Onboarding is one of the first company-related experiences that new employees have. When done right, onboarding can help your new employees transition quickly into their positions and set them up for success. When done wrong, onboarding can leave new employees feeling unwelcome or uncertain about their positions.
Almost every business needs to onboard at some point. We’d like to help you onboard the right way with these 4 best onboarding practices to follow in 2022.
Include Weekly Itineraries in Your Plan
Any HR professional will tell you that effective onboarding will take around 90 days. You’ll want to create a 90-day plan including weekly itineraries. For the first 30 days, you’ll want to introduce clearly defined expectations and learning objectives. For the remaining time, outline specific objectives for growth. This helps to keep onboarding systematic, organized, and helps your team approach training with clear goals in mind.
Lean Into Meaningful Learning
While it’s necessary to include role-specific and technical lessons during onboarding, don’t neglect meaningful learning. What do we mean by meaningful learning? We’re talking about cultural and societal learning. Questions such as “How do I fit in?” and “How do we do things around here?” are common among new employees – yet onboarding rarely seems to answer these. According to Gallup, 88% of companies don’t do a great job of onboarding. That’s because fundamental human nature questions aren’t being answered.
Take Time to Reach Out
A drop-in or quick check-in email offers both a sentimental and functional purpose. Take the time to reach out to let your employees know that you have a genuine interest in their success. This, in turns, means that they’ll view your team in a better light and be more engaged in the work. In terms of purpose, reaching out is the perfect way to answer any lingering or unresolved questions. This helps your new employees get adjusted into their new roles more smoothly.
Prep Managers to Get Involved
MIT Sloan Management cites that onboarding is the single most important period in an employee’s relationship with an organization. Managers are at the forefront of day-to-day onboarding and the first point of contact for new employees. If a manager isn’t dedicating enough to the job – this can lead to subpar onboarding experience. Express to your managers the importance of onboarding, and equipped them with the right tools. Provide development and training so that managers can be guides that immerse new employees into the work.
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/235121/why-onboarding-experience-key-retention.aspx
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/reinventing-employee-onboarding/