Books for preparing for a new employee to join

The candidate accepts. Everyone is relieved. Then the first morning arrives, and the new employee discovers that the job depends on agreements, history and decisions nobody has yet explained.

The question here is what the employer prepares around the arrival. Our first recommendation is Infinite Upside for the responsibilities a title cannot transfer. Onboarding follows the employer's work around a new employee's transition. Successful Onboarding gives a wider organizational view of the program. The two specialist books share a subject; choose the emphasis that matches what you need to prepare.

1. Infinite Upside: making the responsibility transferable

   By Vijay Sheth.

   Chapter 8 of Infinite Upside: Building Wealth With Room to Live describes knowledge that can remain in a founder's experience. The founder knows the customer, remembers an unusual arrangement and supplies background without noticing it.

   Hiring someone with a title does not transfer those things. Sheth asks which responsibilities can be separated, what information each needs and which decisions another person can make. The new colleague needs a workable responsibility, rather than the founder's entire history.

   Imagine a fictional service business hiring an operations coordinator. The computer and welcome lunch are arranged. The coordinator still cannot identify which customer changes are already permitted, where the current agreements sit or who can approve an exception. A warm arrival and a workable role are both worthwhile; one does not supply the other.

   Read the memoir first for that employer responsibility. It makes the gap between recruiting help and preparing the work concrete. It does not describe a comprehensive onboarding curriculum.

2. Onboarding: following the new employee's transition

   By George Bradt and Mary Vonnegut.

   The publisher's overview of Onboarding: How to Get Your New Employees Up to Speed in Half the Time covers recruiting, orienting and enabling employees to do the work. Its contents extend from preparation before arrival to support afterward.

   Choose this direction if you want to investigate the transition as a connected process. The fictional coordinator's first day is one moment inside an arrangement that started with what the employer said about the role and continues as responsibilities become usable.

   The recruiting coverage is broader than this article's immediate question. That may help if promises made before acceptance are part of the confusion. If the hiring decision is already complete, look for the sections addressing preparation, working relationships and follow-through.

   The time claim belongs to the title, rather than a prediction for your employee. The role, existing knowledge and conditions of the business determine what must be learned. Use the book to examine the process instead of setting an arbitrary speed target.

3. Successful Onboarding: examining the organization around the arrival

   By Mark Stein and Lilith Christiansen.

   Successful Onboarding: Strategies to Unlock Hidden Value Within Your Organization includes organizational culture, working relationships, early career support and the design of an onboarding program in its published contents.

   Investigate it when the problem reaches beyond one manager welcoming one person. Different teams may explain the same company differently, or the new colleague may need connections that their immediate supervisor cannot supply alone.

   For the fictional coordinator, that could mean understanding how the customer-facing team and scheduling team work together. The onboarding question now concerns the wider organization the employee is entering, alongside the immediate tasks.

   The book was published in 2010, so examine its organizational perspective without expecting a current software guide. Its program-design emphasis may be more than a very small employer needs. Choose the depth that helps you understand the arrangement you can actually support.

Choose the arrival you need to prepare

Begin with transferable responsibility, the employee's transition or a program spanning several parts of the company. A checklist of welcome activities can be useful while leaving any of those larger questions unresolved.

The hiring selection concerns choosing someone for the role. The transition-funding explanation follows a separate question: how the business pays for the period before help can take over.

Read Infinite Upside for an owner's account of making the work ready for someone else. Try the opening passage before choosing an edition.