Onboarding is critical to employee success at UEA, ensuring that our new employees feel welcome, build relationships, and immediately start to feel part of the organization. It is the first opportunity for our team to make sure that the new employee has the right tools, resources, and knowledge to be successful. With UEA’s focus on core values and strategic alignment, onboarding provides the employee time to learn about UEA’s vision, goals, and culture.
As a new employee joining the UEA electrical engineering team, I was excited to learn about UEA’s products, especially slip rings. Still, my training and onboarding process exceeded what I had initially expected.
In my first week, I met with the electrical engineering team, design techs, supply chain group, HR, finance group, hydraulics team, quality team, IT, customer service, and production leadership. It was crucial for me to see who was involved in making the company operate and meet the people I would be working with daily. I enjoyed talking with the leadership team on a personal level about our families and career future. Doing this eased the nerves of starting a new job. These conversations made me feel like I was a valued team member and increased my comfort level with my coworkers.
During my second week, I met with production department leads and all individual production team leads to see firsthand how our slip rings are manufactured. My hands-on training included riveting brush arms to the brushes, assisting in building a 6-inch bore slip ring, building a wire harness, and integrating a slip ring into a cable reel.
This process allowed me to observe each step in building a slip ring. I met with the people that do these jobs every day and learned what works best or does not work well, what struggles they had, and what I can do to improve the manufacturing process on my end. These experiences help me as an engineer to design new parts to make the assembly process smoother. Meeting the leaders and building these relationships also opened communication between departments, and I am confident in approaching any of the leads with questions.
In addition, I went into our engineering lab and tore down and built several units. This helped me learn how all the assembly parts fit together. I could visually discover how slip rings are made and how they could be improved in the future.
My onboarding process helped me learn from people who do the assembly daily. In addition, working closely with the operators helped establish a communication line early so that if questions arise, there is comfort between personnel. UEA allowed me to learn with hands-on experience, which I have not had in many engineering positions and greatly improved my comfort level with the product line. As an engineer, it’s nice not always to be tied to my desk. I am always willing to learn something new and continually work to improve our products for our customers.
