Creating an Amazing Onboarding Experience for your New Hires!

Creating an Amazing Onboarding Experience for your New Hires

(See link below for our Careers Podcast about creating an amazing new hire Experience)

????> Why do we need to create an exceptional New Hire experience?

The first question you should ask yourself is, what do you want the new hire to say to their family or friends when they finish their first day at your company, when they go home and are asked - How, was your first day at your new job?

Surely, you want your new hire to say, fantastic or they are so glad to have joined this company, right?

Or would you rather have someone say, hmmm, not sure yet, or it wasn’t what I expected...?

Key data points:

Apparently only about 12% of organizations agree their organization does a great job of onboarding new employees. According to data by Gallup.

And only about 30% of new hires feel their onboarding actually help prepare them for their new role in the company.

On average it takes a new employee around 12 months to reach their full performance potential within a role and the onboarding plan is a critical component to expediting a new hires success in their role.

New hires who have a structured and clear new hire onboarding plan are nearly 3 times more likely to be satisfied with their new place of work and more committed to making their new job successful.

(This is big one!) Great employee onboarding can improve employee retention by a whopping 82% - Holy Cow Batman!

Over 50% of companies say their onboarding process is heavily focused on boring processes and paper work!

And if you are looking to boost your Employee Referral Program, reports show that only 1 out of 5 new hires are likely to recommend their new company to a friend after a poor new hire onboarding experience.

This article today is created from the transcript from our podcast (Rather than you just listen to me and John talk you can read about it here too ??)

Onboarding starts before Onboarding - What??

Data shows us that a new team member’s willingness to refer people to join their company increases 93 percent when they get multiple options to understand expectations and goals, meet new team members, and get questions answered prior to their actual start date.?

• You must start your pre-onboarding before they have even signed the contract.
• We have an opportunity to prepare potential new hires mentally and even physically before they join.

?Pre-onboarding is done in phases;

• The Interview which needs to clear about the role and expectations, along with the culture and even the organization's structure and how this role fits in to the bigger picture, along with the company vision and future direction of the company to help people see themselves long term in their new role.
• The Next pre-onboarding approach is once the candidate is in the final stage of the interview process. We need to start to provide more understanding about their career trajectory and training and development opportunities along with what their first few weeks and months in the new role may be.
• The final pre-onboarding approach is once they have signed the contract and set the actual start date, many new hires will take some time off before joining. This is a great opportunity to (on their time not yours) to provide key information to help drive the new hire's success even before they set one foot in the door.
• What can you provide during this pre-joining stage? Videos, manager messages, online or even F2F meet and greet sessions with key managers, future team mates, (as long as this role is not a confidential hire), reading material on the industry such as latest product updates, or client case studies etc.
• The goal is to save time before joining, why have them watch a video or read materials after they have joined and on your pay role? This is also a cost saving opportunity as well as time saving!
• Also data shows that pre-onboarding increases success in role several times and the employee is more willing to refer friends as potential future new hires by over 80%!
• 1 week before send a Warm "Can't wait to see you soon" message!
• 1 Day before, have the manager email or even call and say super excited to see you tomorrow!

Onboarding and the New hires First Day:

?1 week isn't enough! Many firms provide only a week, only 30% of new hires feel this is enough to be successful!

The best employee onboarding programs are at least 90 days—and may even extend out for a full year—to ensure new hires are fully supported as they ramp to full productivity. (Remember it takes on average 1 year to be fully successful in a new role!)

?One of the biggest reasons people leave a company are due to lack of growth and development opps! That is why the new hire onboarding needs to include role related and product or service-related training programs!

Create a culture of learning from day 1...

Prior to joining - consider gaps the new hire may have, skills they need to learn as well as basic training required to be successful. This can help create a solid training plan from day one.

Basic training should be for all new hires, but then you need to focus on the strengths and potential gaps the individual has (don’t just create some basic standard "out of a book" training schedule...

Onboarding Starts with Your Culture

How are you going to instill a deep understanding of your culture? Who are you and what you do alone is not enough.

Cultural immersion, involves, people, unwritten rules and how to operate in a politically correct manner, examples of people who are successful in the company and why they succeed along with your history and roots of where you came from along with where you want to go in future!

Intro videos from the management, warm welcomes talking about who they are and their background can be helpful, along with other messages from their colleagues etc.?

It takes about 3 months to learn new behaviors, having someone who can monitor them, support them (other than their boss or team) such as a mentor or a big brother or sister can go a long way to helping them fit in... (I like to call it the Cultural Hump! Some people just need a little push to get over the top and then they are good to go, others can really struggle to adapt, and you need your mentor to be a skilled coach who can keep an eye on them if needed!

Managers shoulder the greatest responsibility for the success of new hires. It is NOT HR who owns Onboarding! ( I hate managers who think like this!)

Ultimately, it’s their job to ensure that employees are brought up to speed, developed and supported. Research shows that the effectiveness of an onboarding program is largely based on the manager and how actively they are involved in the new hire processes. (I see many managers never meet the new employee on their first day! That is ridiculous!!)?

Mangers write and create the New Hire plan; HR tweaks it and supports it! Have a template for this to keep it structured you don’t want loads of different documentation on this! Share the plan before they join so they mentally are prepared!????

Meet the team, arrange a lunch or dinner with the team on the first or second day! Super critical to start building rapport from day one with the people they will work with every day!

