Onboarding Effectively with Belbin

Helping New Employees Become Effective Team Members Faster

Recruiting the right person is only the beginning. Once someone joins, the real challenge of employee onboarding is helping them understand their role, build effective working relationships. To become a productive member of the team. A good induction process should cover the practical essentials. Systems, policies, objectives and responsibilities – but a successful employee onboarding process should go further.

New employees also need to understand how their team works, how they can contribute most effectively and where behavioural differences may arise. Most induction programmes and employee onboarding processes leave these questions to chance.

Belbin Team Roles can provide a practical framework for answering them effectively.

Why Onboarding Matters

The first few weeks and months can have a significant influence on how successfully someone integrates into an organisation.

Gallup research has found that “only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job onboarding new employees.” This suggests that the majority of organisations are leaving early onboarding and performance to chance.

New employees can have lots of questions:

What am I expected to deliver?
How does the organisation operate?
Who do I need to work with?
How are decisions really made?
What does my manager expect?
How can I demonstrate my value?
Where do I fit within this team?

Traditional induction and onboarding may answer the first few questions reasonably well.

However, the behavioural questions are usually left to chance.

From Job Fit to Team Fit

Recruitment often focuses on whether someone has the qualifications, experience and technical competence a role requires.

Once a new employee joins, another question becomes just as important: how will they contribute within the existing team?

Belbin distinguishes between someone’s functional role – their job title and responsibilities – and their Team Roles. The behavioural contributions they make when working with others.

Two people appointed to the same job can contribute in very different ways. An Engineer, HR Adviser, Accountant or Project Manager might all naturally:

Generate new ideas as a Plant
Build relationships and explore opportunities as a Resource Investigator
Bring people together as a Co-ordinator
Challenge the team and drive progress as a Shaper
Weigh up options objectively as a Monitor Evaluator
Support colleagues and ease friction as a Teamworker
Turn ideas into practical action as an Implementer
Maintain quality and accuracy as a Completer Finisher
Provide in-depth knowledge as a Specialist

Understanding these contributions helps a new employee see where they can add value more quickly. It also helps the team recognise what it has gained.

Onboarding with Belbin - The First 90 Days

To get the most from using Belbin during the onboarding process, it works best to look beyond this as a one-off induction activity. Instead, consider Belbin as a framework which can be utilised in a variety of ways across an employee’s first few months, with a different emphasis at each stage.

First 30 Days - Understand

Explore the individual’s Team Role strengths, the behavioural expectations of the role, the dynamics of the team and the relationships they will need to build.

The key objective at this stage is building understanding.

30 to 60 Days - Apply

Start to look at how effectively the employee is using their strengths in a working context.

Which strengths are already visible to colleagues?

What aspects of the role feel more natural?

Are there any elements that may require more conscious effort?

What else can you do to help?

60 to 90 Days - Review

Use workplace experience and the Observer feedback process to see how contributions have developed. Also identify any further support that may help.

By this point the conversation has moved beyond “Have you completed your induction checklist?”

It’s now about “How effectively are you contributing, and what will help you perform at your best?”

Using Belbin Before the Employee Starts

If Belbin has been used to support a recruitment and selection process, onboarding support can begin before day one.

A Belbin Job Profile Report identifies the behavioural contributions the position requires, using the Job Requirements Inventory completed by the manager or recruiter.

A Job Comparison Report can be used to compare the successful candidate’s profile alongside those requirements.

Rather than treating differences as weaknesses, the comparison highlights strengths the new employee can use immediately and areas where they may need some support.

Instead of disappearing into a recruitment archive, the Belbin assessments become a practical starting point for onboarding and personal development.

Introducing Belbin During Onboarding

For employees who have not completed Belbin before, the first couple of weeks in the role presents a natural opportunity.

The Belbin Individual (Self-Perception) Report sets out an employee’s preferred Team Roles, their strengths and their allowable weaknesses. The online questionnaire takes only around 10 to 15 minutes to complete.

Belbin’s real onboarding value is providing the basis for an early conversation with the manager:

What strengths do you bring to this team?
Which aspects of the role play to them, and which will require more conscious effort?
Which colleagues offer complementary strengths?

This makes onboarding a two-way conversation about contribution rather than a one-way transfer of information.

