Did you know that almost 70 percent of employees are more likely to stay at a company for three years or longer if that company does a great job with employee onboarding? Needless to say, the company employee onboarding policy is a vital part of your company’s long-term success.
There is no one employee onboarding best practice that you should adopt as your own since each business is different. Still, there are some important employee onboarding tips that are helpful to implement into your company’s onboarding process. These tips will give your new employees the best experience possible when getting started at your business.
The good news is that you’ve come to the right place for a helpful guide to employee onboarding for your business or organization. Keep reading this article to learn all about how to build a successful onboarding policy today.
Reflect Your Workplace Model with Employee Onboarding
One thing that has changed vastly since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic is the rise of remote work and hybrid workplace models. Your business might be in a state where you’re working in a remote capacity or in a hybrid workplace model. It is vital that you onboard your new employees in a way that matches the way you’re doing business.
Doing this will help to give your new employees an accurate idea of what working for you will be like. This is a much better alternative to having them come into the office for all of their onboarding. This is especially true if they’ll work in a fully remote capacity after the initial parts of onboarding are completed.
It is also the best way to allow your managers to give more insight and clarity to your workplace model. They’ll establish the expectations that your company has for the new employees. This is the perfect chance to get everyone on the same page. Do your best to also show your company’s values and culture during this time period.
Adding a Partner
A big part of the employee onboarding process is making sure that your new hire is comfortable working at your organization. You want to make sure that they feel included. One thing that you can do to help with getting the new employee up to speed and feeling like they’re part of the group is to assign a work partner to them.
The ideal range of time that they have this work partner is around 90 days. This is their person to go to with questions and issues that they experience when they’re still getting a better grip on the job that they’re hired to do. This is great because it builds the bond between the established employee and the new hire.
It also takes a large burden off of management because they’re not the first point of contact if something does happen to go wrong. This has additional benefits because it puts some of your more established employees in a leadership opportunity where they will get to help take the new employee under their wing and teach them the different facets of the job.
Included Weekly Itineraries
If you do decide to go with adding a partner that the new hire works with and uses as a resource then you should also take the time to come up with an itinerary for that time period. This should include the expectations that you have for the new hire. It should also have the things that they should focus on learning during this part of the onboarding process.
The best approach to take with these itineraries is to break them into 30-day chunks with different goals for each part. This allows your new hire to take everything in chunks or phases that are defined. It also allows for different goals during the three phases that make up the 90 days of onboarding.
Customize Your Employee Onboarding
One of the best employee onboarding advice is to come up with customized employee onboarding for each employee. This might be a bit more difficult if you’re running a massive corporation but it is a great idea if you’re running a smaller business. It helps to make your new employee feel special and appreciate when they’re getting started with your company.
This customized employee onboarding should include personalized touches. These show that you care about their well-being and success with your business. They should also involve scheduled meetings with other people within the business. They will help them understand the importance and magnitude of their role in the company.
On top of that, you should also find people that the new hire can shadow. Shadowing is a great chance for your new hire to see exactly what they’ll be doing on a daily basis while working for your company. They’ll get to watch a trained and experienced expert go about their daily tasks and get a better idea of what they’ll be doing.
This is huge for the onboarding process. It means that your employee won’t be surprised by anything that comes up when they really start working in the role that you hired them for. This means that they’ll be happier and that they’ll want to continue working for you rather than checking out other opportunities.
Come Up With a Standard Operating Procedure
Onboarding is a time-consuming process for both your business and your new hire. The long time periods that make up the process could result in making your new hire feel frustrated or stuck. It is important that you take the time to come up with a standard operating procedure for new hires. Make sure that it includes using a variety of resources that you have at your disposal.
A great strategy is to incorporate training or instructional videos to help with the training and onboarding process. This takes a burden off of your other employees while still allowing the new hire to learn some of the skills that they’ll need to know. Checklists and documents that explain aspects of the job are also great tools that you should use to onboard new employees.
