January 22, 2009
Making a Good First Impression
Leave it to my friend and colleague, Rachel Murillo, our Editorial Director, to compete with Tuesday’s presidential inauguration for a bit of publicity. If you know Rachel or have seen her in the past few months, you would know that Rachel was pregnant with her first child. Rachel went into labor on Tuesday and we are all waiting anxiously for news about the arrival of her new baby. While Rachel enjoys some time with her newborn (and gets very little sleep) during the next couple of months, I will be taking over her blogs. Below is my blog for the day.
Making a Good First Impression
We form opinions about people the first time we meet them. We even form opinions about people we have never met! This is why it’s worthwhile to make every first impression positive and memorable. You may be thinking, “What do first impressions have to do with equity compensation?” They do, and I’ll explain here why.
Most companies provide some sort of introductory training or orientation for their new employees. This new hire orientation is your opportunity to create a favorable first impression of your department, set the tone for the type of service these folks can expect to receive from you and your department, and get new employees excited about your company’s equity compensation program(s). Having a representative from your Human Resources department deliver a stack of stock plan documents to your new hire employees during orientation is not going to cut it when it comes to welcoming a new employee to your organization and getting them familiar with what they need to know about your company’s stock programs.
Key Content
Instead, a thoughtful and effective new-hire orientation program should include and cover several things:
-
Prior to orientation, consider sending an agenda with the employee’s offer letter to outline the topics you will be covering during your part of the new hire orientation.
- Come armed to this orientation with a PowerPoint presentation highlighting why your company’s stock plan programs are innovative and desirable.
- Be sure to describe unfamiliar concepts and/or terms in your presentation, i.e., restricted stock versus restricted stock units.
- Call attention to important critical dates, i.e., the next opportunity for enrollment in your company’s ESPP.
- Share important contact information, i.e., service provider contacts.
- Additional materials you might provide during this orientation include a list of frequently asked stock plan questions, program summaries and/or enrollment forms with samples on how to complete these documents.
Words of Wisdom
Have some fun with this process, but don’t overwhelm people. In my experience, one of the more common complaints about new hire orientation is that it is overwhelming or boring. An effective orientation program (or lack of it) will make a significant impact on your company’s new hires. Ask yourself, “what impression and impact do I want to make on new employees their first day,” and remember that an important aspect of any equity-based compensation program is the manner in which the program and its benefits are communicated to employees. Don’t discount the importance of your company’s new hire orientation; instead take full advantage of this occasion. You have just one chance to make a good first impression so make it count
PS. Did I mention that much of the content you will want to create a brilliant equity-related presentation and articulate difficult concepts during your part of the new hire orientation can be found on Naspp.com in the Prospectus/Plan Brochures/Other Communications Material section of our Document Library? Access to this information is only available to members; be sure your membership is current so you can validate the content provided in your part of the new hire orientation. And we’re always looking for new submissions–if you’ve created something innovative for your new-hire presentations, please send it along so we can share it with your fellow NASPP members.