Do you have the right tools and processes in place to set new employees up for success?
The growing popularity of fully-remote and hybrid workplaces has presented a challenge for employers when it comes to navigating onboarding efficiently. Putting practices in place to provide new employees with a pleasant first experience with your company provides them with confidence and the tools to succeed at your company.
Moreover, a well-established onboarding process can increase employee retention, productivity and overall job satisfaction.
What is Employee Onboarding?
The first week of a new job can be overwhelming. Proper onboarding process is the first step in showing new employees that they made the right decision and helping them feel at ease.
Onboarding refers to the processes in which new hires are integrated into the organization. The onboarding process begins as soon as the candidate signs the offer letter and typically takes around 12 months to reach peak performance potential. The process is a journey, and you need to make sure you are setting up employees to succeed every step of the way.
Employee Onboarding Best Practices
Not every position in your company is the same, so the onboarding process shouldn’t be either—but when you establish the proper framework that can be duplicated and adjusted quickly and easily, you will save your company valuable time and money.
Clear and Comprehensive Orientation
New employee orientation will cover what paperwork is needed from employees, a basic introduction to the company and other routine tasks. This is where you would introduce new employees to your company’s culture, mission, vision, and values.
The best way to have a clear and comprehensive orientation is to provide employees a checklist of what to expect and what is needed from them to complete orientation. Work with all the departments within your company that are crucial to your orientation process and gather the information you need from each to add to your checklist. This will cover everything with new employees up front versus gathering information by department, which can overwhelm a new employee.
Reduce onboarding paperwork by streamlining documents with an onboarding software system. These programs reduce the back-and-forth communications between your HR department and the new hire, allowing documents to be completed more accurately and in an efficient manner.
Make Introductions
Schedule time with employees to meet with their new team. Encourage managers to take new hires to lunch or set time with teammates to get to know each other better. Depending on your company’s size, a company-wide email introduction can be a good practice to put in place.
Managers or HR should also be responsible for introducing new employees to departments that they will be working closely with. This will break the ice and ensure new employees will be familiar with cross-departmental contacts.
Set Clear Goals and Objectives
New jobs can be difficult to navigate for employees, but if you work with them to set and understand clear goals and objectives, you will set your new hires up for success. Managers should work with new employees and set goals for what a successful first 30 days, 60 days and 90 days would look like. Have regular statuses until new employees get more comfortable and managers are confident that their new team member can navigate day-to-day with minimal direction.
Seek Feedback and Adapt
Once the onboarding process is complete, seek feedback from employees and managers. Make sure this experience is as easy as possible for all participants involved. It’s never too late to make changes to company processes—utilize feedback to continuously improve and make the experience more fluid for incoming employees,
Also, if your company utilizes onboarding software, many programs provide valuable data and insights that are useful for your business. Be sure to take advantage of the tools at hand.
Improve employee experiences with better onboarding.
Not only can we help you build employee benefits packages that attract and retain top talent, but Ascela can also assist your employees from hire to retire. We help HR leaders and business owners put tools and practices in place to help their company and employees succeed.
Contact our team of experts today to discover employee onboarding and retention best practices that can help you grow your business.