It was early 1990s and my parents decided to put me in a boarding school. At 11yrs of age, it was tough for me to adjust in a new place away from my family. In the 1st year, I was on my own with no friends and very limited interactions in and outside class. My grades were poor. Something changed.
My class teacher gave me a responsibility. I had to weekly update the class notice board with interesting snippets from the weeks’ newspapers - like fun-facts, ‘believe it or not’ etc. Remember, its 1990s - so no google, mobile, internet. The weekly summary had to be hand-written and in my own language. Updating the notice board every Monday gave me a sense of accomplishment. My interaction started with other kids of the class who shared interesting stories for me to put on the notice board. Looking at students reading what I had put boosted my confidence. My grades also started to improve.
This was an important lesson in life that I use in my teams for new joiners. Give them the notice board to update their snippets i.e. an opportunity to deliver something on the live product as soon as possible. This is the best you can do for any new joiner to get comfortable. Don’t wait for the person too long to get comfortable via trainings, reading documentations, dummy tasks etc. Give them something real and challenging, something that is actually required to be in the product now.
Higher expectation could lead to higher performance - Pygmalion Effect. It boosts their confidence, interactions with team increases, and they are no more seen as overheads. Of course, there has to be a mentor aligned - but now the mentoring happens on the real deliverable and not just on theoretical concepts or anticipated challenges etc.
The best place to start is by fixing a bug rather than building a new feature. This requires lot of reading and debugging of the existing code and flows. The fixes generally do not take huge time - so quick accomplishment. Requires higher interactions with other developers who built the feature.
Next time a person joins your team - remember the noticeboard - give an opportunity to put their snippet on the noticeboard!