Quick Tips on Creating a New Hire Buddy Program
Creating a Buddy Program for your new hires is a giant step in helping them feel welcome and truly instilling the company culture from Day 1. This article is not designed to a "one-stop shop" for how to build a Buddy Program from the ground up. Instead, I will be focusing on some lessons learned and quick tips from building out programs over the last 10 years. This will also serve as a resource for the Catcat Learning Path on Creating a New Hire Buddy Program.
Things to remember when creating a Buddy Program
First and foremost- you need buy-in. Managers will need to assign and support Buddies for their New Hires, and your L&D or Enablement teams will need to create a program and onboarding process for the Buddies and managers.
It is best to integrate the role of the Buddy into their daily work. That means delivering content to the New Hire as it becomes relevant, and allowing the Buddy to walk them through real-life examples as they shadow- providing context and immediate information that cannot be delivered via traditional training or enablement methods. How do you handle an unforeseen issue? New Hires can see these “tips and tricks” in real-time.
The training and enablement team will need to put together a list of tasks and loose calendar for the Buddy and New Hire to sync on. As always- be open to feedback and iteration.
Buddy Expectations
The Buddies you choose are should be those who exceed expectations, are on the same team or department as the New Hire, are confident, patient, live the organizational culture, and want to be a Buddy.
The primary role as a Buddy is to provide context and reinforcement on key responsibilities and knowledge. To do so, Buddies invite the NH to a variety of meetings to ‘shadow’ as they conduct key tasks in a live setting. The idea here is that you shouldn’t need to set aside time in your day to separate out work tasks vs. Buddy tasks. We’d like to combine these! So literally invite the NH to shadow you and work as you normally do.
Shadowing serves as a matter of contextual reinforcement for subject matter that is covered by training, managers, or self-study.
Buddies could also be responsible for supporting early customer interactions for customer-facing teams when the new hire is facilitating their first customer calls. You can assist by ‘listening in’ to calls and jumping in to assist the new hire if prompted to do so.
Buddies can also be available for contextual as-needed Q&A. Though anything that should be handled by managers or training should be passed back to these groups to avoid double-work or help iterate the current training and coaching programs.
Conclusion
Having participated in, and built Buddy Programs, I’d like to leave you with a few reminders and tips.
1. Create documentation and clear expectations
2. Pick the right Buddies
3. Hold managers, Buddies, New Hires, and trainers accountable
4. Check in via surveys and 1:1s during the Program
Managers should be having regular calls with their New Hires and the Buddies as part of their duties as a coach and manager, add in a quick recap for the Buddy Program.
Buddies and New Hires should be meeting regularly.
Trainers should be in touch with New Hires regularly.
Surveys specific to NH/Buddy/Manager should be sent at mid-way and end of formal Program at minimum.
5. Integrate it as much as possible to reduce friction and circumvention
Shadowing tasks should be integrated naturally into the day-to-day of the Buddy. They should not need to create a reason to show a task if possible.
6. Set up time with managers, New Hires, and Buddies who have completed the Program for a roundtable semi-annually at minimum for feedback and info not captured in surveys or during the Program.
7. Iterate and have fun!
Design thinking is very important in training as well! Create a pilot with a few New Hires, gather feedback, iterate, rollout, keep gathering feedback, and keep iterating.
New Hire Buddy Programs are a great way to instill company culture, increase satisfaction, and quickly bring new and veteran employees together across departments.
For more information on Creating a New Hire Buddy Program, check out this Catcat Learning Path
