as three main chunks. And there's this big piece around welcome and alignment, making sure that, you know, our employees have a sense of belonging and really understand that, you know, there's a space that they belong to. So I think if I just look at the kind of overall structure running through the thread with the sense of welcome, alignment to

what it is we do, but a deep sense of belonging. And I think I want to come back, Erin, at a point to kind of just touch on belonging again, because I think it's quite overlooked in how we kind of design and think about these processes. I think there's a huge big part of our culture that needs to flow through in that onboarding piece. But it is also the last element, I'd say, is around the sort of functional and team onboarding.

So aside from the kind of overarching alignment to the organization and all of what fits into understanding the role and the awareness of the organization, mission strategy, core products, all that kind of thing, there's this piece around the belonging that kind of holds the glue between that and between the functional or the team onboarding. So these three pieces for me interact. And I feel like you have supporting elements is what I'll call it in like pre -onboarding or an onboarding course or.

you know, material around reading and decks and just support content that fit into that. But then also just one -on -one relationships, right? It's like these coffee chats and these serendipitous ways in which people can get to know people who are similar to them. So it's creating space for people to feel like this is an environment that I want to be in. I feel like I'm a part of.

which I found really has worked over the years running the onboarding programs that I have run. Yeah.

Erin Rice (08:50.158)
Yeah, definitely. And it's almost like that pre -onboarding piece, you kind of have to deliver on everything that they expected, you know, right out the gate in order for them to be like, oh, I made the right choice. I picked the right company. I took the right job. Yeah, that's so true.

Maxine (08:59.312)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. This makes sense for me and I'm actually confident now to come into this, you know. That's really key, I think. So setting that up in a way that helps people to feel like, you know, I want to take this further. I want to commit to making this my kind of home, if you like, you know, before they get into the kind of onboarding fully. But how we run it is kind of in the virtual space, a week long onboarding process.

So it's quite intense, but it's like a real culture immersion, you know, after the pre -onboarding. So that's the kind of, you know, process in terms of how the pieces work together, the functional kind of happening either in between or, you know, during.

Erin Rice (09:49.486)
Yeah, for sure. At the end of our company onboarding, we always go back to the new hire and say, did we over promise what this was going to be like? Did we deliver? Is this what you expected? And gratefully, they normally say yes. It was actually even better than I expected, which is always a positive. But you never really know if they're taking the information throughout the process.

Maxine (09:58.672)
Yes, yes.

Maxine (10:06.)
Mm -mm.

That's great. Yeah. Yeah.

Maxine (10:16.048)
Mm. Yeah.

Erin Rice (10:17.934)
Speaking of pre, you know, that interview process, I'd love to hear a little bit more about pre -onboarding and what that looks like for you.

Maxine (10:24.304)
So I'd say there's a lot of work to be done around in the pre -onboarding space. So there's elements that we haven't fully worked out, you know, in the best possible way. So I'll speak to what I've been doing and what would be the ideal. So some of the pre -onboarding, so I think if we talk about the onboarding space, we need to sort of separate the systems onboarding, which will be kind of setting up in terms of all of the processes and all of the tools.

and all of what you need to get yourself sort of running. And a lot of that happens a week to two before, immediately after the contract is signed and then after the person has actually joined. So some of that sits into the people operation space and that pre -onboarding happens there. From the culture perspective, I'd say the pre -onboarding begins with a pre -onboarding course formally.

And this is essentially, you know, all for LMS. It's going through, you know, content related to, you know, just the high level understanding of who our business is. And it's almost giving a bit of a snapshot into some of what that is. So it's around, you know, our mission, our vision, our culture, our history, all of the kind of real building blocks in video formats and then a few questions. But what we do is we take that and then we say, okay, let's come into an onboarding week.

and talk about what you've learned because we see the value of one -on -one engagement around this, you know, bringing understanding back to how do you see this and small group discussions and this kind of thing. So essentially that is what the pre -onboarding sort of piece looks like, an LMS course, which is four to five hours long, nothing too intense. But if you're going to have to kind of wait until the full onboarding week, because typically we would need a cohort.

of people to be joining the organization at once to run that sort of culture immersion piece, you've at least got a good sense of who you're joining and why you're joining and what our main projects are and access to that. Another piece of it, and it's not quite, I'd say, pre -onboarding, but it does look to sort of the beginning phases of those important one -to -one contacts, that very first week of joining. So...

Maxine (12:47.696)
key individuals you need to meet with and how you need to actually sort of position yourself to get ready for your role. And I mean, I speak of onboarding week as such. It's more now this culture immersion week long kind of like onboarding fiesta almost that happens for like a couple of hours, four hours, four to five hours in a chunk of a day. And that's typically how I've run it. So I hope that answers your question.

question.

Erin Rice (13:19.054)
Yeah, for sure. And I love that onboarding Fiesta. Is that then where your cohorts sort of come into play? So it's like a group of new hires that are doing this?

