4. Onboarding Your New Faculty Member

Onboarding is not the same as orientation.  However, orientation is part of the onboarding process. Orientation is often a single session focusing on policies and procedures, benefits, and a brief overview of resources. Onboarding is an ongoing range of activities that last through at least the first 90 days of employments.

Onboarding is the process of integrating your new faculty member into your school and USC cultures.  There are established best practices and research shows the first 90 days are critical. Onboarding is directly related to retention for diverse faculty.

Onboarding essential practices:

1. Introductions
2. Supports
3. Communicate

Introductions

Consider the best way to introduce your new faculty member to your school. Perhaps welcome activities with different faculty, staff, and students that facilitate gaining knowledge of the school, university, or Los Angeles cultures. Think about the broad number of school and university activities (i.e. sporting events, arts, professional development opportunities). Connect your new faculty member to USC’s employee resource groups. 

Supports

1. Mentorship: Connect your new faculty member with a mentor. For minoritized individuals it may be more important to connect them with someone with similar social identities on the same track even if they are in another school. 
2. Resources:
   1. National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD): USC has an institutional membership and faculty can access trainings and support programs. NCFDD has been shown to support tenure and retention for faculty from marginalized identity groups
3. Be mindful of the “minority tax”. This occurs when a diverse individual is the only one in school or one of few from their social identity groups. Typically, they will be over volunteered for DEI initiatives and committees to increase the diversity of those memberships. Minoritized students will seek them out and they may be asked to mentor a high number of students. Protect your faculty member’s time with appropriate load distributions and reward this work through your merit process.

Communicate

1. Create regular check in opportunities (at minimum these should occur monthly)
2. Be open to feedback