Auto Groups Make New Hires Feel At Home On Day One

In my third year in college I was elected as the general secretary of the creative activities club. Once i was elected, I automatically was included in multiple student committees, invited to the director's annual dinner, the deans monthly meetings and so on. I was instantly part of all the right groups, met the right people and had a clear idea what is expected of me. All this happened without any specific effort from my part and without any significant effort from the President of the student's union. My university had a well oiled policy of introducing the new student secretaries to the right people and the right activities at the right time. I guess Universities have a lot of experience in welcoming new people and making them feel at home.

Unfortunately most business organizations today lack even the very basic policies and tools to on-board new employees, transferred employees and relocated employees. It is particularly pathetic when there is a merger or an acquisition.

SAP Jam has a seldom discussed feature called Auto Groups. This simple, yet powerful feature in the Enterprise edition of SAP Jam automatically adds employees old and new to select groups based on policies set by company administrators.

Auto Groups automatically adds new hires and transferred employees to select groups and makes them feel at home

The moment I say policy you may think that this is a cumbersome activity that will take a long time to implement and will cost a lot in consulting fees. That is not the case. I am one of the several company administrators of Jam at SAP. I have done this myself. It is a point and click activity that takes less than 5 minutes to complete. Administrators can test the waters with a few auto groups to check how it works for them before adding more groups.

For example a company administrator can create a group for people who were hired in the past 90 days in Palo Alto. Administrators can create any number of groups. The policies can be as open or as regulated as an organization wants it to be. I believe this is a very powerful feature that CIOs and HR leaders are going to love. It is going to empower people and make organizations more effective. 

After I posted this my colleague @jameslkelley shared his thoughts about how auto groups helped him when he came on board.