The 4 C’s of Onboarding

Achieve a Hitch-Free Integration into a New Company

Your onboarding is for you career with an organisation what a foundation is to a large building. An effective and strategic onboarding process is the bedrock of a successful and rewarding employee lifecycle. And in order for an onboarding process to achieve these objectives, it needs to be built on the 4 C’s of onboarding.

We are going to focus this article on the 4C’s of onboarding. Our discussion will touch on each of the Cs, as key pillars for your success in a new job. Thus, you will discover how each pillar – compliance, clarification, culture, and connection – enhances the success of the employee onboarding campaign.

What Are the 4 C’s of Onboarding?

The term 4 C’s of Onboarding was coined by Dr. Tayla Bauer, award-winning teacher and researcher. The 4 C’s of Onboarding framework stands for Compliance, Clarification, Culture, and Connection. 

Dr. Bauer has conducted extensive research on relationships at work. More specifically, her research has touched on the areas of new-hire onboarding, recruitment, selection, overqualification, mentoring and leadership. Thus, her extensive research has brought to light what new employees need when starting a new job. Regardless if we are talking about hourly workers, or new managers onboarding, all new hires need to “adjust to social and performance aspects of their jobs quickly and smoothly.”

Thus, the 4 C’s Onboarding framework is based on the idea of onboarding as a highly complex process. Additionally, it is a process that is extremely meaningful for a new job. This approach to onboarding moves away from single orientation events. The latter approach is highly dependent on signing paperwork and reading documentation. Instead, the 4 C’s onboarding framework focuses on both professional and socio-cultural integration.

The 4C’s of Onboarding

As mentioned above, 4C’s of onboarding refer to the four pillars of: Compliance, Clarification, Culture, and Connection. So let’s review each of the four pillars 4C’s of onboarding.

Compliance

As a part of the four C’s of onboarding, compliance activities focus on the benefits, legal and policy-related roles, and regulations. During the compliance phase, you receive resources and information that will explain benefits plan options. This includes, for example, healthcare, retirement, paid time-off etc.

Also, you get to learn about the basic ethics of the organisation and fill out the necessary paperwork. Also, the compliance focus ensures that you understand the required safety procedures of the organisation. This helps guard against accidents while undertaking your jobs tasks and assignments. These safety procedures also refer to data safety, for example. You need to be aware of various cyber risk and phishing attacks and ensure data integrity. 

Clarification

As an element of onboarding 4C, clarification helps the newly employed workers understand their roles and responsibilities. Clarification activities include describing upcoming projects that you will be involved actively in. 

Also, you will discuss with your manager about your job description, role, and the key performance expectations from day 1. (You can read more about employee onboarding metrics here.)

Furthermore, during the clarification stage of the 4 C’s onboarding, you will be introduced to the work tools such as application software. Clarification also involves you learning about the company’s organisational chart and procedural manual. All of this is meant to enhance your understanding of the company’s mode of operation.

Culture

Culture is another vital aspect of the 4 C’s of onboarding. The culture pillar focuses on providing you with a sense of organisational norms. Culture is the values, mission, vision, belief systems, attitudes, and assumptions the workers in a company share.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos and author of the book Delivering Happiness, reflects on the role of company culture for talent management. He especially focuses on recruitment and onboarding. “Our number one priority is company culture. Our whole belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff like delivering great customer service or building a long-term enduring brand will just happen naturally on its own.” He goes on to add some further insights on the value of having a work environment that fosters friendships at work. “When people are in that environment [where their creativity shines and where true friendships are formed], that’s when the passion comes out and that’s really what’s driven a lot of our growth over the years.”

Culture Says It All about a Company

Without mincing words, culture says it all about a company. Thus, for a proper integration into a company, you must truly understand its culture. Culture aids you in knowing the core mission and value statement that explain the existence of the company. 

You can quickly get to know your company’s mission and vision statement on its website. Additionally, you gather more information from the introductory videos sent to you after accepting the job offer. When you understand the culture of your new employer, you can start feeling like you contribute to a shared mission and vision. This will help you get to speed on time and achieve optimum job performance within a short time.

A positive workplace culture boosts teamwork, raises morale, increases productivity and efficiency, and enhances the retention of the employees.

Connection

An adage says “no man is an island.” And, as a new hire of an organisation, you must build connections with the other company members. You are not on your own, you are becoming a part of something larger than you. 

Connection brings about the synergy that aids team members work together and achieve goals. Thus it is essential for any onboarding implementation to pay attention to the connection pillar of 4 C’s onboarding. By doing so, the new hires will find it easy to establish a meaningful relationship with the company and perform better on their job.

Activities belonging to the connection pillar of the 4 C’s of onboarding, can be carried out together with an onboarding buddy. The role of the buddy is to help you build the proper connection with others. A buddy will, for example, put you through the channel of communication that is available in the organisation.

Hence, a buddy serves as a bridge in the communication gap between the newly employed workers and the existing workers of a company. Your buddy will be by your side till you achieve full cultural integration.

The 4C’s of Onboarding: Summing Up

In conclusion, the role of 4 C’s of onboarding in your success with a new organisation cannot be over-emphasised. When new employees are introduced to the company’s activities with the 4 C onboarding approach, they are assured of a hitch-free onboarding process. This will enhance the understanding of how to perform their roles and make them more motivated to work.

Additionally, the 4 C’s of onboarding framework assists new hires in understanding their purpose in the new workplace. This will also increases their satisfaction and productivity in the process.

With 4 C’s of onboarding, you have an effective structure that allows you to adjust to the social performance aspects of your jobs swiftly and smoothly as a new hire in a company.

Implement the 4 C’s of Onboarding Framework with a Software Solution

Additionally, with a digital tool like introdus, employee onboarding software, implementing a process based on the 4 C’s of onboarding framework is straightforward. You will enjoy an onboarding exercise that will resonate with you and save you unnecessary stress. No excessive paperwork, no useless documentation reading, no meaningless meetings. No social awkwardness, no feeling of being an outsider, no feeling of being out of space. 

Also, you can easily understand the cultural ethics of the organisation. In addition, the task of achieving the needed clarification of your job becomes easy, and at the same time, you have a deep understanding of the work tools. Finally, again, an onboarding process modelled on the 4c’s on onboarding will establish the proper connection between you and your co-workers through effective collaboration. 

We highly encourage you to check out our blog HR for more resources on Onboarding. For example, you will find the complimentary articles: Preboarding vs Onboarding and Employee Onboarding and Offboarding.