For apprentices, graduates and others at the start of their career, Belbin GetSet Reports offer a more accessible workbook-style alternative.

Helping the Team and Building Relationships

Onboarding is not solely about integrating the new employee.

A new person can also change a team’s behavioural dynamics, introducing strengths that were missing or creating Team Role overlap.

A Belbin Team Report makes this clearly visible. It helps the team think about how their new colleague can successfully contribute, rather than just expecting them to “fit in”.

Belbin also gives a shared, non-judgemental language to help understand behavioural differences.

A new Shaper joining the team may see an existing Monitor Evaluator colleague as overly cautious. While the Monitor Evaluator sees the Shaper as charging on towards a decision without due thought.

Neither is wrong: one provides drive and momentum, the other logic and rational judgement.

Understanding different Team Role combinations and types of differences at an early stage can help prevent these differences in style from being read as personality clashes.

A Belbin Working Relationship Report is particularly useful where two people must work closely from the start.

The same approach can help improve any buddy or mentor type arrangements. Typically, the Buddy or Mentor is matched by department or seniority alone.

Different Team Role styles can often make better pairings. An Implementer can help a Plant turn ideas into action. A Co-ordinator can help a technically strong employee develop things like delegation skills.

Supporting Managers with Onboarding

Managers may have their own preferred management or leadership style, which can differ from the style of a new recruit.

A Shaper manager may expect more rapid progress. A new Completer Finisher hire may need more time and space to check for accuracy.

A Plant manager may enjoy discussing ideas and possibilities. A new Implementer hire may want more clearly defined practical actions.

Understanding these differences in style can allow managers to adapt and improve the working relationship.

It can also prevent a common problem where there can be an unconscious tendency to judge or evaluate new employees by how closely they act or behave like ourselves.

We may think someone who approaches a task differently may be less capable. Simply because their method is unfamiliar or different to ours.

Belbin helps explain that different does not mean deficient.

Using Observer Assessments

What distinguishes Belbin from some other self-assessment based questionnaires is the inclusion of Observer Assessments.

The individual can identify their own preferences through the Self-Perception Inventory. Colleagues have the opportunity to describe the behaviours they actually observe.

A strong recommendation is that an Observer should be a colleague, not a friend or family member. Someone who has worked closely with the individual for at least three months. So observer feedback is best a few months into the onboarding process.

Four Observers is the minimum required to produce the observer version of the report with around six observers as the preferred maximum number recommended.

For a new employee this has some obvious implications.

Feedback from brand new colleagues is unlikely to be of much value in the first few weeks. Better to look at this after around three months once team members get to know the new colleague.

This can be integrated as a natural part of a 90-day review rather than an induction activity.

Comparing Observer feedback with Self-Perception can prompt useful questions.

Are colleagues seeing the strengths the employee expected to demonstrate?
Have others emerged?
Is the working environment allowing them to use their preferred Team Roles?

Team Roles Are Not Labels

Belbin is a shared language for understanding and discussing team contribution, not a way of categorising people.

There is a possible risk of misusing it during onboarding when first impressions are being formed.

Team Role preferences describe how someone tends to contribute. Not what they are capable of and behaviour can change depending on the role, team and experience.

Introducing a newly onboarded employee as “our new Plant” means they are being labelled rather than understood.

The Belbin framework should prompt questions and provide insight about how someone can contribute.

Other Onboarding Situations to Consider

Joining an established team

Long-standing teams often develop unwritten rules around communication, decision-making and managing internal conflict that members barely notice but a newcomer may find hard to navigate.

Adding a new team member may also take a team back through its development stages. So a period of team readjustment is normal and not necessarily a sign that the appointment has gone wrong.

Using a Belbin Team Report can give a more objective view of the existing team composition and how the new employee might impact that.

Remote and hybrid employees

When working in person, new employees can learn a great deal more about behavioural nuances through working with and observing colleagues. Who to approach, when to push or when to back off.

When working remotely, employees pick up far fewer behavioural cues. So understanding behavioural styles and preferences matters more. How the team communicates, how decisions are made, how individuals prefer to interact or receive feedback.

Internal promotions and transfers

Employees moving between teams may already know the organisation well. However, the behavioural demands of a new position and team can be very different.

For example, a Specialist promoted into a management role may suddenly need stronger Co-ordinator or Teamworker contributions.

