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Hey! Justin here, and welcome to Just Go Grind, a newsletter sharing the lessons, tactics, and stories of world-class founders! Today we’ve got a special guest post from Bill Kerr the founder and CEO of Athyna, and author of Open Source CEO, a weekly newsletter helping founders, investors, and leaders in tech outperform the competition.

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Traditionally successful with celebrities in apparel, beauty products, and CPG, they’re pioneering this approach for proprietary fitness software and hardware.

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🌴 LA Event Calendar

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The First Step to 93% Engagement by Bill Kerr, CEO of Athyna

Onboarding is all about setting expectations—understanding the culture, rhythms, and role expectations within your company. A phrase that sums it up well is, “How you do one thing is how you do everything.” It always comes to mind when considering the importance of onboarding new talent into our company.

Imagine you are a new hire, ready to go, super excited, starting a new chapter, a new life. And from the moment you step your foot in the door it goes wrong. No welcoming, no organization. Bad vibes overall. What are you going to think of your new life?

This is what we would call poor onboard, and today, the goal is to learn a few tricks so that you might be one step closer to avoiding such a disaster.

A quick note on why I am qualified to dive into this. I am founder and CEO at my startup Athyna—helping companies hire the best remote talent. And if there is one thing we do well, it’s culture. Onboarding being a big part of that. We’re proud to have a 93% engagement rate, which is pretty nice considering 80% is ‘excellent.’

So today, I’m sharing some unique elements we incorporate to craft what we think is the perfect onboarding experience. This is not the typical step-by-step guide but more of a breakdown of what worked for us.

1) Two weeks out

The onboarding journey starts well before the new hire’s first day. The final interview isn’t just about vetting the candidate; it’s your chance to pitch your company and the role. If possible, involve senior leaders, like the CEO, in these conversations.

While Deel were going through true hyper-scale their CEO, Alex, was still able to interview the first 500-700 people. “People follow people. If you are joining a company, it’s because you believe in the people building it, and how they see the world.”

At Athyna, I always join these calls to share our vision and culture, making sure candidates are excited and aligned with our mission. Plus, we coordinate which onboarding cohort the new hire will join, as we run onboarding cohorts every 4-5 weeks. This helps streamline the process and fosters a sense of community among new hires.

2) One week out

Once the offer has been made and accepted, don’t just sit back and wait for day one. This is your chance to be proactive. When a candidate signs on, they often experience a kind of ‘buyer’s remorse.’ It’s that nagging feeling you get after making a big purchase. You know the thoughts: “Was that the right decision?,” “Is it going to be worth the money?,” “What if it turns out to be a waste?”

The same thing happens when someone changes jobs. Even if their last job felt like chewing glass, at least it was familiar. And if they’re coming from a good company, they’re likely terrified of the unknown—terrified of you.

But there’s a simple and effective way to combat this and squash any new hire anxiety: I call it the Vibe Avalanche. Ideally, this avalanche of good vibes should happen as soon after signing as possible. That way, any hint of remorse is slammed square in the face before it even sneaks in the door. This changes the experience from one of anxiety to one of excitement.

Other things that we do at this stage include:

• Sending a welcome email with the start date, time, and other essential details.

• Providing access to the employee handbook and necessary forms, like tax forms and direct deposit information.

• Scheduling the first week’s orientation and training sessions.

• Ensuring they have access to all necessary systems and software.

• Assigning an onboarding buddy to help guide them through the initial days. Welcome email with start date, time, etc..

Note: Onboarding is important—here’s why

I think if you have already read this far, you know onboarding is important. Let’s cut through the noise though and show just how important it is:

• Retention: Glassdoor found that companies with a solid onboarding process see a 82% boost in new hire retention.

• Productivity: SHRM’s data indicates a potential 11.5% performance boost with effective onboarding. And, according to Harvard Business Review and Glassdoor, effective onboarding can lead to up to 80% higher productivity.

• Engagement: A Bamboo HR study found that new employees with positive onboarding experiences are 18x more committed to their employer.

Then we have Gallup, which reports that only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job with onboarding. This leaves a huge opportunity for improvement. And more importantly, an opportunity to outperform your competition.

3) Day one, minute one

When you start your journey at a new company, the first person you meet should be the boss—the leader of the organization. Whether it’s the founder, CEO, president, or other, this person should take a few minutes to personally welcome you. There’s something incredibly powerful about having this person be the first smiling face you see.

