Onboarding — Creating the KONUX Community

Good chance is that we will all go through several job transitions in our life. Adjusting to a new company, a new team, a new role and culture can be super overwhelming and challenging. Onboarding is the process of helping new employees adapt to the new environment and position, preparing them to be successful in their new role, with a focus on culture, performance, and well-being. It ranges from understanding the company’s vision and mission, meeting your colleagues and interacting with the team, as well as learning the tools and resources and existing knowledge to best perform in the upcoming tasks.

Onboarding at KONUX is a community effort.

It starts in the lead up to signing the contract and ranges to the end of the probation period. You will receive a personalized email including expectations of the first week, KONUX’s history, our values and mission and administrative housekeeping. On the first day, you are welcomed by our Community Manager and presented with our sustainable KONUX Welcome Bag that matches our mission. You enjoy a coffee with your Team Lead. You meet every department lead in an onboarding session where they present their team’s purpose and function within KONUX. You receive welcome messages from our executive team, have coffee dates with Welcome Buddies, check-ins with the HR Business Partners and a welcome session with me. You are introduced to the company on the first morning, so by lunchtime everyone is approached and greeted by name. Our CEO also takes the new group of joiners out for lunch together to welcome you all, giving you the opportunity to ask some questions and get to know their approaches and motivations. Especially after the remote working years we have had, we want to put as much focus on integrating our new starters in the most present, engaging and welcoming way possible.

It is well known that if onboarding is not done well, the new employee will start feeling the impulse to leave within two months. At KONUX we make every effort to connect the onboarding sessions to purpose and show the newcomer that we want to reward the decision they made to join us. All these factors flow into our design of the onboarding process, however we also take great consideration from onboarding feedback received from recent new starters. We constantly try to adjust and update our onboarding experience according to suggestions we receive to suit the current phase of the company and our employees needs and wishes.

Thorough and well-structured onboarding lays the foundation of an employee’s productivity, engagement, and wellbeing.

Here at KONUX we want to be an organization of innovation and ingenuity, where amazing things are created by high-performers. From the start we need the tools and resources to be able to work, the knowledge of where to find our answers, the understanding of how our teams work cross-functionally and who to approach for what.

At the same time, we want everyone to gain understanding of our culture, our ways of working and KONUX’ little quirks and mannerisms to ensure that this is an environment they want to help shape and be a part of. Creating a solid relationship between the new joiner and the employer can help increase employee engagement, reduce employee turnover and quickly contribute to them being an active member performing towards company goals. Feeling welcomed, prepared and well integrated during your onboarding will increase employee satisfaction, organizational commitment as well as lower stress all relating to better employee wellbeing.

Throughout this the new starters need to feel a high sense of self-efficacy, to feel empowered and independent in their skills and understanding to autonomously drive their own tasks and projects. For this the onboarding needs a focus on offering role clarity, expectations and feedback from leads, empowering everyone to perform and grow.

I believe the people we have make it so special. Everyone is so dedicated and engaged in welcoming any newcomer, offering their support, answering any questions and running their onboarding sessions with them. Newcomers are immediately grabbed for a coffee, a game of ping pong, taken for lunch, invited to drinks or a fun evening. I was onboarded to KONUX during a time of 100% remote working and yet I felt a part of the team from the first day. I felt integrated into the company, even without all the resources and opportunities we have of onboarding in a beautiful office in person today and I do credit that to our wonderful people and the open and keen talents.

Relocating is never easy and relocating to Munich is a special little adventure. For anyone who has tried tackling German bureaucracy or finding a flat in Munich in recent years will be able to relate. KONUX offers a relocation budget to anyone relocating that can be used to help cover some of the costs involved in making a move like this. We have also partnered with relocation consultants who help our talents from beginning to end with their VISA processes, registrations, appointment bookings and documentation, as well as helping them with the temporary and permanent accommodation search. Starting a new job is a big change already – adding a move to a different country or continent, learning a new language and understanding a new culture can be overwhelming. So we keep trying to improve our processes and make this transition for our talents as smooth as possible. Coming up next is our own KONUX Relocation Guide for Munich, which will hopefully help new joiners to integrate and get to know us Germans and our ways of life.

Thorough and effective onboarding leads to higher performance levels and general productivity. You can contribute to the company’s successes and goals much more quickly if you have all the tools, information and resources to succeed in your job. From the first day, there is a close alignment between the lead and the new starters on role expectations and goal-setting. Focusing on this from the start is a smooth transition into becoming part of and owning your own OKRs. During this time there are regular check-ins to see what further training is needed. We offer a Learning and Development Budget that can be used from the first moment for personal and career development. During the probation period feedback is also collected from peers and stakeholders to further empower the new starters to develop their skills and knowledge. All these aspects are crucial in creating a space for high performance and growth for the new starter.

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