Maxine (13:27.44)
It's a group, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And the beautiful thing about this and what I've found and we've tried all different versions of it, but because we're scaling quite rapidly, we can easily have 15 to 20 people every two to three months, because we're hiring quite fast. And so what's beautiful about it is that there's almost a group of people who journey on the whole kind of employee journey together. And they become like...

you know, onboarding buddies. So it's like, I did onboarding with you, I've got a connection. You know, we were on onboarding together, you find these conversations happen. And it's like, there's this common point. Another thing that happens just so magically is that employees who have been on onboarding together become friends and want to connect on their own, irrespective of what we set up. So there's that sense of belonging and connection and...

You know, I'm not just, I'm not alone in this. I think it's just what such a beautiful, important part of coming into a workplace that you want to show up in, right? Cause you know people. And so that's the value of a cohort kind of piece.

Erin Rice (14:39.438)
I think you might have frozen.

I think you froze. Do you mind going back to, you're back now. Yep. Maybe going back to the part about the belonging kind of organically happening.

Maxine (14:44.208)
I'm a bad.

Maxine (14:54.256)
Yeah, yeah. So the beautiful thing about having a cohort is that people come together and they're so excited to say, I actually know someone else who was in a similar position to me. So there's this beautiful kind of organic belonging that takes place where I'm not alone. Suddenly I've got other people who've been on this journey and are facing all the same kind of fears and...

Like there's much that I don't know still, but there's other people who also don't know it. So I love that that happens. And I think it just, it's just fosters the sense of unity that happens in the onboarding process. So that's just a beautiful piece to see happen. And I have to say, you know, we've run several onboardings over the last four years and it literally happens with every group every two or three months. So it's such a beautiful pattern to have seen.

Erin Rice (15:48.59)
Absolutely, and I bet when things get stressful or workloads increase, having that camaraderie and that sense of belonging with your cohort. Yep, are you there?

Maxine (15:58.288)
Hello?

Hi, sorry, I think you froze. Did I froze? I didn't get that last part. Can you repeat that?

Erin Rice (16:03.886)
Oh, no, no.

Erin Rice (16:09.518)
Absolutely. I bet that having that camaraderie and that sense of belonging when things get stressful, workloads increase, that having that group of people to sort of lean on that learned all the same things that you learned at the same time is probably really helpful in creating some fibers that will help you through those difficult times that companies sometimes go through.

Maxine (16:32.848)
Yeah, I mean, I have to say, I think this is a sort of psychological impact to being in an organization for the first time, that maybe we tend to kind of underplay. And I think there's a lot more anxiety and nervousness around being part of a whole new group. And have I made the right decision? Is this?

Is this a part of a group that I want to be a part of? So I think that that community that you create allays those fears. And it helps us to kind of just bridge that gap around, do I belong to I belong?

Erin Rice (17:18.03)
Yeah, for sure. I'd love for you to circle back to the studies that you're doing with youth entering into the workforce and hearing a little bit more about maybe what companies can do to change things for them or any other feedback that you can share as we have these new generations joining us.

Maxine (17:26.32)
Thank you.

Maxine (17:34.864)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the opportunity. I love that question. I'm so passionate about it because I think it's just one of the really overlooked pieces around how we approach onboarding. And I think it's this whole piece, Erin, around what needs to be customized and personalized for our employees. And in this instance, it's not just for young, marginalized youth employees, but it's any cohort of employees.

coming into an organization. I think organizations would benefit from looking to a more personalized approach of understanding what it is that their workforce really needs. So it's around saying, not just the learning gaps, or not just what do I need to do to get this person up to speed, but a lot more around what's the background that this person comes from.

How do they actually integrate into a new work environment? So if they're someone who's never worked before, what is it we need to do to be able to put in place to give them a sense of, you know, there's a piece here that I can add value to, to build that confidence like, you know, from early on. But I think it's so critical that we are empathetic to the kind of journey that young people walk.

and what systems we have in place that either help to build that or actually are built for a generation that actually doesn't work for young people or doesn't work for the kind of spaces that will make for engagement. And I think taking a good hard look at the types of processes you have in place and who was that developed for and when was that developed.

And how are we tweaking what we have now for the type of young person or the type of employee that we have coming into? So I think it's, you know, if I could say anything, it's around being flexible, not being kind of, you know, holding on dog a determination. This is the way we've always done it. This is how it always needs to be done. It's really being iterative around like the workforce is changing, like literally, you know.

Maxine (19:54.512)
Every five years, we have different kind of individual who's coming into the work. But I say even before that. But in terms of where we hire and who our hiring pool is, we need to be able to say if there's a geographic kind of space that we're hiring from, what are some of the needs of that community? What are some of the issues that young people in certain spaces have? What will make for benefits and packages that make work more attractive?

And these are not easy questions to answer, Erin. It's not like we can understand this just automatically, but I think coming from the perspective of I want to be able to improve what it is we have so that we can meet needs of our employees is the type of mindset that employees and HR practitioners need to dial into.

Erin Rice (20:48.494)
Yeah, for sure. And all that's going to do is help with retention, right? Like, if you're prepared, if you're personalized, if you're well taken care of, your experience is managed positively, your background is factored into all of the decisions that are made in helping you ramp. Those people are going to feel very welcomed. They're going to get that sense of belonging. And ultimately, they're going to want

Maxine (20:53.104)
completely.