At Athyna, we do this on a Monday morning during a group call with all the newcomers. It’s the perfect way to kick off the week, making everyone feel valued and part of the team right from the start.

4) The rest of day one

After the warm welcome, it’s time to dive into setting clear expectations. This step is crucial and should start with HR detailing the onboarding process, followed by the manager reinforcing these points.

At Athyna, we use an onboarding hub built in Notion for each new member, and I can’t stress enough how important it is to have something like this. Our hub includes links to relevant policies and guides, the organizational structure, information about their team, team meetings, and an editable checklist for to-do tasks. This centralized resource ensures new hires have all the information they need at their fingertips.

It’s shocking to learn that 42% of HR professionals say that key company information is too scattered across different platforms and systems, making effective onboarding a challenge. Our onboarding hub addresses this issue by bringing everything together in one place.

By now, the new hire should have an onboarding buddy assigned and a call scheduled. This helps them know exactly where to go for information and who to ask if they need more help.

Other things to do at this point:

• Give a warm welcome and introduce the new hire to their team and key colleagues.

• Review job expectations, responsibilities, and performance metrics.

• Make sure all paperwork is completed.

5) Day two

On the second day of onboarding, we dive into what I believe is the most important part of the process: the Brand Story Session. Now, most companies will run sessions detailing sales, product, HR, and the rest of the standard playbook. Don’t get me wrong, those are crucial, but nothing beats the Brand Story Session.

This session is where we share the heart and soul of Athyna. It’s a detailed narrative of where we came from, where we are today, and where we’re heading. But it’s not just a dry recitation of facts; it’s sprinkled with fun, behind-the-scenes stories that you won’t find in any official documentation.

For example, here are some of the highlights I share during Athyna’s Brand Story Session:

• The original relationship of the co-founders.

• The book I was reading when I decided on the name Athyna.

• Why the co-founders left.

• How we lost 70% of our revenue during 3 weeks in COVID.

• And had days of runway to survive.

• The session we had to rebuild our values with the team.

• Why our motto is ‘What would Ned Stark do.’

• And much, much more.

When we first started crafting our onboarding sessions, I knew this one was key. Not from experience—I’ve never worked for a ‘company’ in my career—but from first principles. The feedback we get is phenomenal. The lights in people’s eyes change from the start of the session to the end. And the best part? No other company does this. Their failure is our opportunity.

💡 Note: if you are reading along and have any questions about how we do this at Athyna, reach out, I am happy to share.

6) Week one

While our process might look standard on the surface, we add our unique twist with a personal touch and continuous support to make new hires feel right at home. We run a few sessions to the new hires with each department, which is great for learning but also great for getting around and meeting colleagues from other departments.

I’d actually like to expand upon this as we continue to grow. Today it’s good, but I still think it can be improved.

Key Actions for Week One:

• Initial Check-Ins: Regularly touch base to answer any questions and address concerns.

• Hands-On Projects: Assign initial tasks to help new hires apply what they’ve learned right away.

These steps are crucial in ensuring our new team members feel supported and can hit the ground running.

7) Week four

As we wrap up the first month, it’s time to celebration! Not only do we get to acknowledge our new hires’ accomplishments, but we also set the stage for their next steps and gather some all-important feedback. Because just like anything in a startup, your culture should always be evolving. And part of that is your onboarding. Learn, test, iterate, improve.

Key Actions on Week 4:

• Performance Review: Schedule a review to discuss their progress, strengths, and areas for improvement.

• Gather Feedback: Collect feedback on the onboarding process. Remember, 55% of companies skip this step, but we know better. Feedback is gold!

By the end of the final week of onboarding you should not have just gotten people ready for work, but gotten them buzzing with positive vibes and ready to dive into month two with total enthusiasm. Culture, after all, is simply a shared way of doing something with passion.

Summary

Alright, that’s a wrap from me today! I hope these tips and tricks around onboarding have sparked some new ideas for you. You can also check out this article for more details on how we do things.

If you want to dive deeper or just have a chat, hit me up on LinkedIn and subscribe to my newsletter Open Source CEO. And if you’re looking to supercharge your hiring strategy with remote talent, you can reach out to us at Athyna here.

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Thanks for reading!

Best,

Justin

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P.P.S. Want to work with me 1 on 1?

P.P.P.S. Hiring? Check out the team at Athyna.