Led by Mark from SUL…
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Specifically, IT Staff
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Developing strategies for on-boarding. What we do:
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Checklist based on past experiences
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Keep a notebook, not automated
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Phil from Stanford Earth: We don’t have a formal process- for those who do, what are the main points
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SUL: we don’t have a pre-hire buddy system but a “day one” pairing; covering our version of good practices; also have a checklist- a six-week schedule managed Intranet
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Mark: A lot of what is important for us is to make the new person feel welcome, comfortable, and productive w the team and tools;
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RDE: “New Employee Ambassador program”
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take that person around- show them the campus, tools, intro partners, etc.; all on-boarding materials are on the Intranet; can update the document continuously (Confluence)
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Sherwin from VPTL: Assigned a buddy system even before they get to on-campus for work and non-work related (e.g., commuting, apartment hunting)
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Jenny UIT admin team:
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We normally start a week prior, a massive checklist; someone is assigned to each task.
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Phil from Stanford Earth: “Is there a way teams can share their checklists?”
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(usu. Locked down b/c dept. Specific)
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we’d be interesting to hear from recent hires what do you wish had been done in the first couple weeks?
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(SUL) “I knew what went wrong… Why I’m interested in on boarding: For there was a lot of stuff in the middle of the stack that was missing;
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Q: “there were hazy areas and you didn’t know how to find the person/info?”
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A: (Mark from SUL) Yes; there was other stuff you would pick up if you’re local… Is *is* documented, but where exactly do you find it?
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Day to day, not IT specific information can be challenging for remote employees;
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part of the challenge is to encourage people to directly ask someone; in general, people want to be helpful. Ask in the #general channel
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Any questions about specific DevOps Onboarding?
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Any tricks to automate? How to avoid information overload for new hires?
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A: Be overly conscious about their first project; which meetings to attend
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Q: How _____ (didn’t hear the question)
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A: Bug fixes; Made it easy b/c while it’s intertwined w the dept., the coding part should be familiar, low risk, while getting used how the dept.
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Operates as they rotate into a project: center on the process of creating inception decks; “this is the context for the project, what we’re aspiring to do”
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(RDE) Most important part to me: my Ambassador took me around to all of the COP groups; good to know that they exist even if it’s not directly related; document which person manages which applications— for the newbie they can refer to the documentation (i.e., make sure the documentation is good/accurate)
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“sounds to me like each dept has an on boarding mentorship…” do you feel as a new employee, that there is a need to connect to the rest of the university IT team (~2000 IT staff across campus);
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“We find trouble introducing SUL programmers even to rest of SUL staff” ( would help to build context on how our work serves the rest of the department); was not originally prioritized but we’re working on that
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(Couldn’t here the question):
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SomethingSomething University guidelines
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There are some folks who are trying to put together a University IT Ambassador Program:
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Mike from VPTL:The name and element has overlap with RDE; the idea is to fill the niche; it normally takes a new person 6 months to branch out of their department; We came up with this idea that old peeps volunteer to be Ambassador- the only requirement is that they are not in the same department; lunch, coffee, campus tours, etc. A “friendly face”; A very different conversation with someone outside of your team; new person feels a part of the larger IT team than just their department. Pilot in place. Will have more information in the coming months. Nothing fancy- the pairing process is pretty easy; not meant to replace a Mentor program; Research shows that relationships directly affect retention;
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Where can we get more information?
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Not posted anywhere yet- still a pilot. (edit: see last line)
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Q: Phil again from Stanford Earth: People who do a lot of on boarding: Are they new positions or are people leaving? Seems like the process would be different… i.e, replacing a position has documentation; a new position might not
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A: Maybe not intentionally; It is tricky w a new position; ex: dual-mentors; some responsibilities fell through the cracks
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SoM: We recently been taking a lot of departments under the SoM IT umbrella: part of that transition, they came w knowledge transfer, how they do their work, so that we could know how to support them; share their knowledge, teach them the best way to get up to speed and knowledgeable how to work with us; ~1.5 weeks. Then shadow field service for a week, then Service Desk for a week, then we release them- there’s documentation, chat, F2F; overall we give them a lot of opportunity to ask questions.
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Phil from Stanford Earth: People have different ways of learning. Is it more helpful for documentation, or a person to call?
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(SoM): Both. When they’re brand new they will ask a human- We’re open to answer questions; remind them that everything is in the KB, get them used to going there first. Anything we say F2F is in the documentation; Google is your friend.
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Marc from SUL: We have lots of information documented- but unless you know how to find it… So we help them und. how to navigate the documentation; Try to get people to place where they are comfortable searching documentation as a first step; Also, it doesn’t help when the interfaces are complicated
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Confluence and SNOW support tags- as new person, what would you be looking for?; take advantage of “new eyes” to update tags.
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SoM: We have two people who update/edit articles for consistency, vocabulary
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(Also SoM): Something that we’re trying to adopt from UIT is “training modules (videos)”- so much information coming all at once even when you have a mentor; UIT has training modules that ppl can review as needed
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Stanford University IT Ambassador Pilot: ambassador@lists.stanford.edu
