Pre-boarding – What is that and why is it more important than ever?

Pre-boarding is known as the period after your candidate signs the offer letter and before their first day. ?? Why is it more important than ever? Because in today’s extremely difficult talent market – more candidates than ever are signing offers and not showing up to work. Some are kind enough to inform you they have changed their mind, some just never show up – the elusive ghost. ??

It happened to me just the other day – we had made an offer and the candidate accepted. This was just before Christmas. The candidate was due to start 1 April – I guess this is a bad example of an April Fools joke. ??

What happens now? We have to restart the search, we have lost 4-6 months and we don’t have a clear timeline for when we will find the next suitable candidate! This is not the place you want to be in after successfully getting your candidate to sign! ??

This is where pre-boarding comes in and there are many things you can do to avoid losing your confirmed candidate before they start. I’m taking inspiration from a startup called Workelo – a Paris-based company focused on supporting their clients through all touch-points in the employee experience. Let’s start with tips on pre-boarding. ?

1. Creating a link with your new hire before their first day.

Don’t wait until your new hire joins before continuing to foster the employer/employee relationship. You can begin to integrate them from the day they sign the offer. ?? Think about things like; a digital welcome book, pictures of the team they will join, a chatbot that can answer basic HR questions, a detailed agenda for their 1st day / 1st week and why not some gamified challenges to get them learning about their new workplace in advance.

2. Define the onboarding schedule with the proper cadence and engagement.

Use the period of pre-boarding to prepare the onboarding schedule – rich in content and cadenced appropriately. Share the planning with your candidate or even co-create with them. Show them the agenda for their first day or even better the first week. Detail content or information they can review to get up to speed before starting. Set up everything in advance so your new hire can hit the ground running. ??♀?

3. Get your new hire up to speed quickly and have them operational in no time.

Propose to your new hire to begin immersing themselves as early as possible by sharing with them key ?? elements to their start. This might be in the form of access to Blended Learning content, presentation folders to learn more about current operations or even a set of quizzes to help them learn key terms necessary for their role.

4. Automate your administrative tasks.

Before the rush and confusion of the 1st day, collect all the administrative paperwork you need to get them on board. It’s always better to do this in advance than on the first day when your new hire should feel the energy and excitement of their new company and role.

The more you can make this fluid and automated ????, the easier the admin work will be when onboarding starts and the focus remains on strategic and operational content. Make sure you aren’t simply going back and forth about administrative details – use the time to further construct the relationship and get the new hire excited for their arrival.

Most of these tips aren’t hard to implement. It’s simply a matter of prioritising what’s important. In today’s talent market, I’ll say it again – there is nothing more important than pre-boarding if you want to avoid some major headaches.

You can do this yourself or you can look to Workelo – they are after all the experts here. ??

Good luck and keep on hiring! ??

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