Getting a new employee up to speed is a challenge for any company. Onboarding involves more than just teaching new skills and tools. An effective onboarding process ensures that new hires embrace the company’s culture, values, and rules. It’s also about getting someone comfortable in a new place and with a new team.
The duration of the onboarding process depends on your sector and the new hire’s position. Their first few days, weeks, and months on the job will have a significant impact on how long they stay with your company.
The above hardly scratches the surface. Let’s dissect the term “onboarding” and learn how to implement it successfully.
What Is Onboarding?
New hires go through onboarding to become fully integrated into the company. Onboarding helps them grasp their duties and needs and easily integrate into the company’s culture, beliefs, and processes.
Team bonding, training, and policy learning are all part of a successful employee onboarding process. Depending on the profession and sector, onboarding might take weeks or months. After a successful onboarding process, new hires should be fully prepared to perform their duties.
Methods That Guarantee a Successful Start
Don’t Rush Things
Research has shown that 91% of new workers are prepared to resign from their jobs within the first month if the position doesn’t live up to their expectations or if they don’t like the culture of the organization. With so much information to digest, it’s hard to remain afloat without help.
To avoid information overload, extend the onboarding process beyond the first several days. When you do this, you help the employee learn at their own pace about the corporate culture, their position, perks, rules, etc.
Have a Plan of Action
Set specific objectives and check in often to enable the new employee to concentrate on what’s required and clearly serve their own employee growth.
New hires should never feel lost or unsure of their responsibilities. New employees strive to impress. How can they accomplish that if they’re not doing what you want? Having everyone on the same page and working toward the same objectives from the start is essential.
Have an Exceptional First Week
As a manager, you want to create a positive impression on your new hire. The worst thing for a new hire is being wooed throughout the recruitment process and coming to work to find the receptionist unprepared or their desk or office unfinished.
From the moment they arrive, decorate their desk, introduce them to everyone, give them a welcome package, and involve them in meetings.
Maintain Frequent Contact
Communication with new employees is essential throughout the onboarding process. This way, everyone will feel like they belong. They will come right up to you and ask questions. Employees frequently do what they believe is right without understanding the procedure because they’re afraid to ask.
Check in on them every half an hour during the first week. Discuss what went well and what can be improved upon at the conclusion of the first week. After doing this every week for a month, you should revisit the technique every month or every three months.
Analyze Your Onboarding Process
As an employer, you should regularly evaluate the efficiency of your onboarding process and any other factors that may affect new hires’ performance. Among them are:
- Productivity time. How long does it take for a new recruit to get up to speed and make a useful contribution to the company’s success? Finding out how long it takes to achieve key performance indicators is a useful indicator.
- Turnover/retention. Compare employee turnover and retention rates among groups of employees depending on the year they began working.
- Retention threshold. Determine how long it takes the typical employee to leave the organization. Employers may discover tendencies while also personalizing exit interviews to determine the reasons for turnover.
- New-hire surveys. Send questionnaires to new employees at various intervals during their first year to monitor their development.
- Employee engagement and satisfaction. The onboarding process should be enjoyable and engaging, capturing the employee’s attention and making them feel welcome from the start.
- Performance evaluations. Compare how your new recruit performs week by week. After one year, for instance, performance should have increased significantly in comparison to when they first began.
Gather Feedback
The pace of life and the demands of the workplace mean that it is essential to regularly check in with staff members to hear their feedback. To get regular input, create surveys and live polls. Your mission is to guarantee that each new recruit benefits from the onboarding process.
Final Thoughts
A happy, healthy, and productive employee contributes to a more successful company. With the correct onboarding process in place, you can make it easier for an employee to perform well in their position, which in turn increases the company’s chances of future success.
