Onboarding is one of the most crucial parts of hiring and bringing on new staff. If an employee doesn’t receive proper training or gets the wrong impression during their first couple of weeks at a job, it can be hard to change bad habits. Ensuring employees get a solid and fresh start is essential to building a capable and efficient workforce. Here are some tips on how best to onboard workers — from office to frontline, hybrid or remote — so that your employees get the best start.
1. Make sure new employees feel welcome before their first day
Pre-boarding is the process of welcoming a new employee before their first day. This can include sending information about your company or providing informative links on the company’s website or intranet. At this point, you can set expectations and ease new hires’ minds for their first day. Send out an agenda for their welcome day and include any rules they’ll need to know, including the dress code and what to bring. It’s also an excellent time to provide them with their schedule for their first week of work so they know what hours they will be working and can plan ahead. Providing information ahead of the first day will help your employee feel prepared and ready for success when they come in. They will be less nervous and more receptive to new information and training!
2. Integrate new hires as soon as possible
It’s crucial that your new employees feel that they are part of the team. Creating this feeling as soon as possible allows for opportunities to answer more specific questions about the job and build a more seamless integration when they are ready to work independently. Don’t just spend the entire onboarding process in a training room or one-on-one meeting if you’re doing it online. Take your employee around, introduce them to the colleagues they’ll be working with, and maybe even have different team members assist with their training.
Another important part of this step is providing your employee with an organizational chart to help new hires understand who’s who at the company. This information helps new employees know who they report to, who is in charge of other teams and helps them become further acquainted with everyone at your company.
3. Set an attainable timeline
Onboarding can last through your employee’s first year at your company. Over the first 90 days, set goals for your employee to take on more responsibilities and challenges in their role. Check in once a month to ensure that they are meeting these goals and to assist with any concerns they may have.
When creating goals for employees, it is best to use the SMART goals method. The goals you set should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
4. Follow up with new hires frequently
During their first month on the job, it’s best to follow up with new hires weekly to ensure they are getting the hang of things and can ask all of their questions. This follow-up can be as simple as sending a checklist to ensure they have completed all necessary tasks or making a quick quiz on company policies and procedures to evaluate their knowledge. Avoid micromanagement, but help the new employee make sure they are progressing as expected.
5. Always be available for new hires
You must be available to answer any questions a new hire may have. Make sure that even after you assign them a task, you are still available for questions and concerns that they might have. Also, ensure that they know the proper channels for asking their questions so they can always get the answers they need. The worst thing at a new job is being thrown in without any support, so make sure that your new hire knows that they have the support they need to do their job to the best of their abilities.
Did you know? Hospitals have turned over nearly 90% of their workforce in the past five years. Over a quarter of these job vacancies occurred within the first year of employment. Read more about how thoughtful onboarding can benefit healthcare retention.
Managing remote onboarding
Remote work is becoming more and more popular, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic and remote onboarding presents different challenges for bringing a new hire onto the team. A service like Firstup can make onboarding so much easier by automating the processing, standardizing information, and reducing the time required from Human Resources to bring on new people.
Download our A Four-Step Guide to Improving Employee Engagement to learn how to create an engaged workforce from the start, or reach out to us today to start optimizing your onboarding process and ensuring your new hires are with you for the long haul.
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