imapMyTeam Blog

‘Say It Ain’t So, Joe’ – The Onboarding ‘Scandal’

In 1919 the Chicago White Sox were involved in a scandal of throwing the World Series. Legend has it that after the Grand Jury testimony regarding Shoeless Joe Jackson’s involvement, a bewildered young boy grabbed Shoeless Joe’s sleeve and implored of him to ‘say it ain’t so, Joe.’

I had that same reaction to a recent article in Chief Learning Officer (CLO) magazine about onboarding. Say it ain’t so!

Companies that are spending months and months searching for talent – at great cost – are short changing onboarding training once the employee is hired. A recent study by Mindflash  revealed the following:

Average time spent on corporate onboarding, including necessary skills training:

1979      100 Hours

1995      10 Hours
2015      30 Minutes


The author of the CLO article believes companies should shift their strategy to recruit for attitude and train for skill. Why – because schools curriculum's cannot keep pace with the change of what businesses require. Business would be better suited to focus on getting the right soft skills and do their own skill training to business need.

The Association for Talent Development agrees. They believe business should prioritize soft skills, interactive or people skills, because a new hires attitude and willingness to manage their midset or themselves is a better predictor of long term performance success than hard skills.

Regardless of where you stand in this debate, imapMyTeam® is a tool that helps you keep focused on the necessity of soft skills to get work done and delivers that information to you on a “just in time” basis.  

For you to be able to effectively support an employee throughout the onboarding process you need to have a relationship first. Building trust makes it easier to be effective in teaching/developing that person. You will find imapMyTeam® is also an excellent onboarding and trust building tool you can use collaboratively with others.

Haven’t thought to use imapMyTeam in a while? Say it ain’t so!