The relationship between onboarding employees and retention of those employees is crucial to understand. After all, first impressions are everything to a new hire, and because of that, the onboarding process is almost like a first date. New employees need to feel welcomed, well-informed, and well-prepared for improvement and success at their new workplace; otherwise, they may not feel prepared, accepted, or emotionally invested enough to flourish in their new role.
Improper onboarding often leads to a lack of motivation, and feelings of dejection, and can ultimately result in a new employee leaving the company soon after they joined. To ensure employees feel equipped to do their best work and are immersed in the values and culture of their new workplace, onboarding is everything.
A great way to ensure employees are onboarded effectively is by following an onboarding checklist! With one, employers can ensure all their new employees share a similarly thorough onboarding experience. It’s important to ensure employees are consistently onboarded similarly, with some room to field their questions and concerns, or to adapt the process to their needs if accommodations have to be made.
Onboarding is a crucial process because it’s an employee’s first introduction to a company, and it’s where they acquire the skill, knowledge, and professional practices they’ll need to find success and usefulness in their position, and their place in the social ecosystem of an organization. Proper onboarding encompasses everything from an employee’s first-day orientation to training that’s more specific to their position, and introductions both to the workplace and the team, which can help them feel better integrated into the fabric of your organization’s social dynamics and culture right from the start!
Successful onboarding establishes everything from expectations, what makes an ideal employee for a respective role, and everything a new employee needs to feel comfortable and confident in that role. With that understood, here are some important factors to consider when it comes to onboarding new employees.
The Onboarding Process: Priorities for the First Day, Week, and Month
Crucial to a successful onboarding experience is ensuring your organization has a plan to carry out this important process consistently and effectively. It’s important to understand what proper onboarding looks like, and what the priorities of your company should be at formative moments, such as an employee’s first day, week, and month. However, when done properly, the onboarding process begins before an employee’s first day in the workplace.
Pre-Arrival Onboarding:
As stated before, first impressions are everything; in that spirit, the best onboarding experiences begin before an employee’s first day begins. This is called pre-arrival onboarding, and it’s all about setting proper expectations for an employee’s first day. Since this is an employee’s initial impression of their new job, it’s important to put them at ease by letting them know what to expect on their first day and how to prepare.
In the lead-up to that all important first day, these are some examples of proper pre-arrival onboarding practices:
- Email new hires to introduce their first day before it occurs; include any paperwork they might need so they can feel and be prepared for what day-one will bring.
- New employees should receive an itinerary, usually for their first week. This will help them mentally prepare and know what to expect for their initial week at the company.
- Set-up any logins, passwords, and other important permissions that need to be established. This kind of preparation isn’t just practically important, it sets a good impression.
- Announce to other employees that a new member is being added to the team; this will help them welcome them into the workplace since they’ll know to expect their arrival.
The Ideal First Day:
The first day is all about introducing new employees to the company, its culture, their fellow employees, and their initial tasks. An ideal first day should introduce all of this in a way that doesn’t overwhelm new employees, and allows them to get comfortable and feel welcome in their new workplace.
It’s important to deliver accurately on the expectations outlined to a new employee in the lead-up to their first day. Here are some ways to help introduce a new employee to their role, the workplace, and the team:
- Schedule an orientation. The first day is the first time an employee truly sees themselves as part of a company, so make this orientation feel like the positive celebration it is.
- Don’t just show them where they work, give them a tour of the building so they’re introduced to their new environment; It’s amazing how much more comfortable people become when they know their surroundings.
- Plan some sort of introduction to the team; give them an opportunity to get to know each other. Perhaps this could be through an organized team lunch, or a similar informal outing.
- Let them know who to reach out to for help, guidance, direction, and to receive assignments.
- Provide a comprehensive overview of their responsibilities, and how their position works at the company. Here, transparency is everything, so answer any questions with consideration, and try to leave no important information undiscussed.
A Confidence-Building First Week:
Provided the first day is successful and well-organized, the first week is for building off of everything established before, and building confidence along the way as the new employee both settles into the workplace and gains better understanding of what is expected of them.
The first week is as much about learning the systems of the company and how to fulfill the responsibilities of the position as it is finding their place in the social dynamics of the working environment, so proper preparation on the first day and before can make all the difference here. To ensure the first week is productive and formative, consider the following:
- Introduce the programs your company uses, and ensure the employee has the proper time and resources to learn how to use them effectively.
- Have other employees take a sort of mentorship role, offering assistance and answering questions as they pertain to an employee’s responsibilities or other concerns.
- Ensure their training has begun, and is progressing adequately.
- At the end of the week, it’s a good idea to check in with a new employee. This’ll give you the opportunity to understand how they’re feeling, progressing, and their confidence level. This is also a good opportunity to ensure the employee knows they’re in a supportive environment that wants them to succeed.
The First Full Month:
Finally, we’ve come to the first month; how an employee feels in terms of confidence, their responsibilities, and how they fit-in to the dynamics of the workplace is cemented here. While there will always be room for employees to develop in the future, ensuring they feel confident in all of these aspects, and are starting to turn around high-quality work, is very important to accomplish by this time. Employees may leave during this period, often because of poor onboarding practices.
To ensure a fruitful first month, and a promising start to this new chapter in an employee’s career, ensure you’re doing all you can to set them up for success. Here are some final considerations to make during an employee’s first month:
- Schedule weekly one-on-one check in meetings with a supervisor, manager, or similar employees. This will help track a new employee’s progress, address concerns before they become larger issues, and ensure they’re feeling confident in their new position.
- After the first month, train a new employee on more advanced tasks, and give them opportunities throughout the first month to diversify their skills; doing so in this formative time will prove extremely beneficial, allowing them to feel more equipped to accomplish any task. This way, if an employee is struggling in a certain area, they are learning early enough to address any challenges before those become deficiencies.
- Increase the amount and scope of their work assignments. Considering over this month a successful employee will have proven they are capable of fulfilling their tasks, with time to become more comfortable in the role, it’s important to gradually increase their assignments to a level closer to that of an experienced employee.
Do You Have an Effective Onboarding Checklist?
The purpose of an onboarding checklist is to ensure every new employee receives a similar, yet thorough and comprehensive introduction to the workplace and their responsibilities. Although some details of an employee’s onboarding can differ based on relative factors specific to them, an onboarding checklist is great practice to make sure new employees all receive the same high-quality onboarding experience!
If an employer can guarantee all employees are introduced to the same things in roughly similar ways, it can decrease the likelihood of knowledge-gaps and useful information slipping through the cracks. An onboarding checklist is made the most useful if everything an employee needs to ensure a positive onboarding experience is accounted-for.
In summary, effective onboarding practices are the first impression any employee gets of a company’s environment, and how they’ll be equipped with the tools they need to find success. Because of this, successful onboarding is as important to employee retention as it is to how a company is perceived by prospective employees.
Employers can never be too prepared when it comes to introducing employees to the workplace and making sure they have what they need to succeed. If you’re reconsidering your business’s approach to onboarding, contact TripleTrack HR Partners today for more information on how our team can help.