If you've ever witnessed a favorite and essential member of your organization leave suddenly and without warning, you understand the importance of a successful employee onboarding process.
While it may take weeks to fill in the gap in your heart, you'll have to fill that vacant workstation and get your new employee into operation as soon as possible.
What is onboarding?
Before we get into how to speed up onboarding and improve performance, it's essential to define onboarding. Onboarding is a series of learning and training activities, including orientation and briefing, intended to teach employees how to prosper in their jobs. It differs from an orientation, part of onboarding, in that it is usually more than a single day and is mostly job specific.
Here’s how you can make your onboarding experience better.
Preliminary introduction
The best employee orientation experiences begin before the employee's first day on the job. From the beginning, they may feel needed, preoccupied, and valuable. You can prepare a plan for the person's initial days, including the duties they must complete before day one. Furthermore, you can send a welcome email or clip to your new employee and request that the HR department creates a personnel file and other necessary documentation.
Briefly describe the company
You should always take advantage of any chance to introduce your business to new individuals. The same is true for new employee onboarding. Tell them about the corporate history, accomplishments, employees, vision, beliefs, and objectives. Meld them with your enthusiasm and passion. It's the ideal time to share additional details. This could help them feel proud and enthusiastic about their new workplace.
Personalize it
It is always preferable to do things with customizations rather than standard and template-based strategies.
Personalization is, of course, highly dependent on a variety of factors, but some of the best onboarding experiences include a meet-and-greet session.
This immediately improves the mood and allows the new employee to connect with fellow employees and introduce themselves.
This is an essential step in ensuring a memorable first day at work.
Use learning resources
The best onboarding software in the market comes packed with various instructional tools, such as video clips, graphics, web conferencing, gamification features, and so on.
You can use this onboarding software to diversify the onboarding process and encourage higher levels of engagement.
Another good practice is to have new employees learn under experienced employees to get a sense of how the job is done.
Create video tutorials and online programs for new employees, depending on the role and job requirements, and gamify the process.
Continuously support the process
For a new employee, the first day at work can be disappointing and long, primarily if you do not provide proper support. It would be a poor onboarding experience to meet them in the early hours and leave them for the rest of the day.
Supervisors should ensure that the new hire has settled in, feels confident, and has sufficient tasks to do.
You can improve the onboarding experience by acknowledging and celebrating small wins. This will boost the employee's confidence and make them feel like they're making a difference.
Obtain Feedback
Onboarding is an essential process for both the new hire and you, the employer. As a result, you should take advantage of the opportunity to solicit feedback and identify ways to enhance the process.
To get accurate feedback, it's best to provide numerous avenues for communication.
Allow for anonymous feedback, in person, via emails, and so on so that everyone feels comfortable with sharing their ideas and suggestions.
A suitable method is to conduct monthly surveys and schedule an extra, more interactive session with the recruiter every few months.
Bottom Line
Today, it is not easy to provide an onboarding experience that makes new employees feel welcome. To get things right, you may need some time and proper feedback. However, robust onboarding software can make this process easier. Not only does such software create a smooth onboarding experience, but it also improves employee productivity and job performance.
