Top 5 Simple Employee Onboarding Best Practices

"My Top 5 Simple Employee Onboarding Best Practices." James Hamilton-Reed

For me, a healthy employment relationship is kind of like building a healthy romantic one (just bear with me on this analogy for a minute).

Organisations that support effective employee onboarding understand that integrating a new hire into a business and its culture requires more than just a warm welcome email, a great first day at work, or a first-week orientation program.?

Similarly, you’ve probably never entered into or stayed in a long-lasting romantic relationship based on just the first date.

Like bringing someone new into your life, when it comes to bringing new employees into your company, a great first impression doesn’t always lead to a great lasting impression. According to Sapling HR , “The best employee onboarding programs extend throughout the employee’s first 90 days—and may even extend out for a full year—to ensure new hires are fully supported as they ramp to full productivity.”

This article focuses on my suggestions and best practices that will help you create your own onboarding program unique to your organisation and tailored to the needs of your team.

Important note: Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic has changed many hiring and onboarding processes, these best practices will apply regardless of whether you’re starting someone in the office or fully remotely.

So, Why Is Employee Onboarding Important?

Research has shown that implementing an effective new hire onboarding process (which often includes a structured orientation program, can have a huge positive impact on company growth and success, including retention and productivity.

Some of the benefits of employee onboarding include:

1. Maximise retention and loyalty: according to Click Boarding , an employee onboarding software company, 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experienced great onboarding.
2. Strengthen company culture: an effective onboarding process will help new team members understand the company’s vision, mission, and values and reinforce the expected behaviours and attitudes that collectively form the company culture.?
3. Maximise productivity: according to research done by Glassdoor , a robust onboarding process can improve productivity by more than 70%,
4. Reduce turnover costs: according to Scalexperts recent survey, the average cost of a Tech hire in the UK was ￡14,129, and on average took 42 days to fill a position. Great onboarding can create long-term employee engagement.
5. Attract top talent: It’s a small world, and businesses like Scalexperts allow employers to step outside the typical transactional recruitment model. Remember Word will spread if you create a great onboarding experience that supports new team members when they join.

So, What Are Some of My Key Success Factors For An Effective Employee Onboarding Process?

The best practices I've outlined in this article will only be successful if you also keep in mind several key factors:

• Have a clear purpose: have a clear vision for why onboarding is important, what experience you want a new hire to have, and even what you would like them to say on social media and public forums like Glassdoor .
• Minimise surprises: it can be difficult for anyone to walk into an unfamiliar situation and environment. Minimise surprises for the new recruit, including everything from letting them know what the dress code is to what their first day and week of work will look like. (Something I've been guilty of in the past!)
• Be prepared: your new team member will show up on their first day ready to get started, and you should too. Start by putting a new hire checklist in place. Schedule meetings and training sessions in advance, get their computer equipment and workstation ready and prepare other team members to help.?
• Exercise patience: your new team member will almost certainly make mistakes, forget parts of their orientation program, and miss a step or two as they get up to speed..?
• Set a reasonable pace: avoid overwhelming them with too much information, which can lead to more important things being missed or forgotten. Try to remember how long it took for you to learn everything!?
• Build-in flexibility: the COVID-19 pandemic has forced businesses to turn to remote work and other virtual practices. Build flexibility into your remote onboarding processes so that they can be quickly adapted to changing conditions and still feel connected.

My 5 Best Practices For Effective Employee Onboarding

It can take months to educate new employees on the knowledge, skills, and behaviours required for them to begin contributing to the organization’s success.?

Because of the long time horizon for onboarding, which can continue through the first year of employment, it’s almost impossible to create a specific onboarding agenda, schedule, or template.

Instead, try following some of these best practices as you create the longer-term goals and metrics that you’ll use to determine whether onboarding is successful.

#1: Start onboarding before your new hire’s first day of work

Many organisations will mistakenly wait until the new employee’s first day of work to start orientation and onboarding. In many cases, however, there will be a delay of days, weeks, or even months from receiving a job offer to when your new hire begins their new job.

This delay presents a great opportunity for you to use this time before day one to build excitement, help them feel welcome, and begin the steady stream of information they will need to get up to speed quickly. With all clients, Scalexperts recommends touch points; in the tech industry, notice periods are often long, so an absolute minimum of three is required.

#2: Create fantastic hiring and welcome practices

Creating a fantastic hiring experience can create a superb and long-lasting first impression. That hiring experience, however, consists of many different elements beyond sending your new team members a coffee mug or a list of company policies.

To help your new employee hit the ground running and get them ready not just for their first day in their new job but for their first month, consider putting a new hire checklist in place that captures some of the following new hire practices:

• Welcome the new hire with a call and welcome email
• Send a new hire welcome package
• Prepare the new hire’s work tools and resources
• Prepare an orientation program and agenda
• Provide opportunities to meet and greet colleagues

#3: Involve senior leaders in instilling company culture

Onboarding is not just the responsibility of your HR or Talent team. While HR professionals will often be involved in the creation of a new hire onboarding program, it’s the responsibility of the entire organisation - team members, managers, and senior leaders - to execute onboarding activities.

Involving a senior leader like a founder, for example, gives that person the opportunity to help new employees understand the company culture, educate them on the company history, and explain company values and expected behaviours. I always found the time to meet new hires on their first day.

There are many ways you can involve senior leaders, such as:

• Deliver a company presentation;
• Present a specific training topic; and/or
• Take the new team member out for coffee or lunch.

#4: Leverage onboarding software

An effective onboarding process consists of many, many different tasks and activities, from completing new hire paperwork to conducting new hire orientation and training programs.

Many HRIS software providers, like BambooHR , provide automated, integrated onboarding solutions that eliminate the redundancies of data entry, reduce the use of paper-based forms, and streamline the overall process. They also ensure tasks don’t get missed in those important first few days and weeks.?

#5: Provide opportunities to connect with co-workers

It can be tough to be the new kid on the block. There are many ways you can support your new employee in their efforts to connect with their new teammates and foster their feelings of belonging and inclusion, such as:

• Schedule short introductory meetings with co-workers.
• Ask an existing team member to act as a mentor or buddy to your new hire.
• Host a team lunch or team-building event to create a more relaxed, informal environment for getting to know each other.
• Share a welcome video with the new hire before their first day of work, introducing members of their new team.?

Lastly, and for me, possibly the most important,?

Conduct “offboarding” to understand why people leave

Offboarding consists of several activities, many of which focus on understanding the employee experience. This is typically done by gathering feedback through mechanisms like exit interviews and surveys.

One of the goals of an effective onboarding process is to maximise employee retention and loyalty. When an employee leaves, it’s critical to understand why and what could have been improved in the onboarding process to prevent that from happening.?

So What do you think?

What are some of the best employee #onboarding practices you employ in your organisation? Why do you think effective onboarding is essential, and what impact has onboarding had on?your organisation and the employee experience??

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