Give them loads of swag! People feel good when they get their swag bag! You can send this before they even join, But I like to give it on their first day. Invest money and time into this, great swag often gets shared on social media by new hires and can help build your talent brand as well.

Re-boarding - Food for thought!??

Onboarding isn’t just for new employees. Every time someone changes roles, teams or managers, it’s time?to reboard. While the company culture doesn’t change for an employee who moves internally, team culture,?expectations and relationships do.?Location even matters! Country cultural understanding even!

To help your rising stars quickly acclimate to their new role, take reboarding as seriously as new-hire onboarding — there’s no quicker way to lose a star or disrupt a team than promoting someone beyond their preparation!

Ask the questions now to check you have the right onboarding process!

1. Are we embedding the Company values and culture from day 1?

As mentioned already. It's not just words or reading the mission statement, embedding the company culture is critical.

Are you able to describe the culture, perhaps using real-life examples, such as employees who live the values, how you impact your clients or the industry or even the planet, due to your culture and values?

And don’t just do this once, to instill new values and culture, they will have to experience it daily, in the team and the manager needs to live and breathe this stuff! Walk the Talk!

According to data employees on average are 5 X more likely to say that the onboarding was super successful because they got a deep understanding of your culture from Day 1!

2. What do the new hires need to be successful?

Other than the basic training, either HR or the manager needs to think about the individual strength and weaknesses. It’s the only way to create a thorough onboarding plan that helps ramp them up quickly to their full potential. Generic onboarding does NOT work! A one size approach is not a thing!

We see a 4 x increase in employee engagement when they have all the right skills to do their job and it's the onboarding process to be the foundation of that success according to employee survey feedback on their new hire experience.

3. What are the expectations of this Role?

Super big one this, of course the interview and selection process should have explained expectations, but once they are onboard you need to make sure this is explained in detail.

Explain the What they must do to be successful, why they must do this! And how much time they must do this! Fact is a lot of employees get into trouble several months down the road since they joined because role expectation was not clear... I see many PIPs and even people getting fired because they couldn’t do their job, but often the mistake wasn’t just theirs...

4. Do we have the career paths mapped out?

Just because they walked in the door today doesn’t mean they shouldn’t know about what the future has install for them! At DB, all the new grads were shown the future career path of an investment banker, they talked about the hard graft and even potentially how many years in each position before someone could reach Managing Director status in investment banking...

Show examples of staff as well who have achieved this, create a cool map and path not just some boring PowerPoint with titles and role explanations! Younger talent especially need this vision of the future as they are very focused about their learning and growth and you need to generate excitement around this great future with them!

Create a Panel discussion with successful people in your company - Have 4 or 5 top talents talk about their career ups and downs! Let the new hires interview them and learn about what success looks like, and what even failure looked like!

5. Are we helping the New Hire to connect with people quickly? (especially within their immediate network)

Super important to create ways for new hires to connect with teammates, other people they will have regular interaction with and with people who can support and guide them.?

There is nothing worse than joining a company and feeling very lost and alone, even weeks into the job.

It is even more critical now than before with a hybrid remote work situation!

I am not going to give you ideas on this, as each company, team and manager will all have very different set ups and need to think about how this will work based on those circumstances.

Final Points:

I heard an Manager complain a while ago that HR doesn’t have a good onboarding process.

This makes me laugh and get a little angry at the same time!

If you are a manager YOU and only YOU are responsible for your new hires wellbeing and creating an effective onboarding plan. HR will provide the structure, the process required to set the individual up and some HR teams might do more (like I do around values and culture etc), BUT! They work for you, in your team and you own that responsibility, if they fail it is most likely because you didn’t do your job correctly as a manager!

Ok, got that off my chest! Can continue lol ??

According to Gallup HR: When managers take an active role in onboarding, employees are nearly 4 times likely to strongly agree their onboarding process was exceptional!

Data shows that time and time again people leave a company because of their manager!

Managers need to make their new hire feel welcome and help create that warm fuzzy feeling! Make it an experience and NOT a formal process, with a daily check list or schedule of boring meetings for the next 3 weeks!

So, after HR’s planned orientation and other additional activities and all the meet and greets, it’s up to the manager to show employees how the onboarding experience is put into practice over time. They need to be able to coach and guide their new hire. And connect so closely that there is no confusion about expectations, this should lead to a successful and happy hire and of course a win-win for both the manager and new hire!

Wrap up!

Survey all your new hires after 3 months!

Either blind survey or F2F depending on the size of the org and the confidentially levels you would like.

If you do a F2F feedback session, sometimes it is best for HR or a mentor or coach to do this than the manager to allow for new hires to be open and speak their mind. But if the manager feels they have built up a good rapport with the new hire they can of course do this!

Create a feedback loop - The feedback you get needs to create key data points that help you polish your onboarding program!

You need to focus on the majority vote, not just on what one person says. And you need to prioritize that feedback and work on what these top initiatives first that will add significant value to the New Hire Onboarding experience in future???

Success to you all in your New Hire Onboarding Experience!

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Article by: Simon Cropper

Please listen to our Simon & John Careers Podcast about creating an amazing onboarding plan for all your new hires ??

Enjoy ??

https://podcasts.apple.com/jp/podcast/simon-and-john-careers/id1588619077?i=1000584180157