When People Come Back to the Office: A Learning Leader's Guide to Reboarding

Reboarding is short for re-onboarding, and in case you missed the memo, this new trend is worth understanding and acting on. Like onboarding, it includes activities that help set people up for success—specifically when they rejoin an organization or return to the workplace. As a learning leader, you likely have a role in planning and delivering onboarding. Your role in reboarding should be even larger and more prominent.

When Should Reboarding Occur?

Reboarding is appropriate in at least four situations. You want to deploy reboarding when:

1. People return to work after taking a long-term leave (such as parental or sabbatical leave).

2. You rehire people who used to work for your organization.

3. You invite those who have retired to come back as contractors.

4. You reopen your workplace after an extended period of remote work (even if employees don’t return to the office on a full-time basis).

That final bullet—returning to the workplace—has made reboarding a more important and timely skill for organizations to undertake in today’s environment.

Why Is Reboarding Important?

Effective reboarding can help people become more proficient and productive while reconnecting with the organization or team’s people, culture, and purpose. Let’s examine these reasons more closely:

• Productivity_—_If employees have been away from an organization or the physical workplace, procedures, policies, and protocols likely changed while they were gone. Even if things somehow haven’t changed, people will have forgotten details. When employees believe they are up to speed, they are more confident, which allows productivity to ramp up more quickly. There may also be new safety measures, and there are likely aspects specific to your organization’s return to the workplace that must be communicated.

• Connection_—_When people rejoin your team or return to the office, they want to know how they fit in, who they will be working with, and what to expect from the changed environment and the culture. As a learning professional, chances are one of your chief concerns is employee engagement, and effective reboarding can boost engagement quickly and tangibly.

What Can We Learn From Onboarding?

Since reboarding is an outgrowth of onboarding, many of your organization’s onboarding techniques can be strategically repurposed. Of course, if your organization thinks of onboarding as filling out forms and outfitting people with their technology, there might not be much carryover. But if your organization has worked to ensure onboarding supports new employees’ emotional and task needs, there is likely much you can learn from and reuse in your reboarding efforts.

Spend some time considering what works in your onboarding—from both a content and process perspective. If there is content you want to be part of reboarding, flag it. Perhaps more importantly, look at how you conduct onboarding. For example, if you have a buddy or peer process that you use in onboarding that works, ask yourself how you can apply that in reboarding. Do you have specific learning solutions or platforms that are successful? Deploy those.

In short, while reboarding isn’t the same as onboarding, you likely don’t need to reinvent everything. Instead, find what works and replicate it.

Consider the 3 Cs

In my new book with co-author Wayne Turmel, The Long-Distance Team, we introduce a framework—the 3C Model—to help design a team or create a culture. As you reboard employees to your team or workplace, these three Cs can also help you design your reboarding:

1. Communication. What are the communication needs, approaches, methods, and technologies that will be used on the team and in the workplace? Specifically, how should communication be different on days in versus out of the office for those who work in a hybrid manner?

2. Collaboration. What are the expectations for collaboration within the organization? Is collaboration seen only as a synchronous event (in a meeting) or can technology support it? When do we meet and why, and—if we are working in a hybrid manner—do we plan meetings more on the days we are face-to-face, or does it not matter?

3. Cohesion. Organizational charts, time, and space don’t solely define work and working relationships. While you may want to discuss org charts in reboarding, you must also discuss factors like relationships, accountability, relatedness, inclusion, and more.

As a learning professional, when you consider these three dimensions, you will likely find tangible ways to support reboarding on both the skill set and mindset front.

Setting Clear Expectations: A Guide to Successful Reboarding

A significant theme of successful reboarding is helping people understand what success means today, on this team, in this work environment. If we want people to be successful, they need to know what success looks like. That means that the expectations of the what, why, and how of the work must be clear. To get there, three things must be true:

1. Expectations must be known.

2. Expectations must be successfully shared.

3. Expectations must be understood and applied.

As a learning leader, you can help make all those things happen—in the formal reboarding process and beyond. Specifically, bring your consulting hat to the project and ensure expectations are consistent and clear. Ask questions like:

• What are the specific expectations around communication, collaboration, and cohesion?

• Are these expectations shared across all teams? If not, do they belong in organizational reboarding or are they part of the individual leader’s role?

• If people achieve these expectations consistently, will they be—and be seen as—successful? If not, what must be added?

Beyond the context of the reboarding programming, are your organization’s leaders prepared to share and coach to these expectations and set more specific job expectations? While we in learning and development may see this as a basic leadership skill set, it is often lacking. Your reboarding initiative may allow you to support and shore up this critical leadership skill in your organization through various interventions.

Reboarding Is a Process

As a learning leader, you know that reboarding must be more than a singular event to be most effective. Here are some other ways you and your team can bring your expertise to strengthen the success of reboarding efforts:

• Think of reboarding as a skill-building opportunity. Use your platforms, technologies, and learning expertise to bolster the skills of those being reboarded and the rest of the team during this window.

• Encourage peer networks to form and grow as a part of reboarding. Consider processes that will help make that happen.

• Connect reboarding efforts to culture. Since culture is how we do things here, the feel and messaging of the reboarding process must match your desired culture in tone and approach. If it doesn’t, you are shifting the culture—perhaps in ways you don’t want or intend. Making culture meaningful to your reboarding could be your most important and lasting impact on these processes.

Reboarding might already be on your list of initiatives for the year, or perhaps you are adding it because you’ve read this article. Either way, don’t see it as yet another project. Instead, see it as a powerful way to use the expertise and perspective of learning and development to create real, powerful business results.

When you do, you will create better reboarding processes, give rise to more effective and engaged team members, and produce a real difference for your organization.

Read more from Talent Development Leader.