On-boarding 101: How to make new employees feel like home

Being a company that has been growing by 100% annually for years, we have become very familiar with on-boarding. Sometimes we’ve been more successful with it, sometimes we’ve realized that the process could be improved. Throughout the years and new team members, we’ve fine-tuned the process and here’s what we have learned!

It starts from the day 1

Firstly, proper on-boarding makes a huge difference (here’s a story from our former intern, nowadays event coordinator!). It gives the new team member a confidence boost but also allows the team to trust their new colleague with a wider set of tasks from the beginning, knowing that the new person has been given guidance on the ways of working of the team.

To make your new employees feel welcomed, it’s good to try to involve them as much as you can in the daily tasks of the team, from the very first day. Try to make some time for making some calls together, or introduce the new person to your clients right away.

When I started as Agile Search, I started the first day with making some calls with my colleague. The next day, another colleague asked if I’d like to work on a new eBook we would publish on our website. Also, as I had previous experience from events and we had one coming up, I got various tasks related to it — and suddenly my first week was full of activities that allowed me only not to take responsibility, but also learn while working.

Involve the team

As my job doesn’t consist of only one area — I share my time between marketing and recruitment — I valued the variety of tasks I got to start with, as it gave me a good picture of what my work days would look like also later on. It’s good to plan a set of tasks the new employee could complete during their first weeks — something that will allow them to try different aspects of the job right away, and learn at the same time at a reasonable pace. They get an instant feeling of being a valuable team player and are more engaged with the company from the very start.

However, even if you’d want the new member to become an independent employee quickly, keep in mind that everyone needs some tutoring. Especially if the new job is a step up in their career or in a new field, the new employee is very likely to have some questions — likely a lot of them.

You’ll want to make them feel comfortable to ask those questions and we’ve noticed that this is best solved by assigning a “tutor” colleague for the new employee. This person should be available to help them especially during the first days and reserve some time to discuss the progress and learning throughout the first weeks. To ensure the tutor will have time to focus also on their own job, booking time slots for the tutoring and less urgent questions has been a good solution, following the schedule of the tasks given for the new employee.

Get personal

It’s also a nice practice to reserve some time from the whole team to hang out together and introduce them to the new member — it’s good to go through the responsibilities and tasks each person has, but also share something personal — hobbies or interests — if that suits the culture of your company.

We have a habit of organizing an after work whenever a new person starts — as we have a fairly small but tightly bonded team, we want to ensure that the new member also feels as a part of it.

There are numerous simple things and gestures you can do to ensure that your new team members have the best start and on-boarding possible.

It’s not rocket science — after all, all you really need to give to the new employee is your time.