Onboarding New Faculty: A Physician Leader's Responsibility
The First 90 Days Make or Break a New Hire
If you're a physician leader responsible for onboarding new faculty, I want you to think about your own first week. Not your first week as a leader -- your first week as a faculty member. What do you remember? Chances are, the answer falls into one of two buckets: someone took the time to orient you, or nobody did and you figured it out on your own.
Most of us ended up in that second bucket. And most of us have unconsciously replicated that experience for the people we now hire.
Faculty onboarding in academic medicine is, in many departments, almost nonexistent. A new physician gets an email about parking, a brief tour of the clinic, a login to the EMR, and a "let me know if you have questions." Then we act surprised six months later when they're struggling with productivity, unclear on expectations, or already looking at other opportunities.
Why Onboarding Fails in Academic Medicine
The core problem is that most physician leaders treat onboarding as an administrative task. HR handles the paperwork. IT handles the credentials. The department coordinator schedules a few introductions. And the leader assumes the job is done.
But administrative onboarding and leadership onboarding are two completely different things. Administrative onboarding gets someone into the system. Leadership onboarding gets someone into the culture.
A 2017 study in Academic Medicine found that while most medical schools had some form of new faculty orientation, the programs varied enormously in scope, duration, and content. Many focused almost exclusively on logistics and compliance, with little attention paid to role expectations, mentorship connections, or long-term development planning. That's a structural gap, and it falls on the physician leader to fill it.
What Good Onboarding New Faculty Looks Like
If you want to build an onboarding process that actually retains and develops people, here's where to start:
Set expectations before day one. The offer letter is not a substitute for a real conversation about what success looks like in years one, three, and five. Before your new hire arrives, sit down and clarify:
- Clinical volume expectations and ramp-up timeline
- Research or scholarly activity benchmarks
- Teaching and service obligations
- Promotion timeline and criteria
If you can't articulate these clearly, that's a problem worth solving before the hire starts.
Assign a peer navigator. This isn't a formal mentor -- it's someone at a similar career stage who can answer the questions your new hire won't ask you. Where do people eat lunch? Which administrator actually gets things done? What are the unwritten rules of this department? Every organization has a shadow culture, and a peer navigator helps new faculty decode it fast.
Schedule structured check-ins. I recommend weekly one-on-ones for the first 90 days, then biweekly through the first year. These aren't status updates. They're conversations about how the new faculty member is adjusting, what's confusing, what support they need, and whether the role is matching what they were promised. Put them on the calendar. Protect them.
Introduce them to the network. One of the biggest predictors of faculty satisfaction is connectedness. Don't just introduce your new hire to the people they'll work with directly. Introduce them to collaborators across departments, to senior faculty who share their research interests, to the people who run the committees they'll eventually serve on. Relationships are infrastructure.
The Sports Analogy You Knew Was Coming
Think about what happens when a professional sports team drafts a top prospect. They don't hand them a playbook and say "good luck." They assign position coaches, build a development plan, and surround the new player with veterans who model how things work. They invest in that transition because the return is enormous.
Your new faculty hire is your draft pick. The question is whether you're developing them or just hoping they figure it out.
Faculty Onboarding Is a Leadership Responsibility
I want to be direct: if you hired someone and they fail in their first two years, that's at least partially on you. The physician leader who brings someone into a department and provides no structure, no guidance, and no connection has not done their job.
Faculty onboarding in academic medicine doesn't need to be elaborate. It needs to be intentional. Clear expectations, a peer connection, regular check-ins, and deliberate introductions. That's it. But it requires the leader to treat onboarding as a leadership function, not an administrative afterthought.
The departments I work with that retain faculty and build strong cultures almost always have one thing in common: their leaders take personal ownership of the onboarding experience.
If you'd like to learn more, contact us to schedule a time to chat.
