This post was originally published by Mitch Causey on lessonly.com
Our friends over at BambooHR did some fantastic research about onboarding — you can check out their entire findings here.
From their findings, it’s obviously wise for companies to have a smooth onboarding process to welcome their new hires and help them get the tools they need to be effective at their jobs. When you skimp on employee onboarding, it can cost you thousands of dollars each year. But, by taking the initiative to streamline this process organizations can improve productivity by encouraging new workers to stay and grow with the company.
Here are some quick ideas to help streamline your onboarding process:
1. Get paperwork out of the way
Although they won’t say it, new hires feel more at ease if they can take care of their payroll and insurance information first. When they do, they tend to worry less about mishaps regarding their pay and insurance benefits in the future.
2. Make responsibilities clear
Give new hires a written rundown of what’s expected of them. Providing clear direction will eliminate the potential for confusion and give employees a chance to ask questions and voice their concerns before they start working. If employees feel like they’ve been lied to about their job duties, they’ll probably pack up and leave.
3. Schedule follow-ups
Instead of flinging workers at their desks and leaving them to their own devices, schedule biweekly follow-ups for the first 60 days to see how they’re getting along. As new workers get deeper into their jobs, you may find they need additional training or have questions or concerns about work-related issues.
4. Implement a buddy system
A new job feels less intimidating when workers know they have a peer to help them out when they get stuck. After you introduce the new employees to the veterans in their departments, pair each of them with a person they can lean on when they get confused about their jobs.
5. Communicate company culture
The last thing you want is for any of your new hires to experience humiliation because they are unaware of how things in the organization work. When you are onboarding new workers, give them a copy of the company’s policies and procedures. You should also and go over these rules verbally so newbies are clear about what they should and should not do. In addition to the “rules and tools,” be sure to discuss the more intangible side of culture to bring the warmth of the workplace into the light.
6. Automate as much as possible
Finally, for your sake, please automate as much of your onboarding process as possible. This leads to less stress on you, less room for human error and priorities to slip the process out of sync, and exudes a spirit of being intentional. Who doesn’t want all of that? In our opinion, one of the best things to automate is training delivery, follow up, and feedback.
7. Ask for feedback
Just because you’ve created what you think is an effective and engaging onboarding process, that doesn’t mean your work is done. The best organizations ask their new hires to provide feedback throughout the onboarding process to find out what was helpful and what wasn’t. This is a great way to find out where there may be gaps and room for improvement in your onboarding program.
Employee onboarding can make or break how new hires view your company. If they have a negative experience, they are likely to run the other way. If you have multiple employees quitting each year, it can cost you thousands in resources and productivity. When you follow the above tips, you can streamline your onboarding process and encourage new employees to stick around and grow with the company.
