The problem

Onboarding is more than just a formality – it’s the cornerstone of new staff’s effectiveness, engagement, and retention. Orienting new staff to the many documents, websites, procedures, and forms is a critical task. Yet, this crucial process often lacks consistency and structure, handled in an ad-hoc manner across various teams and departments.

Few libraries have the time, resources, or tools for proper onboarding. This leads to varied experiences and expectations for new staff within the same organization.

Moreover, as libraries evolve, current staff also need re-onboarding to align with shifting priorities and workflows. A need often overlooked in the hustle of daily operations.

The solution

Skilltype introduces a harmonious and systematic approach to onboarding, tailored for library HR leaders and supervisors for early success.

Each library can create a Skilltype Team for new hires, streamlining the sharing of essential resources like strategic plans, staff manuals, and recordings of all-hands meetings. This approach ensures a unified introduction to the organization’s vision, mission, and values. Each Team’s roster provides a list of recently hired staff with links to their profiles. As a result, relationship-building and ongoing collaboration are promoted.

Once an organization sets up a Team for new hires and shares a Training List of key information, additional new hires can be added to the Team as they arrive and receive access to the Training List of core resources.  When new articles, documents, or procedures are added to a Training List for new hires, staff will be notified through email and Skilltype notifications. Instead of onboarding by providing an overwhelming amount of information in their first few days or weeks Skilltype Teams and Training Lists can extend onboarding across manageable weeks or months.   

Each new staff member’s Skilltype profile populates the library’s Talent Audit with skills that recent hires add to the organization. When the capabilities of newly arriving staff are visible through each library’s Directory or the leadership view of the Talent Audit, it is possible to involve new hires in critical projects and meaningful work early in their tenure so they can make an impact and remain engaged. 

A similar approach can be used for continuous staff onboarding by creating Teams and Training Lists. This helps share new priorities, processes, or workflows, supporting adaptation to change and keeping everyone aligned.