Onboarding Practices That Will Make Your Employees Feel Wanted

Research proves that companies that do onboarding right have higher employee engagement, loyalty and productivity. They also have much lower turnover. In short, making employees feel wanted and appreciated, even before they start working for you, pays off in the short- and long-term. How can you create an effective onboarding process? 

Here are the following steps to take once you’ve talked to your current and former staff:

1. Figure out your onboarding objectives

If your onboarding program doesn’t answer all of the questions below, upper management and HR must get together to come up with solutions. Otherwise, it will be tough to gain team and management buy-in or ultimately, your new hires. Questions to ask are:

• When will onboarding start and how long will it last?
• When the employee goes home at the end of the first day, what impression will they have?
• What is the “must know” part of the culture and work environment for the new hire? What is the “nice to know”?
• For the most effective onboarding at our company, what roles do HR, direct managers and even co-workers play in the process?
• What kind of goals do you want to set for new employees?
• How will you gather feedback on the program and measure its success?

2. Effective onboarding starts BEFORE your new hire’s first day

Instead of swamping them with a pile of paperwork their first day, send it to the employee beforehand, for an electronic signature. Provide them with all their benefit information up front, giving them time to look it over and formulate questions that they can email HR with before they start work. If your company has an online employee portal for regular employees, create an onboarding portal for newbies that they can access with a temporary ID and password. If there is a social piece to your portal (company events, celebrations, parties or more) allow the new employee access to those areas as well.

Additionally, give them content designed to engage them, such as a letter from their manager, first day information, directions to the office and where to park. Let their new co-workers send them, and welcome messages and photos from their new co-workers. You can give them an electronic copy of the employee handbook, a complete job description, company acronyms and much more.

 

If you're not only getting a new job, but locating to another city hundreds of miles away, it can be a source of anxiety. Consider how much better you'd feel if you received a handwritten post card from your new boss with words of encouragement and a nice greeting. Your new boss offers her help or advice about the new city and texts you a personal phone number with instructions to call if you have questions during off-hours. Your new boss “gets it.”

To make your new employee feel wanted the first day, set up the employee’s desk, phone and computer and password logins before they arrive. There’s nothing more demoralizing than being wooed throughout the recruitment process, and then show up the first day to an empty desk with an old, ill-fitting chair that doesn’t work. Have your staff get on social media and see what the new employee likes and decorate their office/cubicle/desk appropriately.

3. Get to the root of each job

In a recent survey of 1,000 respondents done by BambooHR, 23 percent said they had left a previous job within six months because they never fully understood the responsibilities of their new job. Therefore, spell out job responsibilities often during the interview process, and then make it crystal clear (again) after the employee is hired. Hiring professionals must make this a priority beginning on Day One!

Your two main effective onboarding goals that first day should be setting expectations and introducing objectives for both sides. Organizations that don’t focus on familiarizing new employees to their corporate culture are guilty of lazy onboarding and are at a significant disadvantage. Employees who know what to expect from their company’s culture and work environment make better decisions. Period.

4. Make new hires feel wanted, but don’t forget the current staff

Much like the toddler who gets a new baby brother or sister, jealousy can flare up if too much attention is spent on “the new guy.” To keep existing team members from resenting a new employee, make sure roles and responsibilities are outlined for the entire team. Existing team members can feel threatened that someone new could take over their responsibilities. So, clarify the position of the new hire, as well as the positions of co-workers whose work is closely related.

Go over how they’ll interact with each other, reporting hierarchy, and how future projects will run. This also keeps an ongoing dialogue between management and staff on how things are running in the department. That can have significant and beneficial long-term effects to productivity, harmony, and the well-being of the department.

5. Avoid lazy onboarding by staying in touch

HR should take the lead on this part and schedule regular check-ins with the new hire at one month … three to six months … one year … and even beyond.  Remember that most employees make their decision to stay with a company in that three- to six-month range. Yet, only about 15 percent of companies continue onboarding after three months. And, 83 percent don’t even make it that far. This is the definition of lazy onboarding.

Continual updates keep the employee engaged and lets them know the company cares. In conjunction with their first annual performance review, have the conversation about their future career development. Use their one-year anniversary to transition the employee from the onboarding process to retention and engagement.

Yes, effective onboarding can be difficult and time consuming. However, not nearly as much as constantly having to replace employees who leave or get fired. Once your process is up and running, the turnaround in productivity and engagement will be worth every cent spent. Dump your lazy onboarding mistakes today! Make every new employee feel wanted.