Onboarding buddy

Selecting onboarding buddies

The ideal onboarding buddy for your new hire is a fully-ramped employee who works on the same team as them. They can offer role-specific knowledge, help train, and serve as a close confidant to answer questions they might not be comfortable asking their manager. 

If you want to take it up a notch like we do at Sora, you can run a dual buddy program where a new hire has an onboarding buddy who works on their team and another one who works on a completely different team. This gives our new hires insight into how other teams operate within the context of the company’s overarching strategy.

To help build rapport between your new hires and their onboarding buddies, especially if they’re on different teams, you can match them based on a commonality like the same hometown, current city, or college. 

Setting expectations

If you want your onboarding buddy program to help your new hire transform from a wide-eyed employee to a fully-ramped one, you need to set some standards. At Sora, here’s what we expect from our onboarding buddies: 

• Toward the end of your new hire’s first week, schedule a 30-minute video chat with them, where you casually get to know them and ask if there's anything you can do to help.
• During your new hire’s first week, check in every day via Slack or a quick Zoom call.
• After your new hire’s first week, set up a weekly or bi-weekly coffee chat. These should be 15-30 minute video chats, where you can check in, see how things are going, answer any questions, let them vent, or catch up with them.  
• You should be available for and attentive to any questions your new hire has. If there are questions you can't answer, be sure to refer them to someone who can. 

We know, remembering to complete all of these tasks can be a tall order for your onboarding buddies. So consider assigning them as tasks in your onboarding automation platform. It will automatically send reminders and notifications to your onboarding buddies for what they need to do, when. You can also easily reassign these tasks if an onboarding buddy takes PTO or leaves the company, so your new hire isn’t left without one.

Establishing a plan for your onboarding buddies 

In addition to setting expectations for your onboarding buddies, it’s helpful to paint the big-picture plan for them. Below is our 4-week plan for our onboarding buddies, and you can download our message templates to get yours started.

Week 1

• Schedule a 30-minute, 1:1 buddy chat toward the end of their first week. 
• Throughout their first week, reach out a few more times. The goal here is to connect. Try not to talk about work and focus on your personal bond. You want to build a relationship.

Week 2

• Set up a 15-30 minute video call with your new hire to see how they're doing. Do they have any pressing questions? Is onboarding going well? Do they have plans for the weekend?
• Reach out again on Slack later in the week for good measure.

Weeks 3-4

• Set up recurring weekly or bi-weekly meetings with your new hire. Feel free to keep these on the calendar as long as they feel useful. We encourage buddies to keep in contact for at least the first 90 days, even if it's not every week, to ensure new hires have all the support they need to be successful.
• Similar to the weeks prior, check in via Slack. Send a quick message to let them know you’re here for them. And make sure to follow up on anything from your last conversation.

Everybody needs an (onboarding) buddy

Onboarding new hires successfully is a tall order for any company. But if your onboarding buddies can forge both a professional and personal relationship with your new hires and rely on a strategic, intentional onboarding buddy program to do so, you can effectively transform your new hires into fully-ramped, connected employees.