Onboarding a New Accountant: Lessons Learned from Philmont Scout Ranch

The onboarding process is one of the most important experiences that your new accountant will have at your company. It’s a way for you to welcome them with open arms as a valued new member of your organization’s culture.

The crew at Philmont.

​If done well, your new hires will feel important, supported, and immediately motivated to do their best work for you and your organization. When left as an afterthought, however, new employees may end up feeling undervalued, unsupported, or even ostracized by the rest of your team.
​
Surprisingly, one of the best experiences that I’ve had with onboarding came from a backpacking trip with my daughter. These are the critical lessons I can take away from my experience.

Onboarding, Culture and Philmont Scout Ranch
Philmont Scout Ranch is outside of Cimmaron, NM. It is the oldest Boy Scouts of America (Scouts BSA) high adventure camp. It sits on over 130,000 acres of New Mexican wilderness. Philmont has welcomed over 1 million visitors to date, with over 20,000 scouts and advisors visiting every summer. They have over 1,000 employees to help make this an adventure of a lifetime for many of those scouts (and adults).

With so many new visitors travelling through their backcountry, Philmont must have an effective and consistent onboarding process in place. It is this process that has kept Philmont and its culture as an enduring legacy since 1939. Here’s how it works:

Arrival
Like any new team member, you are excited to be on board, but aren’t quite sure where you are supposed to be or what you are supposed to be doing. In most cases, you have come by plane and then a very long bus ride to get dropped off at the welcome center. There, a staff member welcomes you and asks your crew to form a pack line.

You are then introduced to your Ranger, who will be your mentor at Philmont and accompany your crew for the first two days in the backcountry. They give you a basic orientation, answer any immediate questions, and arrange to meet you at the mess hall for dinner. After you get your gear all put away at the tent city, there is some downtime for scouts to visit the trading post to buy ice cream and soda.

Key Onboarding Takeaways: Constant communication is key for new employees. On their first day, they need some directions to navigate the office and what they should be doing (usually hiring paperwork). However, don’t overwhelm them on their first day with an 8-hour orientation. Allow some downtime for them to digest information, relax and explore, and informally get to know the rest of your team. And, for goodness’ sake, arrange for one or more team members to take them out to lunch!

The Day Before Heading Out
The morning before heading out, you’ll meet your Ranger at the mess hall for breakfast. Afterwards, they take you on a tour of basecamp and get the required stops out of the way: logistics/registration, medical pre-check, equipment and initial food pickup, and facilities like the post office and lockers.

After lunch, they meet you in your tent cabins, and have you completely empty your packs to determine what you have that you really need and what may be unnecessary to bring (for example, a 5 lb. bag of M&M’s).
The night is capped off with a welcome campfire program, where they introduce you to the history of northern New Mexico, Philmont, and the scouting legacy. The evening ends like every campfire program with the Philmont hymn. This, like the Philmont prayer before meals, is another reinforcement of the Philmont culture.

Key Onboarding Takeaways: Onboarding requires a few core components to succeed. You need to educate your new team members on the policies and procedures of your organization. But, in order to instill a sense of belonging, you should also teach them some of the company lore that exists below the surface. Stories are a great way to communicate your culture. From the history to current traditions – sharing this information can help make your new hires feel as if they’re part of something bigger than themselves.

On the Trail
At your first camp, your Ranger introduces you to the three points of the ‘bearmuda triangle’: the red roofed outhouse, a sump for dumping smellable liquid waste and the bear cables. You don’t camp inside the triangle and usually try to set up your tents in previous tent spots to minimize impact. Your Ranger then shows you how to hang your bear bags and takes you through the process for the first meal in the backcountry. Lessons include how to sterilize cookware, prepare your meal, and cleanup before getting the crew down for the night.

The next morning, you pack up and make a breakfast of snack bars, pop tarts and/or instant oatmeal. Meals may seem like a brainless routine, but during this time, our Ranger was constantly showing the scouts how to follow ‘leave no trace’ and, in the case of the bear bags, reinforcing the idea behind them as protecting the bears. New Mexico policy is to tag a nuisance bear twice then kill it, so through this education the scouts know that they are helping to possibly save a bear when they follow these rules.

Finally, each night the crew does shares what they call their “roses, thorns, and buds.” This is the chance for every scout and advisor to tell the rest of the crew what they liked about the day, what they didn’t like and what they are looking forward to the next day.

Key Onboarding Takeaways: Hands-on mentoring with a combination of demonstration and delegation helps each team member learn to follow the processes and execute them competently. Regular check-ins are a chance for the team to build camaraderie, while making sure that your new team members are engaged with the process. From beginning to end, constant communication is key to success.

The Rest of the Journey
On the last night together, your Ranger hands out wilderness cards to each scout and asks them to think long and hard before signing them and committing to protecting the wilderness. The next morning, your Ranger is gone, and the crew is on its own. In our case, we were on our trek for another nine days. We hiked over 60 miles, including summitting Baldy Mountain (the highest mountain on Philmont Scout Ranch), and saw some of the most beautiful backcountry there is. We had our ups and downs (as only a group of 15, 16 and 17 year-old girls can) and managed to bring everyone back without any injuries.

Key Onboarding Takeaways: While mentoring and constant check-ins are important to ramp up your employees, empowerment is truly tested when they are on their own. At the end of the onboarding process, your team should be ready and able to carry on the behaviors and values that make up your company culture.

Lessons Learned
I have yet to meet someone who went to Philmont and did not describe it as one of the best and most memorable experiences of their lives. I did not have the chance to go when I was in scouting and am very happy that I had two opportunities to go, once with my son and once with my youngest daughter (and perhaps show them that I am not as old as they think). They both went on to become Eagle Scouts, like me and my twin brother, and I hope that in future years they will both look back and remember their experiences fondly.

From an onboarding perspective, I have to admire the way that Philmont takes in hundreds of scouts on a daily basis, plugs them into the program and gets them on their way into the backcountry, all while instilling them with the idea that they are doing something really worthwhile. Scouts know that they have a responsibility to themselves, their crew, and Philmont, to dig deep and be the best team member that they can be.

How are you instilling these kinds of values into your onboarding process?
When you need assistance hiring an accounting or finance professional, let us help! Our accounting and finance recruiting team can find you a qualified candidate that is just right for your open role. We specialize in accounting, senior accounting, and management roles, drawing on a wide professional network of possible candidates to look for your next hire. Let us help you hire an accountant today!

About the Author
Mark Emerson – Consultant with The ASP Team

​Mark is an accomplished financial executive with broad experience in accounting, finance, HR, and operations. He has an entrepreneurial background with an all hands on deck mentality that adds value and produces results.  With a strong ability to present high level analysis to executive teams and articulate complex financial concepts to help drive success, he builds effective teams and establishes strong relationships with banking, audit, and investor communities.​

Mark holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science from Santa Clara University, and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Washington.

---