How to Use this Guide
Download this guide document and use it to fill out a specific outline of the onboarding expectations of your team. By providing concrete, written expectations to the employee, their ability to acclimate to the team and start meeting expectations quickly will greatly increase.
❖ Who?
Managers complete the New Employee Expectations Overview document and provide it to new team members. While this is especially helpful for some neurodivergent employees, incorporating this resource into default onboarding procedures is "good hygiene" for your team.
❖ What?
When a new team member is joining a group, this document can be used to communicate the “hidden curriculum” of a team/organization and clarify the often unwritten expectations and culture of the team.
This is a template message which can be downloaded and filled in.
❖ Why?
This tool helps address the "hidden curriculum" barrier experienced by many neurodivergent hires during onboarding. Miscommunication and conflict can be avoided by clearly and concretely communicating expectations proactively.
Case Study
Brian's team has had a history of onboarding challenges. Every employee's experience seems to have been different, experiencing varied challenges and roadblocks causing frustration for the employee and delays for the team to get them up to speed. These challenges have included logistical ones like building access and parking, technical ones like connecting virtual desktops or accessing necessary software, and operational ones like work hours, taking breaks, availability throughout the day, and time/place for asking questions.
The team had previously just accepted that onboarding is difficult and that every employee would go through some kind of frustrating blockages and “learning curve.” However, when introduced to the New Employee Expectations guide, many of the common roadblocks and questions from new hires could be preempted.
By sharing this guide with all new team members, the expectations of the team were clearly documented which made it easier for employees to understand them. Many logistical questions were preempted; many technical questions were given a clear and practical point of contact, and many operational questions were clarified.
The team no longer had to continue to repeat and clarify themselves by trial-and-error as new team members acclimated to the operational norms of the team such as cameras-on for meetings, notifying your team lead if you were taking a break, or the amount of flexibility with arrival and departure times. Things ran smoother, and both sides of the employee/manager equation were happier with onboarding.
Insights
Learn more about the hidden expectations and ways to clarify communication in our e-learning course,
Neurodiversity At Work: From Bias to Belonging