Progressive companies increasingly use onboarding methods borrowed from computer games. In older games, players often had to complete a long and sometimes difficult tutorial before the actual game began. Modern games teach people as part of the gameplay itself.
Game developers understood a simple rule: when users cannot learn how to play, they will stop playing—and they certainly will not pay for the experience. Employers face a similar challenge. When a new employee cannot understand how work is organized, the company may lose that person before they have a chance to become productive.
Fast and Gradual
Zero training and instant productivity are the dream of almost every manager and HR specialist. In practice, “zero training” usually means lowering entry requirements, reducing the amount of role-specific knowledge, and automating part of the work.
Rapid onboarding can also be built around the company’s existing information systems. The important measure is not whether training formally took place, but how quickly a person learns the company’s working environment and begins producing a useful result.
The following five levels describe a gradual path into a role.
Level 1: Press Start
The employee has just joined the company. At this point, the primary task is to teach the new character how to walk, jump, and interact with the world.
A person’s first experience with the company can shape their opinion of the job for a long time. When an employee cannot enter the working process, they may become disappointed, discouraged, and likely to leave.
During the first stage, the employee needs to learn:
- where to find tasks;
- whom to ask for help and where to find information;
- which reports must be prepared and who should receive them.
From a management perspective, this is still a chaotic stage. The employee may move rapidly between thoughts such as “Why did I come here?” and “I can fix everything right now.”
This stage should therefore be completed as quickly as possible. There is nothing worse than leaving a new employee alone with a giant corporate manual and their own thoughts. The company may produce a burned-out former employee before the person has even started.
Level 2: First Moves
The employee now knows where tasks are located, which reports are required, and where help can be found. The next step is to learn the company’s rules.
This can be done through simple tasks that reinforce procedures and standards while requiring only the basic skills the employee acquired at university, in professional courses, or through previous experience.
The employee becomes familiar with:
- the procedure for completing and closing tasks;
- business processes for approvals;
- the creation of standard requests.
In software development, new programmers may receive tasks such as correcting a label, fixing a spelling mistake, or making a minor interface adjustment. These tasks already provide value to the team and the product but create little risk if the employee makes a mistake.
In sales, the equivalent may be visiting a customer with a mentor and completing a sale with that person’s support. The employee sees how the basic sales process and deal closure work in practice.
In management terms, the employee begins acting according to rules. This may appear to contradict the common sequence in which task-based management comes before rules-based management. Common sense, however, suggests that before playing a game—or performing any work—a person should understand the rules and try operating within them.
There is a reason people are not allowed to begin work before learning internal procedures and safety requirements.
Level 3: Find the Rhythm
After learning how production processes work, the employee can begin performing full tasks.
Tasks arrive through the agreed channel, are processed according to company rules, include the required reporting, and are completed through the established procedure. In other words, the employee combines everything learned during the first two levels.
This is the point at which task-based management becomes appropriate. KPI, OKR, and other methods can be introduced. Employees become full participants in the team, take responsibility for tasks, and contribute to shared goals.
In development, these are complete tasks, although standard work still dominates. The algorithm or technical approach is already known; the employee mainly needs to implement it.
In sales, this is an independent sale from first contact through deal closure.
Task assignment and acceptance are best automated using task trackers or business process management systems. This makes life easier for both the employee and the manager: everything is stored in one place, and the history of each issue remains visible.
Many employees remain at this level until retirement. Their principle is simple: “If I was told to do it, I did it. If nobody told me, I did nothing.”
This model suits leaders with an authoritarian management style who believe that the manager should think while the employee should execute.
Level 4: All-Wheel Drive
The fourth level is not suitable for every employee or every company. Its usefulness depends on management style and the context of the work.
By now, the employee understands how to live in the company’s virtual world, which characters to interact with, and which quests must be completed to receive a reward.
The next skills are:
- finding alternative ways to solve a problem;
- making decisions independently;
- handling non-standard tasks.
This stage opens the path to management by objectives. The employee receives a goal but chooses the method of reaching it independently.
Rules remain important, but employees may deviate from them at their own risk when the situation requires it. The fourth stage represents a relationship of trust between the company and the employee. Managers and team leaders often operate at this level.
In software development, employees who reach this stage can design modules around customer needs, concentrating more on business functions than purely technical implementation.
In sales, an example could be deciding to grant a customer a discount in order to build a long-term relationship.
Level 5: Alt+Delete Control
The final level is management by values. Employees no longer need detailed goals and tasks because they understand why they are working, what will benefit the company, and what will not.
At this level, the company’s goals become more important than the employee’s immediate personal goals.
A paradox appears here. Company owners often want managers to accept responsibility and treat the business as if it were their own, but the same owners may be unwilling to trust those managers with serious decisions or delegate important work.
In software product development, employees at this level may be trusted to initiate new modules without waiting for a customer request, hold meetings with customers, and help define the future shape of the product.
In sales, the equivalent may be entering new markets or developing new categories of customers.
Reducing unnecessary control is only part of the solution. Companies can also:
- support employee initiatives;
- create individual development plans;
- support and assist with personal projects;
- offer stock options, shares, or another form of ownership participation.
Conclusion
Even a well-designed training model may produce mediocre results when the golden rule of sequence is ignored.
Ideally, a new employee should have regular meetings with HR and their manager. In practice, companies often pay less and less attention to these meetings over time.
This is why information systems such as BPM platforms are useful. They can define each onboarding stage, list the tasks within it, and link directly to the required documents—for example, materials stored in a corporate wiki.
Automation creates another major advantage: accumulated experience. When the company can see statistics and a conversion funnel between onboarding stages, it can identify where failures occur, where employees encounter the most negative experiences, and why motivated people leave.
The excuse “everyone already knows why” cannot improve a situation in the way facts and numbers can.
Perhaps many employees do not enjoy their work simply because nobody ever taught them how to play it.