Employee Onboarding Lisa Pate, FRSA Executive Director Ever wonder why some companies continue to find new hires when you are offering the same rate of pay? Those companies fortunate enough to find and hire new employees know it’s important that a new hire feels like a team member from the beginning. What was once a quick meeting with someone from Human Resources has morphed into a friendly, social experience called onboarding. First impressions can have a lasting impact. Your company’s employee onboarding process is your chance to make a good first impression with new
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employees. This process should be about making the new employee feel welcomed, valued and prepared to succeed in his or her new role. A recent report by the Society for Human Resource Management showed that 1 in 25 employees leave new jobs because of bad onboarding experiences. Onboarding is the process of integrating a new employee into your company and its culture, as well as getting a new hire the tools and information needed to become a productive member of the team. The onboarding process is important because it sets the tone for the entire employee-employer relationship. The onboarding experience can ultimately determine if that relationship will be successful or troublesome. For new hires, orientation is a one-time event welcoming them to your company. Onboarding is a series of events (including orientation) that helps them understand how to be successful in their day-to-day job and how their work contributes to your overall business. What makes a good onboarding experience? Balancing information with excitement and relationship building. By carefully planning onboarding steps, companies can give new employees the information, relationships and tools they need to be comfortable and confident enough to succeed. Building a strong onboarding process is the best way to welcome and retain new employees. Effective onboarding is all about planning ahead and thinking from your new employee’s point of view. It doesn’t begin and end on your new hire’s first day with you. It starts at the beginning of your hiring process and ends when your new employee is fully settled into his or her role. Creating a new hire checklist allows you to prepare for the onboarding process and guide your new hire every step of the way. It should be a flexible document that evolves based on what you learn with each new hire. The goal is to moderately improve the new hire checklist. This checklist should be completely different from the one your Human Resource department or hiring manager uses to make sure all legal documents have been completed on a new hire. More on that topic next month. The onboarding process should begin on the employee’s first day and include information about tenure with your company, which can set a positive, long-term goal for a new hire. Your recruitment practices should leave employees with a clear sense of what your company wants in an employee as well as who you are as a company – your missions, values, culture and people. Begin the dialogue by reviewing job descriptions and interview
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