New hire onboarding: before they join
Before the new employee is hired, preparations should begin for their arrival.<ahref="https://bestatdigital.com/how-to-scale-a-sales-team/">Goodonboarding</a> should begin before the new hire starts with online orientation in advance, hints and tips sites to help understand operating principles and key information, even some compliance training can begin before day one. Following their hiring, it is important to provide any information that the employee needs before their first day.
To keep new hires from drowning in information, keep the new employee onboarding process going beyond the first day. Ideally, you should be using tools that give them an overview of what they should be doing on day one, week one, month one, et cetera. By doing this, you'll help them learn at their own pace about the company culture, their role, policies, and so on. This makes it easier for them to fully absorb the information without feeling overwhelmed. Good onboarding should also make it easy for their manager to see where they are in their onboarding journey. Tools like customer journey mapping are good for understanding and plotting employee engagement with an onboarding journey.
After they accept the role
After the new employees sign their contracts, you should start the pre-employment onboarding process. It's critical not to overwhelm them here, as they are likely finishing up their old job.
However, this is an opportunity to train them on the company culture and give them an overview of what the onboarding process will look like. This should take the form of access to online training materials, a calendar and some simple training videos to help them get set up with the essentials for their job. The pre-employment phase varies from industry to industry. In highly regulated industries, the pre-employment phase is very barebones, and there maybe issues sharing information outside of their IT system. However, in other sectors, you can progress much further into some of the topics for Day 1 or even Week 1.
Employee onboarding - day 1
The next phase of the new <ahref="https://bestatdigital.com/how-to-scale-a-sales-team/">employeeonboarding process</a> starts on the employee's first day. Day one is all about the agenda and a digital orientation. The digital orientation should greet them and virtually show them the surroundings, so they know where to find what they need. Introduce the employee to their coworkers - let them create connections. Often this process is a hybrid of digital and physical orientation. Allow your new hire some time to set up their new equipment, set new passwords, and log in to their new accounts. Assign them a buddy. Consider a teammate rather than a manager. They'll feel more comfortable asking silly but important questions they may have.
Choose a real rock star—someone who loves their job and lives and breathes the company values. If applicable, give them their first assignment and get them working.
Employee onboarding - week 1
Throughout their first week, assist them with anything they may need help with. During new employee onboarding, a mentor should stick close to make sure they feel comfortable in their new role. Schedule regular meetings with the new hire and set clear goals and performance objectives for them. Again, this process will vary from company to company. Some companies won't do this at this early stage. Instead, they'll still be expecting their employees to be understanding their organisation or meeting colleagues.
Understanding influencers is important at this stage, as is understanding operating procedures, but goals and performance objectives may come a little later depending on the sector, the complexity of the job and what regulations they work under.
Employee onboarding - month 1
Throughout the first month of onboarding, continue to work with the employee to help them to integrate into the new team. The best training regimes make sure of something called "<a target="_blank"href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3399982/"rel="noopener">The Spacing Effect</a>". The spacing effect is often referenced in education and training. Essentially, it states that in order for people to learn, we need to be taught the same information a few different times with gaps between. At university, we would study atopic at the beginning of term and then revise it a few weeks later. Training for new employees works the same way. Month 1 should work to review what they've learned and measure the success of the learning.
New employee onboarding after their first month
Onboarding is an ongoing process. Setting your employees up for success overtime requires clear goals, objectives, and personal development plans. Define the core steps for an employee to become a productive team member. Immerse the employee gradually into their role with periodic check-ins. Think about your employee journey.
Sharing career development plans and required skillsets for senior roles demonstrates that the business is interested and supportive of their development. Choosing systems that enable this information to be visible online can also help or be used here.
Importance of onboarding
A supportive and effective new employee onboarding process can help emotionally connect a new employee to your business. At the same time, it can also provide data on how your business operates, reduce the risk of churn, increase the productivity of existing teams, enable personal development of mentors andmore. Providing people with the information and tools they need helps get them up to speed quicker, improving your ROI. The onboarding process is an essential part of welcoming and retaining employees.
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