4 Tips for Improving Your Onboarding Process for New Hires

Attracting talented people is key to your organization’s overall success. But what do you do once you have found the right employees? You onboard them! Onboarding new employees is an important process for ensuring that everyone is set up to thrive in their jobs. If you worry that your onboarding process is lacking a certain pizzazz, here are some tips to spruce it up:

Have a Plan

Start thinking about onboarding before your new employee accepts the position so that the transition will go as smoothly as possible. Have a comprehensive onboarding strategy tailored to different departments, teams, and jobs. The onboarding process should last from the time a new employee signs a contract (or otherwise signifies acceptance of the job offer) until the end of any type of trial or probationary period.

How to begin? Online HR systems can provide new hires with access to pre-employment materials. Such materials include forms that need to be completed, a copy of the orientation schedule, information about benefits, etc. Once your new employee starts, I suggest that you provide day-to-day training plans that are job-specific. Make sure to keep a written plan on file for your reference.

Train the Onboarders

You can’t have a successful onboarding process unless your train those who are involved in the process. Choose current employees that are qualified to orient new hires. Designate one person to oversee the entire process and train other onboarders. Make sure to review all necessary information that needs to be covered during the onboarding period, e.g., introducing the company and its mission, setting expectations, and explaining daily job tasks.

Make the Employee Experience #1

If you want employees to stay with the organization, make sure to perfect the employee experience. According to , “Understanding and improving the employee experience is vital for ensuring that great staff want to continue to work at your organisation.” From day one, employees view what happens at work as a combined experience that impacts life in and out of the office.

Onboarding is an essential component of employee retention and happiness. Building a support system and rapport for the new hire during the first 90 days of employment is pivotal to success. One found that high support levels result in new employees having more positive attitudes and being more productive — all good things!

Review and Refine

When evaluating your onboarding program, continue to think about how you can make new employees feel secure and supported throughout the process. Each time you run your onboarding program is an opportunity to assess what is working and what isn’t. One way to decide whether you need to refine the process is to ask for feedback from your new hires. Since this can provide you with tangible data and specific examples of ways to improve onboarding. This will give you concrete data and real examples of how you can adjust the process. New employees may, of course, have varying perspectives, so it should be your goal to identify overall trends from employee training.

Originally published at https://sandracharton.net.