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Onboarding in a Global Crisis

In 2019, HR tech company Hibob conducted a study that revealed an illuminating fact; 64% of new employees are less likely to feel welcome if they experience a poor onboarding process. Making things even more dire, only 12% of companies are seen as having positive, repeatable onboarding procedures. Having experienced onboarding in a wide swath of industries from financial compliance to specialized polymer sales, I can personally attest to these sentiments. I lead with this data to suggest that Dotted Line had their work cut out for them when bringing me on as an account manager just days before COVID-19 disrupted seemingly every normal business practice.

Onboarding can be a bear for an organization and take an emotional toll on new hires in normal circumstances. In novel and adverse environments like this, the task of joining a new team and assimilating into their culture seems herculean in nature. But with ample compassion, transparency, and vulnerability from Dotted Line, I have been a able to experience a truly complete and accepting onboarding process, while going through one of the most alarming crises my generation has witnessed.

I have now been with Dotted Line for 26 days, only five of which were spent in the office. Luckily, all five took place in the first week and allowed me to have some semblance of normalcy before it was stripped away with the growing severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated closures of out-of-home workplaces. Before my first week was in the books, it was determined that we would work from home for the next two weeks. Our imposed seclusion was then extended to four weeks. Then, upon the Governor’s recommendation, our target date to return to the office moved another 10 weeks, into mid-June.   It took a great amount of self-regulation and introspection for me to appreciate the difference between adapting to a new work environment and adapting to the new universal constraints of the pandemic. I continued battling these competing thoughts until I allowed myself to fully appreciate Dotted Line’s continued support for its employees and clients. This concept of unity and togetherness sparked a notion that the storm on the horizon presented an opportunity for our growing team, as opposed to an insurmountable problem. It helped me realize I wasn’t the only one trying to find my way in a new environment. Everyone was adopting new practices and learning together how to operate within this “new normal”.

That realization eased my remaining anxiety stemming from being the “new guy”. Accepting that each day was new for everyone, I no longer felt trepidation when suggesting a solution, offering advice, or volunteering to take on work. Where previously I may have tried to avoid stepping on toes, I was now eager to prove that I was willing and able to contribute, however I could.

Not every organization will be as accepting and encouraging as Dotted Line has been during this crisis, but what they were able to orchestrate and manufacture from a genuine care of their employees, clients, and community has been a true blessing for me. Every day since I began this role, I have taken time to appreciate how fortunate I am to have a job that can operate effectively while working from home and that I have a manager and team supportive of both my business practices and my personal and emotional health. The number of “check-ins” and assurances facilitated by management and the operations team at Dotted Line has been as comforting as it was unexpected.

As I look ahead to next week, next month, and even next year, I don’t know how the pandemic will affect our business, others’ businesses, or the world around us, but I know exactly how our team will approach each and every day – together, as a unit that cares deeply for each other, our clients, and our community. For that, I could not be more proud of being part of this great team and am extremely thankful for them and the opportunity they have afforded me amidst a very trying time I otherwise would have had to navigate on my own.

Why we must sharpen our communication skills during crisis

As marketers, we always talk about the power of words and the need for brands to choose them wisely. But as the world shifts into crisis mode with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, words and their consumer impact are heightened and being felt more intensely. And as operations leaders turn their focus towards implementing organizational shifts to enable remote workers, marketers will need to carry the load creating measured communications to their most important constituents – customers and business partners. But what does that mean for your organization and how should you go about building what is already a nuanced message remotely? We’ve come up with several considerations for marketers.

Know who you are

Organizational branding runs the gamut – anywhere from a light touch with a simple name, logo and mission to a more thoroughly expressed identity with brand guidelines that include set typography, color families and clearly defined values and employee behaviors. Regardless of what your organization has in place, the common thread among organizations that effectively communicate is that they know what they do well, and they have a set of core phrases they use consistently to convey their value. And those descriptors don’t stop at the what – the what is easy and often quite evident. Effective communicators focus on the why.

Think of the why as the roots system for an organization’s communications. When a wild wind (or pandemic) threatens to uproot the tree, its roots ground the message and serve the audience’s needs, reinforcing its value. Conversely, when we stray from what the audience needs and expects, the roots are unearthed and the message is more likely to be lost, because we didn’t provide that value.

