Onboarding new employees is a crucial task for any company. The process allows your recruits to get familiar with your work culture and environment. Additionally, successful onboarding of new employees prepares them for the job and provides necessary training.
Onboarding is also vital for new employees to feel welcome and engaged. It goes a long way to retain your staff and improve satisfaction. As a result, business leaders recognize the importance of employee onboarding and invest in the process.
Here are 10 proven tips for onboarding new employees for more productivity and engagement.
1. Start Onboarding New Employees from Recruitment
Effective onboarding starts with your recruitment process. How you behave with your potential hires and make them feel is key to attracting leading talent.
Therefore, start your onboarding from the moment you come in contact with a candidate. Communicate every step of the process and give an idea of how it is to work in your organization. Your job post will also go a long way to describe your company and what recruits can expect.
2. Make a New Hire’s First Day Hassle-Free
Don’t bombard your new employees with papers to sign and formalities on the first day. Reserve it for showing them around your office and getting introduced to the team.
Therefore, make sure you do the following tasks before the first day:
- Send a welcome email with company information and fun facts
- Sign and complete any paperwork like contracts and NDAs
- Send a list with all the people in your organization and their posts
- Create a list of skills or tasks your new hire needs to learn
- Send a fun questionnaire so that you can kick off conversations with current staff
In addition, assign a mentor to each hire so that they can have some to approach in case of queries or apprehensions.
3. Introduce Recruits to Colleagues
Introductions are an integral part of onboarding new employees. It is pretty important as 83% of new hires expect to meet their colleagues on the first day. Additionally, 89% of recruits want to meet their managers the day they join.
As a result, prepare your team to meet recruits and encourage conversations. It will help your new hires start their job on a positive note. Moreover, the process helps your existing and new employees build rapport and collaborate in the coming days.
In the case of remote employees, you can conduct a virtual meeting. You can use tools like Zoom or Skype to let your teams connect and develop an understanding. In addition, ask each team member to create an introduction bite.
4. Consider Each Role for Effective Onboarding
There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes successfully onboarding new employees. Each recruit performs a different role and handles a separate set of responsibilities.
Therefore, your onboarding is set to suffer if you cannot tailor your program as per the role of hires.
For example, you surely won’t onboard a chef and a waiter in the same way. Your onboarding for the chef will focus on cooking and duties in the kitchen.
On the other hand, you will need to teach your waiter how to handle customers and provide excellent service.
So, plan ahead and create a personalized onboarding program for each hire.
5. Assess Your New Hires
Organizations spend up to $4,125 to hire new employees that including the cost of onboarding. As a result, businesses can end up spending thousands of dollars every year to onboard new employees.
It would help if businesses could save some money and ensure the success of their onboarding programs. The best way to do that is to assess your recruits for existing knowledge and capabilities.
Here is how you can go about it:
- Create quick tests to evaluate your new hires
- Try to find out their areas of weakness and strength
- Develop a training program skipping what they know
6. Invest in Participatory Learning
Employers can choose different methods to implement onboarding and employee training. Traditional ways include lectures, independent learning, and so on.
However, not all techniques come with the same level of effectiveness.
Research shows participatory learning to improve learning outcomes compared to other ways. In one study, participants were able to achieve better academic performance using participatory techniques.
Therefore, you should also consider the same for optimum results. Additionally, your recruits can create a better bonding among themselves by learning alongside.
Some of the ways to facilitate participatory learning are:
- Group discussions
- Brainstorming
- Case studies
- Group assignments
7. Blend Your Training Methods
All recruits need some degree of training to acquire the necessary skills and fit into their roles. Employers can use a plethora of training methods to facilitate and achieve optimum learning outcomes. The list includes reading, writing, discussions, and visuals.
Interestingly, some methods can engage learners better and improve retention, like visuals. It can work wonders as 65% of the general population needs to visualize information to retain it.
Therefore, you can try creative ways to onboard new employees like using training videos. Bites lets you create videos from your phone and share them with your new hires. You can shoot tutorials of handling software, making burgers, or operating a roller coaster to improve retention.
8. Sign Up Your New Hires for Tools You Use
A department in a modern business uses 40 – 60 digital tools. These solutions vary based on the department like sales uses a CRM and finance rely on accounting software.
It is necessary to chalk out a checklist to ensure your recruits are registered efficiently. Consider the tools your existing employees use and determine what your new hires will use.
You will need to invite or add them as users in enterprise applications. Additionally, make your recruits aware of the need for confidentiality and best practices to stay safe.
You can recommend ways like:
- Enabling two-factor authentication
- Using strong passwords
- Changing passwords regularly
9. Give Your Recruits an Office Tour
Your new hires will be a part of your organization from now on. As a result, you should aim to reduce the amount of “unknowns” to make them feel confident and welcomed. Prior to the actual tour, you can create a playlist of bites introducing the workspace.
Start with an office tour and show your recruits around. You can focus on the following:
- The desk or workspace your recruit will use
- Rooms of managers or supervisors they report to
- Restrooms
- Where to get supplies from
- Meeting and conference rooms
Additionally, you can consider handing out a digital map of your office for easy reference. Your employees can save the map or on their computers for quick accessibility.
10. Encourage Regular Meetings
A single meeting may not be enough to get your recruits comfortable with the rest of the team. The issue can be more prominent for teams that work remotely.
As a result, you should encourage regular meetings to help your staff connect. You can have a daily stand-up for remote teams where they share their updates.
However, don’t drag on meetings for too long. You can also use a list of agendas to stay on track and prevent wasting time.
In addition, involve only the people who have a genuine reason to be in the meeting.
Final Thoughts
Onboarding new employees is a nuanced process. Employers will need to create a plan and develop a tailored strategy for each role. Additionally, they should evaluate different training methods and implement the best ones as per needs. It is also advisable to use onboarding tools for new employees to reap more efficiency and streamline the process. In the end, try to make your onboarding as engaging and exciting as possible to improve outcomes.