Internal moves very rarely receive much by way formal induction or onboarding. This can be where the onboarding gap can be at its widest.

Common Onboarding Mistakes Belbin Can Help Address

Four key issues account for most poor onboarding:

Concentrating on operational processes but not informing how the team actually works
Assuming integration will happen naturally, when it can sometimes take months
Expecting the new employee to adapt to everything, when integration should be a two-way process
Treating onboarding as a one-week event rather than a long term requirement

How to Integrate Belbin into Onboarding in Practice

Belbin is straightforward to add to any existing programme. The Self-Perception Inventory takes around 10 to 15 minutes to complete online and the report is generated immediately.

Observer Assessments are sent by email at the appropriate time and only takes each colleague a few minutes.

Reports can be purchased individually, with no formal accreditation requirement or commitment.

Reports are very cost effective – current prices can be found on our Buy Belbin Reports page.

For organisations using Belbin regularly, it may be of benefit to have someone Belbin Accredited internally.

For an initial team session, a facilitated workshop can be highly practical.

Building Belbin into Onboarding - Simple 9 Stage Process

Recruitment – define the role’s behavioural requirements with a Job Profile Report.
Selection – use a Job Comparison Report to explore the candidate’s behavioural fit.
Pre-start – use that information to shape the onboarding plan.
Early onboarding – use the Individual Report and discuss strengths and allowable weaknesses.
Team integration – introduce the employee to the team’s dynamics with a Team Report.
Manager discussion – compare working styles and agree how to work together.
Buddy or mentor support – use Working Relationship Report insights to build stronger pairings.
Observer feedback – gather Observer Assessments after three months or more.
90-day review – discuss behavioural contribution and development needs alongside performance objectives.

Onboarding - Frequently Asked Questions

When should a new employee complete Belbin?

The Self-Perception Inventory can be completed at any point. During the first week or two usually work quite well. Early enough to shape the manager’s onboarding conversation, but late enough for the employee to get a proper sense of the role. Observer Assessments are different – observers really need to have worked closely with the individual for a recommended minimum of three months, so they are better looked at around the 90-day review rather than at induction stage.

Should new employee’s Belbin profile be shared with the team?

Belbin reports work best when they are shared. The real value lies in the understanding and subsequent conversations rather than the document itself. The individual should always see and discuss their own report first, and sharing should always be with their approval. A collective team session in which everyone’s contributions are discussed together can also be far more effective than simply circulating the new employee’s report.

Can we use Belbin before the employee’s start date?

Yes. If Belbin was used during the recruitment process, the Job Profile and Job Comparison Reports can be used to help inform the onboarding plan before day one.

What if the new employee has completed Belbin before?

Where a candidate has completed Belbin with a previous employer they may be able to bring that information with them, and Observer Assessments from former colleagues may be of benefit. However, we would always recommend gathering observer feedback from actual team colleagues. If someone has an existing Belbin report, it would be worth completing a new one with current observers in time. Team Role preferences are also not fixed and can shift with role, team and experience. Any profile more than say a couple years old, or one produced in a very different working context, is always worth refreshing. The earlier report can be a useful point of comparison for any behavioural change.

How many Observers does an employee need?

A minimum of four Observers is required to produce an Individual Report incorporating Observer feedback, and a maximum of six is normally recommended although more can be gathered if needed. Observers should ideally be direct working colleagues rather than friends or family members where possible, and should have worked closely with the individual for at least three months.

Does Belbin replace our existing onboarding process?

No. Belbin addresses the behavioural side of team integration and sits alongside any practical essentials relating to systems, policies, objectives and responsibilities. It should complement a good induction and onboarding process not replace it.

Want to Learn More?

Recruitment is a considerable investment, and onboarding should always be about more than getting someone through their first few weeks.

A successful recruitment process may get the right person through the door; a successful onboarding process should help them become a highly effective part of the team as soon as practical.

Belbin reports provide the behavioural bridge between the two.

Belbin Individual, Team, Job Profile, Job Comparison and Working Relationship Reports can be used at every stage of the employee journey, from recruitment through to leadership development.

We also support organisations with facilitated workshops, team sessions and accreditation.

Get in touch for a no-obligation discussion about how Belbin Team Roles could support your onboarding and team development approach.

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