A WHOLE NEW WORLD
I had spent 35 years teaching, which required spending nights and weekends preparing so that I could actually do my job during contract hours. Then I spent five months intensely preparing for this new career. What I wasn’t prepared for was not having to prepare anything for the first day of work! I felt anxious the weekend before I started at the bank - not because I was nervous by any means. I was so excited to be a part of the team I had met during the interview process and the company that seemed to genuinely value every employee. I just realized I had never in my life gone to work without a great deal of preparation beforehand. Heck, I didn’t even need to pack a lunch!
The Onboarding Process
My hiring manager contacted me the week before I started to give me an idea of how my first 3 weeks would look. He also met with me via WebEx to make sure my equipment had arrived for my home office and to answer any questions I may have. There were no surprises when I logged on for my first official day on the job.
My manager had scheduled 1:1 meetings for me with each member of the team and sprinkled them throughout the first 3 weeks on my calendar. The purpose of each meet and greet was to get to know each team member on a personal level. I was a little concerned these would be awkward - sort of like being forced to make friends with the new kid in school. But there was nothing awkward about it. The first person I met was my Onboarding Buddy, who had been with the bank just over a year herself. She was super helpful, guiding me through all of my account setups and navigating the various bank platforms. By the end of our hour together, I knew she was a safe person to go to about any aspect of the job. Most of the meetings lasted the full hour, and I was able to find a connection with every person I met. They were each prepared to ask questions about me, my experience, my family, etc. The coolest part was that my manager took the entire orientation agenda and gave each team member a small piece of it to go over with me. By the end of the final meet and greet, I had completed the orientation agenda and felt like a welcome member of a close-knit team. My only other responsibilities in the first 3 weeks were to attend a weekly team standup meeting and complete 10-15 self-paced compliance trainings. My manager set up weekly 1:1 check-ins for us to make sure everything was going smoothly and to answer any questions that may have come up. Each time we met, he made a conscious effort to get to know me on a personal level. We chatted about our families, weekend plans, etc., which in hindsight was a great way to establish a foundation for building a trusted relationship.
The Monday starting my 3rd week on the job, I woke up to discover my work laptop wouldn’t turn on. I tried everything I could think of to get it working with no luck. I imagined my manager noticing I wasn’t online on Microsoft Teams and thinking I was AWOL. I couldn’t log into the bank network from my personal computer, so the only thing I could do was send him an email from my personal gmail account on my phone. He assured me I was fine and sent me the Help Desk phone number to call. After a lot of time with the extremely personable IT guy, it was determined my laptop had experienced a “catastrophic failure” and would need to be replaced. Unlike teaching, where you were handed a loaner or replacement laptop on the spot, in a remote position in the corporate world this involved certain protocols on the bank’s end and then priority shipping of the equipment. I was told to expect the new computer to be delivered on Thursday. My manager rescheduled the 1:1 meetings I would be missing and told me there really wasn’t anything I could do for work until the computer arrived. Three days of work with no way to work! I felt so guilty, but my manager said to relax and enjoy the downtime! I racked my brain for legitimate ways to spend my time. I suppose I could have taken a mini road trip or met friends for shopping, but the self-imposed guilt was too strong. I did shop for office furniture and catch up on a few chores, but I spent the majority of my 3 days on my personal computer learning from articles, podcasts, and tutorials. My laptop arrived Wednesday afternoon, so I was able to set up all of my accounts, files, etc. again and was ready to get back to work Thursday morning.
I had already completed all of the compliance training and met with the whole team, so my manager began assigning me to “maintenance” courses - existing courses that needed updating. This would give me a chance to learn the team’s protocol for courses from kickoff to launch without the pressure of designing a new learning solution. He was being careful not to overwhelm me with too many responsibilities right off. Of course, after 35 years in the classroom, I found the easy workload uncomfortable. Surely I should be working hard from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM! He encouraged me to relax and step away from the computer, go for a walk, or take care of whatever needed to be done - a seriously foreign situation for someone who had never even been able to use the bathroom when I needed to before! I felt guilty for at least a month when I stepped away from the computer to throw in a load of laundry, take a call from a family member, or walk to the mailbox and have a brief conversation with a neighbor walking by with her dog. Taking my lunch outside on the patio to enjoy the weather, I thought of my friends back at school and wished for this sense of peace for them too. I was always aware of the clock, making sure that my lunchtime never went past the 59-minute mark, and on days I commuted the 45 minutes to work from my Mom’s apartment and ran into traffic I worried I would be the last member of my team to log on in the morning. By the end of my first month, it was finally sinking in that my manager trusted me as a professional to use my time responsibly and had no intention of monitoring my every move. Can you imagine that?! You might think someone in my position might take advantage, but this newfound mutual respect for my manager and my teammates only made me want to work harder.
One thing I knew for sure was that this new world was exactly where I wanted to be!