Your Chief Virtual Learning Architect

Learning to Performance

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Custom Design & Delivery

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Predictive Evaluation

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Enterprise Learning Strategy

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Dave Basarab Consulting has elevated the training experience, offering an end-to-end comprehensive approach that includes training strategy, instructional design, development, delivery , post program training transfer, and evaluation (via the unique Predictive Evaluation methodology). Virtual Chief Architect Dave Basarab has combined all of these individual training elements with his user-friendly, comprehensive Learning to Performance approach, which significantly increases companies' training ROI.

Why we are different

Innovation: Our primary focus is creating learning programs using a Learning to Performance approach.
Expertise: Dave offers the depth and breadth of his experience, including working internally at prestigious companies (Motorola, Ingersoll Rand and Pitney Bowes) as well as his knowledge and expertise as a highly-respected, sought-after consultant.
Partnership: Basarab collaborates with companies, serving as their own Chief Learning Officer whenever they need to plan, strategize, or implement training initiatives.

Training Services

Enterprise Learning Strategy

Enterprise Learning Strategy

At Dave Basarab Consulting, we're experts in creating Enterprise Learning Plans. We work with you to develop your company's learning strategy and direction.

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom training is an effective way of developing the capability required to execute your strategy. We are a custom design house that creates programs specific to your business.

Learning Burst Development

Learning Burst Development

We can create and deliver your courses via our unique Learning Burst Method - keeping your employees at their jobs while receiving world-class training.

Predictive Evaluation

Predictive Evaluation

We predict the ROI for your courses and establish success gates. We then evaluate the course against the success gates to show value realized and continually improve results.

Leadership Development

Leadership Development

Turn-key virtual custom leadership development program that combines world-class leadership speakers/educators with post-event personalized coaching to provide you with a cadre of highly skilled leaders.

Predictive Evaluation

Designing Onboarding Around Performance Management

Effective onboarding should do more than help new hires navigate policies, tools, and team routines. It should establish the capabilities, behaviors, and performance expectations that managers will reinforce throughout the employee life cycle.

When onboarding connects with performance management, the employee’s first weeks become part of a measurable development journey. Goals, feedback, coaching, learning activities, and business outcomes work together instead of operating as separate processes.

This approach gives new employees a clearer sense of what good performance looks like and gives managers practical evidence for supporting progress. It also helps organizations evaluate whether orientation and role training are producing meaningful workplace adoption.

Start With Role-Based Performance Outcomes

The strongest onboarding programs begin with the outcomes a role must deliver. Rather than organizing content around everything a new employee might need to know, learning teams can identify the tasks, decisions, and behaviors that contribute directly to success.

These outcomes should align with the organization’s competency framework and performance review language. For example, a customer service employee may need to demonstrate accurate case documentation, effective issue resolution, and consistent use of escalation procedures. Each expectation can then become a learning objective, an early performance goal, and a coaching topic.

A role profile should distinguish between knowledge, skill, and observable behavior. This distinction makes it easier to assess readiness and prevents onboarding from becoming a collection of disconnected presentations.

Translate Learning Objectives Into Early Goals

Onboarding objectives become more valuable when they appear in the same system used for individual goals and reviews. New hires can receive a small set of time-bound objectives for their first 30, 60, and 90 days, with clear evidence for completion.

These goals should include both productivity milestones and capability-building activities. A new manager, for instance, might complete required systems training, conduct regular one-to-one meetings, demonstrate effective delegation, and achieve a defined level of team communication quality.

Performance management platforms can support this integration by displaying onboarding tasks beside broader objectives. Managers gain a consistent place to review progress, while employees can see how required training contributes to their role expectations rather than treating it as administrative compliance.

Build Feedback Into the Learning Journey

Feedback should begin during onboarding, not wait for the first formal performance review. Short manager check-ins, peer observations, practice scenarios, and work sample reviews can reveal where new hires need additional support.

