Your company’s onboarding process is a new hire’s first impression of working in their new role. To help set new hires up for success, you should have an informative and thorough onboarding process. These five tips will help you improve your onboarding process.
1. Think About the New Hire Experience
Put yourself into the shoes of the new hires. View your onboarding process from the eyes of someone coming into the organization for the first time. This will help you see obvious issues and breakdowns in your current onboarding process.
2. Have a Standardized Kit or Packet
Nothing is more frustrating for new employees than continually finding out about things that they should have been told but weren’t. This is a sign of an incomplete and poorly organized onboarding process. Having a standardized onboarding process can help you ensure all important information gets communicated. Create a standardized process and materials that you use for all new hires to create consistency.
3. Personalize Where Possible
While it is important to have an overall standardized process, you don’t want new hires to feel like just another number or cog in the machine. To prevent this, try to personalize the onboarding process whenever possible. This could include directly addressing the employee with a customized welcome letter. Or perhaps you use a needs assessment to customize where to give more or less attention during the onboarding process. There could be a portion of the onboarding process that is job-specific.
4. Encourage Communication
Open, transparent, and effective communication is a must for a positive onboarding experience. Do not wait until the employee’s first day to start communicating with them. Instead, open the lines of communication early, soon after the official hiring, if possible. This sets the stage for a positive experience and helps set the expectations for your new hire.
Create a welcoming environment for new employees by setting up their workspace or desk before their first day. Communicate to current employees that someone new will be starting. Finally, assign a mentor to whom the new hire can ask questions. This helps new employees form relationships and integrate into the company culture more easily.
5. Ask for Feedback
The best way to improve is to ask for feedback. Follow up with new hires to get their feedback on their experience going through the onboarding process. You can do this immediately after onboarding to get their immediate impressions and feedback. Following up and asking for feedback again in a few months is also helpful. New employees will now have some experience under their belt and can reflect on their onboarding experience. They may have a different perspective now that they have worked for the company for some time.
Improve Your Company’s Onboarding Process
These five tips should help you improve your company’s onboarding process. That way, you can set your new employees up for success. They can feel more confident and welcomed into their team. With a positive start, you can build a positive company culture, foster interpersonal relationships, and reduce turnover.
Contact the BOS Staffing team and let us help you improve your hiring and onboarding process.
