What is crossboarding and what should it include?

The benefits of well-organised staff onboarding are undeniable and it is often seen that organisations with the highest levels of staff engagement and, therefore, productivity are actively actioning clear onboarding processes for their new hires.

You can read more about what employee onboarding is and why you need it here.

There are also, however, many benefits to hiring for vacant roles internally and crossboarding those employees.

What is crossboarding?

An organisation can save time and money by hiring a member of staff who already knows how their company operates, is familiar with the structures and people within the business and may already know how their new role works. The time taken to find and recruit a new team member from within will typically be significantly less than an external hire – often also resulting in a tighter person-to-role fit.

It is all too easy, however, to overlook the onboarding process when a team member already knows the business and has, perhaps, previously been trained on key initiation elements. This will, clearly, adversely impact the transition to the new role and increase the ramp time to full productivity.

By reviewing your existing staff onboarding procedure in the context of an existing staff member transitioning into a new role, it is possible to create a strategic crossboarding process. In turn, this revised process can really facilitate the transition: maximizing the role inductee’s engagement and readiness for the new role within the organisation.

In Method Grid, your existing onboarding grid can be cloned and adapted to create a crossboarding grid to share with transitioning employees. This ensures that all key documents are kept in one place and offers relevant familiarization task checklists to be completed by both employees and managers.

What should crossboarding include?

In addition to refreshing staff training, company missions, values and role specific initiation items, your crossboarding procedure grid should include:

• A checklist of items to be discussed at a meeting between the new and former managers to discuss the transition;
• Clear learning and professional development goals with respect to their new role and responsibilities (with a heightened focus on the first three months of the role);
• Regular progress reviews (you should check in with crossboarding staff as often as you would for a completely new recruit);
• Introductions to their new team colleagues;
• An assigned buddy within their new team to help them settle in;
• A new development plan to build longer-term skill sets and overall career progression.

In summary, it is vital when hiring internally that organisations do not overlook a consistent crossboarding procedure in order to ensure smooth staff transition and maximal employee engagement and productivity.