A structured feedback loop also gives instructional designers evidence about whether learning activities are preparing people for real work. Organizations seeking stronger design input can use a feedback culture to capture observations from managers, learners, and subject matter experts.

Feedback prompts should be specific and behavior-based. Instead of asking whether an employee is “settling in,” managers can discuss how confidently the person applies a process, communicates with stakeholders, or handles common exceptions. This creates useful performance data while reinforcing psychological safety.

Connect Onboarding Activities With Systems

The learning management system, performance platform, knowledge base, and collaboration tools should support a coherent employee experience. Integration does not require every system to be replaced, but it does require clear ownership of data, reminders, completion records, and manager visibility.

Learning bursts can reinforce a concept immediately before employees need to apply it. Practical guidance on adding learning bursts to an existing LMS can help organizations deliver short activities without disrupting established learning operations.

Onboarding Element	Performance Management Connection	Useful Evidence
Role expectations	First-quarter goals and competency standards	Manager-approved objectives
Product or process training	Job-based proficiency milestones	Simulations, work samples, assessments
Manager check-ins	Coaching notes and progress reviews	Documented feedback and action items
Peer support	Collaboration and communication behaviors	Observation notes and peer input
Reinforcement activities	Adoption and performance trends	Follow-up assessments and operational metrics

Measure Adoption Beyond Course Completion

Course completion confirms that an employee accessed content. It does not confirm that the person can perform independently or that the organization is receiving value from the program.

A stronger measurement model tracks several stages: participation, knowledge or skill acquisition, workplace application, business impact, and return on investment. Predictive Evaluation can help learning leaders forecast likely adoption and identify the conditions required for successful transfer before a program is fully deployed.

Useful measures may include time to proficiency, error rates, manager confidence, customer outcomes, productivity levels, and retention during the first year. Baseline data collected before onboarding makes later comparisons more credible.

Reinforce Expectations After The First Weeks

Performance integration should continue after the initial onboarding schedule ends. Employees often need reminders, practice opportunities, manager coaching, and access to job aids as they encounter unfamiliar situations.

A deliberate reinforcement plan might include weekly learning prompts, monthly application challenges, targeted coaching, and 60- or 90-day demonstrations of capability. Organizations can strengthen adoption by using post-training reinforcement to keep key behaviors visible after formal instruction concludes.

Learning and HR teams should review results together. If employees complete onboarding but struggle with a critical behavior, the solution may involve clearer goals, better manager support, revised workflow guidance, or redesigned instruction rather than simply adding more content.

Practical Design Priorities

A coordinated onboarding and performance strategy is easier to implement when responsibilities are explicit. Learning teams can own curriculum quality and measurement, managers can own coaching and observation, and HR or people operations can maintain the performance framework.

Begin with a focused pilot for one role or business unit. Use employee feedback and performance evidence to refine objectives, system workflows, manager tools, and reinforcement activities before expanding across the organization.

Define three to five observable success behaviors for each role.
Match onboarding milestones with existing goal-setting and review terminology.
Give managers short coaching guides and evidence-based check-in prompts.
Track application and time to proficiency alongside completion rates.
Review onboarding results with business leaders at established performance intervals.

When onboarding is designed as the first stage of performance development, employees receive clearer direction and managers gain better tools for coaching. Organizations can then connect learning investment to capability growth, operational results, and sustained adoption.

Dave Basarab Consulting can help your organization align enterprise learning strategy, instructional design, leadership development, training delivery, and Predictive Evaluation with measurable business outcomes. Explore an approach that makes onboarding a practical foundation for performance rather than a one-time orientation event.

Learning to Performance

Learning to Performance, a complete training approach, gives companies world-class training to drive significant return. This approach includes upfront work (Impact Mapping, design), training (for staff and company executives), and post-training efforts to ensure training transfer. This unique recipe - the key for successful training and adoption - is changing the way companies implement training. This methodology could work with any content for organizations in any industry.