Contextualize but Stay True to Who You Are

As COVID-19 expands indiscriminately, we are all feeling its impact. But simply because we’re all experiencing the same event doesn’t make us all experts. As organizations begin to contextualize their brand message for the current crisis and its impact on priority audiences, remember to stick to what you know, the areas where you excel and the information your audience has come to expect from you.

For instance, if you are a consumer brand that produces cleaning supplies, stick to your knowledge of the product and your organization’s why. Straying to related but tangential topics, for instance human tendencies surrounding hoarding of cleaning products in times of crisis, is not part of your wheelhouse and has the potential to fall flat, or even worse disappoint your audience. Preach what you know and lean into that…but try to avoid overstepping. It’s a fine line.

As you begin to find that fine line for your organization, be aware of your consumers’ sensitivity as they work through their own anxiety and figure out their new normal. While humor is oftentimes an incredibly effective tool, at least for the immediate future, it should be used with great care. Also, bear in mind that delivery is central to whether a joke lands or falls flat. It’s hard to show inflection through the written word and that may very well dampen your delivery, or worse yet, offend your audience.

Get Internal Alignment

Once you’ve reexamined your areas of excellence and the expectations of your audience, take the necessary time to socialize your thinking with senior leadership. Various key roles – the CEO, the COO, your people officers – will process this event from a different lens, so it’s helpful to collaborate and understanding the problem and its most affected audiences from various perspectives. After that exercise, develop a simple, focused message that reiterates your why, bridges the gap on how that may change during this crisis and identifies the means by which your audience can communicate with you in this new normal. Circle back with your team to ensure you’ve hit on the key messages, and then you’re ready for an external audience.

Lend a Human Element

There are several funny memes and a piece from the NY Times that talk about how extroverts are struggling with the isolation of social distancing. And while they’re made in jest to help lighten the mood during these trying times, the message is important. We will NEED each other in order to get through this mess. And while that won’t be face to face for quite some time, brands owe it to themselves and their audience to take this time to develop real relationships and create ways in which to connect in meaningful ways. That can be in the form of humanizing the people from your organization – giving a face to a voice people hear on a regular basis – or creating digital opportunities to operate as a community. Not only will these events strengthen your connection with your customers, but it will provide a real benefit to their peace of mind, something we can all use a little help with.

Organizations are still in the early days of navigating what it means to operate in a COVID-19 era. But as we turn the page on a second week of working from home, and prepare for what could be several more weeks of a digital-first interactions, it’s critical that we spend the time now, if we haven’t already done so, to make sure we communicate with care and lead with the needs of our audience, first and foremost.

From Entrepreneur to Enterprise

Tory Burch Fellows Presentation Collage

The Challenge

Dotted Line Collaborations spends every waking hour helping clients achieve their business goals through creative marketing. But when we made the finals of the esteemed Tory Burch Foundation Fellowship, we had to practice what we preach. With only 24 days to gather more votes than the other finalists, our Dotted Line team needed its own campaign to raise awareness about the Fellowship and encourage as many friends, fans, and strangers alike to vote. And do it in a way that would make the Tory Burch Foundation take note of our nimble and creative team.

The Solution

The solution started with our core strength: collaboration. We knew that we needed to leverage the support of all our connections. With an overarching campaign idea of supporting women in business, we came up with easy and engaging ways to remind people to vote for us while raising awareness around female entrepreneurship. The campaign didn’t focus solely on DLC — we highlighted inspiring female leaders from the Richmond region to create mutually beneficial buzz around the Fellowship and its mission of empowering female business owners.

By the end of the three weeks, we had done an astounding amount of marketing, including 2 local press features, an event with over 80 attendees at Quirk Hotel, a shout out from the nationally recognized 3% Conference, and over 185 shares on Facebook. Our message reached over 5,000 people, drove 1,400 new visitors to our website, and led to over 3,000 votes in the competition.

Best of all, we won! As a Tory Burch Fellow, our CEO, Lauren Sweeney, won a year-long fellowship full of resources and education, a $10,000 grant, and a chance to pitch for $100,000 investment from the Foundation. All proof that creativity and collaboration can pay off in remarkable ways.