Chip Heath examines how a well-designed first day shapes new employees' experience. He uses John Deere's onboarding process as a case study in why those initial hours matter for retention and engagement.
Well, I think there are certain moments when you can make a big impact on your employees or on your customers, and these are the tools that you have available to you. So one of the stories I love from the book is John Deere, classic American company that make tractors. And in this country, a lot of people know John Deere because we're only. Most of us are only a couple of generations from people that actually farm the ground. But as you enter China and India, there's not that history. There's not that connection. And you. And so they took something that is an important moment of life, but we typically don't honor it much. It's the first day on the job, and I don't know about you in your last job, but the typical experience I think, of the first day on the job is you show up and the person at the reception desk is really happy to see you, but they actually thought you were coming in early next week. And so somebody will stop by and rescue you and take you to your cubicle, which is the monitor's there, but the CPU unit isn't hooked up and the person is late for a meeting. And so they kind of drop you off and they grab for an employee manual that's sitting in the cubicle from the last owner and say, well, here, why don't you look through this for a while? So you spend your morning reading expense reimbursement policy and assorted other technical things. Finally, somebody, right before lunch, takes pity on you and whisk you around the Office to meet 23 people who are themselves late for a meeting or late for lunch. And so you feel a little guilty for interrupting them. It's not an optimal example experience as a first day. And so what John Deere did is they said, let's design this so that it makes an impact on people. And you only have one first day on your job. So what they did is they assigned everybody a texting buddy. And so you've been texting back and forth this person, and they tell you how to get to the location. They tell you how to dress for the first day, but they show up and they hand you your favorite beverage. So caramel latte, or the chai latte or whatever it is that you've been talking about, because they work that into the text message. The monitors on the front wall have your name on it, say, welcome Chipheed. And as the person takes you to your cubicle, there's a banner that stretches up a little bit above the cubicle farm, a couple of feet above and so people can look across and see that there are new people on the floor and then stop by at their leisure. During the day, the monitor is set up, is hooked up, and it's showing beautiful pictures of screenshots of tractors. And you wouldn't think that there are beauty shots of tractors. You get a tractor out in the sunset, plowing the last few rows before the evening, and it's a beautiful thing. And it's scrolling by and you click the screensaver off and your first email is there from the CEO of John Deere. And he appears in a little video and he talks about the 175 year history of this company. This was a company that was founded by John Deere. He had a patent for a plow that looks pretty innocuous, but it was a plow that was less likely to foul up with roots as you're plowing the ground. And over on the side of the desk there's actually a little toy model of the plow. And so you look at this thing and say 175 years ago, John Deere got a patent on this because he saved farmers time and allowed them to plow more. And the CEO talks about the fact that this is a company that's devoted to helping the world have more food and more shelter. Those are two needs that we desperately need. And so he says, welcome to the most important work you'll ever do. And we hope you'll have a long history with John Deere. Your manager stops by right before lunch and says, I'd love to have lunch with you tomorrow, but today I'd like you to go out to lunch with a few of your peers. So you meet up with four or five of your peers at lunch. They talk about the projects that they're working on, why they think they're important. And so you think about the end of that day. Elevation, sensory experience. There's not a lot there. But you got your favorite beverage in the morning. You got the, the model of the plow that you can pick up and hold in your hand. You've got the beautiful shots of tractors. Lot more on pride and insight. I mean, you may not have known the history, the 175 year history of this company. You may not have thought about the fact that I'm doing work that I could be proud of because I'm helping people eat, I'm helping people have shelter over their heads. And connection is just off the charts. You've got your texting buddy, you've got the people that you meet at lunch. You've got a first email from the CEO, and that's a good first day. And in fact, the reaction was a lot of people that had been in the company before they started this program. It's like, can I quit so I can go back and have that as my first day? Now, my question to all of us is, why isn't every first day kind of like that?
O processo de reconhecer limites, mesmo quando a vida parece exigir sempre mais.
Depois de tantas histórias, aprendizados e pausas necessárias, o @interior_iza está de volta