Get Your New Hire Onboard With Company Culture
Many businesses make the mistake of thinking that the onboarding process starts with a welcome email and ends with filling out paperwork on the new employee’s first day, like filling out an I-9 at https://WorkBright.com/verify-i9-remote/. There is so much more that goes into the onboarding process and one of the biggest things to consider is the company culture.
One of the best things that you can do when it comes to your company and new hires are to help the new hires learn about the culture at your company and in your workplace. This will help them gain a sense of belonging and understand the goals that they’re working towards with their coworkers.
You should also use your established employees to help guide your new hire in the “do’s and don’ts” of their new job. This will help them know what to do in order to find the success they’re seeking while working for your company. This is a critical part of your business’s success as well as the success of your new hire.
Help Them See a Future With Your Company
Another great tip for your employee onboarding process is to focus on helping your new hire see a future working for your business. This comes with building trust and loyalty with your new employee. It involves making them feel like they’re part of something special or important.
No one wants to bring on a new employee and spend time and resources into helping them maximize their potential only for them to leave. Creating trust and loyalty will help you retain your best talent. Even better, it will help to create a reputation for being a great place to work and have a career.
A good starting point is to take your new employee on a trip through your company’s history and talk about the things it has accomplished in the past. Then talk about the future goals of the company and show how the new employee’s goals align with those of your organization.
The goal is to help your new employee feel enthusiastic and excited about the opportunity that they have. Help them feel excited about working with your organization.
Internal Sponsorship Programs
This is a tip that was taken from the United States Armed Forces, but it is a helpful option that you have at your disposal. You should consider using an internal sponsorship program in your new hire onboarding process. This is also effective if you have an employee that left one department to join another one.
It works by assigning a sponsor or a partner to the new hire. This sponsor helps to answer any questions and solve any issues that the new hire encounters. It is effective during the first few weeks or months that they’re on the job. This does a great job of speeding up the process of acclimating the new employee to the job and building a bond with the sponsor.
It saves time and money while also preventing mistakes that would happen with a poor onboarding process or on-the-job training.
Get-To-Know-You Meetings
Another great thing that you need to add to your employee onboarding process is scheduling meetings with important people. This is great for meeting leaders within your organization for the new hire. These meetings are a great way to introduce the new hire to some of the people running the organization.
It helps with getting them in tune with the culture of your business or organization. Most businesses are informal and don’t go out of their way to help new employees meet the people they’re working for. Scheduling these meetings is a great way to set your business apart and show your new hire that they’re an important asset to the organization.
This speeds up the process of helping the new employee mesh into the organization. It doesn’t leave meeting these important figures within the business to chance. It will make your new employee feel important that these people went out of their way to meet them.
It is also important that you have the infrastructure in place to facilitate meetings like that if you’re working in a hybrid or remote workplace. This means having email addresses, software, and a work computer ready to go on the first day that the new hire starts. This will create a positive impression that your business is organized and knows what it is doing.
Assign a Mentor
Assigning a mentor is another great thing to add to a new hire onboarding process. This mentor doesn’t need to be someone from within the new hire’s department. With that being said, the new hire should still be someone that has worked for the company for an extensive period of time with lots of experience.
This relationship will help both parties to continue their growth while working for your organization. The mentor will get the chance to take the new hire under their wing and help them grow as a professional. The new hire will benefit because they’re learning from the experience of the mentor and avoiding making mistakes because of it.
Have All Resources Ready To Go
A big mistake that some companies make with employee onboarding is not having everything ready to go on the first day. This makes your business look unprepared and unprofessional to a new hire and will decrease the chances that this new hire will stick around and continue working for you.
It is important that you give your new hires the tools and equipment that they need to be successful in their role from their first day. Not having the things in place to provide an environment where your new hires can succeed will result in high turnover rates and a negative reputation in your industry.
Take Your Employee Onboarding to the Next Level
Employee onboarding is the lifeblood of any successful business or organization. There are a number of great employee onboarding tips that you need to consider using in order to get your new employees up to speed as quickly as possible. Using a mentor and providing the right resources is a great place to start.
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