A Guide to Employee Onboarding
Given how much time, effort, and money is spent on recruitment, it’s vital to ensure that the employee onboarding process actually goes smoothly.
Onboarding starts when recruitment finishes. When managers introduce new hires to the company culture, they have to bring them up to date on projects and ensure they’re ready to reach full potential.
To help you with that, this guide will cover onboarding and how to achieve it.
What is onboarding?
Essentially, onboarding is the process of integrating a new hire into the organisation and its culture. It also covers giving him what he needs to become a productive member of the group, whether in terms of tools or data.
People tend to disagree about when exactly onboarding begins. Roughly, though, you can consider it a process that begins the moment your offer is accepted. It ends when the new employee actually begins contributing to the company.
Why is it important to have a good onboarding process?
Onboarding is important because if it’s handled poorly, it can waste all the time and resources you already spent on recruitment.
Shoddy onboarding leads to unhappy employees, unstructured teams, and confusion over what new hires should do when they begin.
By contrast, good onboarding leaves very few doubts over new hires’ tasks and abilities.
That’s why it’s so important to have a structured and effective onboarding process. Here are some of the key benefits of a strong onboarding process:
Increased Productivity
When employees have a clear idea of what to do and how to do it, you make it easier for them to get started on their jobs.
Well-laid-out process manuals, training programmes, and mentoring systems help to get new hires productive as soon as possible. You should also prepare the tools they need early
Satisfied Employees
Besides employees, employment security benefits companies as well. When employees resign or get laid off, it’s the company that pays the price because they’ve invested in selecting and training these employees.
Transparency
When employees are perfectly aware of what to expect and what’s expected of them, misunderstanding and suspicion have little space to breed. This improves the overall atmosphere and collaborative culture at your organisation.
Reduced Workload for Other Teams
The benefit of a smooth onboarding process for HR is that it reduces the workload for so many other parts of the organisation.
HR won’t be forced to step up recruitment to make up for turnover thanks to shabby onboarding processes, veteran teams won’t have to pick up the slack as new hires struggle to find their feet, etc.
Onboarding Checklist
A good way to make onboarding more organised is to prepare an employee onboarding checklist. Then, you can simply go over the checklist each time you hire a new employee.
Take care of documents
The moment an applicant accepts your offer, the first thing to do is to handle all the documents relevant to making that person part of your organisation. Here are some of them:
- The signed contract with the KET (key employment terms)
- Forms to fill out
- Identification forms and necessary clearance forms
- Policy documents
- Banking or salary payment details
Make a list of the relevant ones for each role so you can tick them off when they’re submitted and filled out.
First day at work
For the first day, you also want to prepare a number of things. Remember that most new hires are going to feel some anxiety about how to fit in or get started on a new role, so provide for that.
A good idea is to prepare an orientation of some sort. You can also package this as part of the training programme if you have one set up.
Moreover, you want to clarify the tools and assets available to the new hire from the beginning. Where should he go? What cubicle or desktop is his? What programs does he have access to?
An especially useful tip here is to assign one of your current employees to serve as his mentor or senior buddy. Along with the employee’s immediate manager, this mentor can do a lot to explain the workplace and make the new hire feel welcome.
Meet with the team
This is par for the course in most organisations. You want people to feel as though they belong, among other things, so they need to know the people they’re working with.
Introduce them in particular to those they’re most likely to work with often in the course of their employment. It may also be necessary to introduce the new hire to some members of other departments based on which departments collaborate regularly.
Be sure to tell the employees to make the new hire feel welcome, of course. It may even be wise to encourage them to put together a welcome party or gesture of some sort.
Training opportunities
As mentioned earlier, training programmes are often part of a structured onboarding process. The idea is to equip the new hire so that he can take on his tasks with all the data he needs to succeed.
Training programmes are best developed with the help of current employees and their managers. These people can provide insight into what’s needed in their roles as well as what can help new hires settle into a job quickly.
Check-in
The check-in phase usually happens after the employee’s first month in your organisation. This is when you see how the new hire is doing, if he has any questions or concerns, and whether or not both his and the organisation’s expectations are being fulfilled with his employment.
This is also a great time to get feedback on the onboarding process. New hires can give you a lot of data that can help you improve the way you train new employees and bring them up to speed.
In Sum
Onboarding is a key process within every company. Done right, it can encourage employees to stay longer and be productive faster within your organisation; done poorly, it can lead to high turnover and substandard employee performance.
Structuring your onboarding process as early as possible can help you make the most of your recruitment and talent. Use the best practices noted above to do that or contact us for more information!