Erin Rice (21:17.198)
to perform for that company.

Maxine (21:18.768)
Yeah, absolutely. It totally is that, you know. And it's been willing to let go of ways in which we've been doing things, to open ourselves up to, okay, like, we are willing to pilot, you know, this particular process or try these particular tools and look over three or six months around, you know, what is it that... Oh, is it... Am I gone again? It's actually recording at higher quality on my thing.

Erin Rice (21:35.886)
Oh, I think I might have lost you.

Erin Rice (21:42.35)
Yes, you're back, you're back. Sorry, can you...

Erin Rice (21:49.23)
It says what?

Maxine (21:49.456)
Okay, sorry, did you lose me?

Erin Rice (21:52.366)
Uh, you had just started.

Maxine (21:54.992)
Okay, I forget what I was saying now, but I think it was around... Okay, I don't know what I was saying. Lost my train of thought.

Erin Rice (22:03.47)
talking about belonging and like setting the employee up for success and they want to contribute.

Maxine (22:10.352)
Yeah, I mean, you were talking about retention and I was agreeing with that, that it is around us just saying, you know, we shouldn't hold on to just the way in which we've always been doing things. But we need to be able to embrace what's going to work and look at iterating and changing some of what we have always to match that. Yeah.

Erin Rice (22:13.166)
Great.

Erin Rice (22:32.014)
Yeah, and if it still works the way that it is, keep doing it. If not, scrap it. Yeah, we talk about that a lot. Awesome.

Maxine (22:36.144)
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure, for sure. I think it's just this whole agile approach to what we do in the business anyway that makes for success, yeah.

Erin Rice (22:48.91)
Yeah, and as our world is changing so rapidly, you know, we always have to be ready to pivot and that's, you know, everything, not just onboarding.

Maxine (22:55.696)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Erin Rice (23:02.67)
So this has been so great. I always like to end with one final question. What is one thing that companies can do to create wow moments for their new hires?

Maxine (23:08.144)
Mm -hmm.

Maxine (23:16.624)
Mmm, wow, I love that. So maybe what I can talk to one of the things that we do that I think is really special is we look to align personal values with organization values. Really through an exercise of creating a personalized mission map in the onboarding process. And this is done in a small group setting.

So three or four people within the kind of onboarding week, you know, the sort of cohort space. And you would look to the things that are important and you really value about yourself. And so it's getting to know, you know, your values, getting to understand a little bit of your history, like the things that make you tick. And then really saying, you know, this is who I am and this is the kind of impact that I want to make and the mark I want to leave in the world.

And so you kind of end this week, the Friday always, on this high of I've learned something new about myself. And we're able to take that thread and say, this is how within the space that you're joining in this organization, that your personal mission sort of fits into the organization mission. And there's always a thread, whatever that may be and whatever the values or the kind of.

area that you want to actually make a mark in. But I think because we've worked with the group for five days, ending on this particular sort of my mission map really just creates a sense of cohesion and a sense of I want to share because you're now sharing at a really deep level, right? But because you've been kind of journeying with people for five days, you can be vulnerable. And there's that part, Erin, about opening yourself up to other people.

and being vulnerable that actually allows you to show up at work in a very real way, in a very genuine way, you know? And so all the pretenses and all the nervousness and all the kind of like, will I fit in here? The whole sense of bravado when you first join, it almost just falls off. And you just have these very beautiful, rich individuals who are here to kind of get their hands dirty. And it shows what we call a sense of common ground, that we actually are all the same.

Maxine (25:39.6)
And so ending onboarding at that level always gives us like the highest NPS rating because people are like, oh wow, this has been so useful. I've gained so much out of it. So yeah, that's been a really beautiful sort of process for me to run. So I facilitate that piece. Oh, I have, I'm actually doing a different part of like, you know, working in a different part of the business now. But that has been, I always love that. I just think it's so beautiful.

Erin Rice (26:07.022)
And to connect that back to what we kind of started this conversation with, that sense of belonging is then sort of just reiterated in one other new way.

Maxine (26:16.72)
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, the community that we feel, the kind of like, I'm just a part of something where other individuals, you know, are here with me. I think that, you know, that creating that, especially in a remote work world, is so powerful. It is so powerful.

Erin Rice (26:37.966)
Absolutely. And the more connected we can be, the more we're going to produce and ultimately push goals forward and just hopefully make the world a better place.

Maxine (26:47.056)
Yeah, and just get along with people and enjoy the process. Have fun while you're doing it.

Erin Rice (26:50.894)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Great. Well, Maxine, this has been so wonderful. I have written down so many nuggets as I do with all of my conversations. And, you know, I really thank you for your time.

Maxine (27:04.4)
Well thank you, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you. I've thoroughly enjoyed this errand.

Erin Rice (27:09.87)
and I'm hoping you'll share that chili pepper recipe with me soon.

Maxine (27:13.52)
I shall, I certainly will do that.

Maxine (27:19.376)
Thank you.