New hires’ first impressions of your company occur during the onboarding process.
That’s one of the reasons why you, as a business owner, CEO, or manager, should know the importance of a great Onboarding Program. And let me tell you, having a good, well-structured onboarding experience is not an easy task.
A great onboarding program is more than just offering your new hires a quick tour of the office, ensuring they have a computer, and sending them on their way. These kinds of poor onboarding experiences can affect your company in different ways, such as:
- Lower employee morale.
- Lower levels of employee engagement.
- Lower confidence among employees.
- Lack of trust within the organization.
- Missed revenue targets.
These negative impacts prompt lower company productivity and ultimately lead to a higher employee turnover.
There are a couple of steps to follow to have a great onboarding experience and ensure your new hires start on the right foot.
A useful, motivating, and thorough onboarding process should include:
- Making the new hire feel welcome.
- Establishing a foundation for strong relationships.
- Building an understanding of the culture and how work gets done.
- She sets clear expectations and connects the individual’s work to the broader organizational mission, vision, and goals.
Let’s not forget that whether you run a restaurant, a small shop, or a large corporation, you should take the necessary steps to build an effective onboarding process that resonates with your company culture and makes the right first impression.
These four recommendations will help your onboarding process succeed — whether it is remote or face-to-face:
1. Make Them Feel Comfortable From Day One
Do you remember your first day at your current job?
First days tend to be stressful, you are usually nervous due to the uncertainty of the new job, you don’t know what it is going to be like, whether you are going to feel comfortable, or like your coworkers, and so on.
This uncertainty becomes more considerable in a virtual environment since you’ll be missing those face-to-face encounters and the opportunity to bond with coworkers or ask anyone in person when you have some doubts.
So here are a few tips to help your new remote employees ease first-day nerves and allow them to feel welcomed and gain confidence from the start.
Make Sure They Have A Go-to Person
It’s essential to have someone at the office who fills the role of informal mentor of the new hires; this importance is stressed when it comes to the remote workers because they won’t have colleagues around to ask questions as they come up spontaneously.
In the best-case scenario, this go-to person should introduce himself or herself before the day of work so that when the first day comes, the new hire will already see some familiar faces.
Do not forget that the go-to person should not be their team leader or manager but someone different so that the new hire not only has more people to consult but also feels more comfortable asking any question, large or small.
Make Them Feel Part Of The Family
When your new hire is fully introduced to the company, find an opportunity to make them feel a part of the family. You could send them a warm, welcoming note alongside some branded office products and even some sweets!
Here’s an example of something we give our freelancers!
Show Them How Everything Works
Minimize technical issues and alleviate first-day anxiety by guiding them throughout your communication channels, video conferencing platforms, and other company systems. This way, new employees will be fully present and more comfortable from day one.
2. Establish Strong Relationships Across The Organization
Encourage your employees to be proactive and intentional about creating personal and professional bonds.
Since the employee will be working remotely, it means that they won’t have the opportunity to communicate and build relationships in organic and spontaneous ways like chats in the hallways, over lunches, or at office events so it’s best to encourage video interactions whether it’s a formal or informal meeting to combat the lack of spontaneous opportunities for small talk and other relationship building that would typically happen in the office.
Also, it’s essential to organize a mix of different group discussions with other groups of employees so that the new hire can develop a contextual understanding of team dynamics and make it easier for an individual or leader to work with the same network of people regularly, as well as with different groups.
3. Explain The Company Culture And How Work Gets Done
New employees must learn about the company’s culture from the start.
The “about us” section of your website should be a great help to accomplish that, with videos about the company’s history and documents, and checking the vision, mission, and core values of the company will give the new employee a good feel about what the organization is about.
Also, it is important to make light of unspoken assumptions, so that the new hires are aware of how people usually work in the company, this means the company’s tone and level of formality, dress code, virtual etiquette on videoconferences, messaging norms, and working hours.
New hires shouldn’t guess the policies and instructions of your business; this will only create more ambiguity and stress for your employees.
4. Set Clear Expectations And Align Individual Efforts To The Broader Organizational Goals
A new employee should have a clear picture of what success looks like. They should recognize how their work and responsibilities are valued and add to the overall success of the company.
They should have a whole context of the company and how their work affects it to fully understand their importance as workers, increasing motivation and productivity of the employees and therefore ensuring future success.
Over the long term, most professional roles tend to evolve, adapt, and become more complex and ambiguous, so having a clear focus from the start will create a strong foundation from which the new hires can adapt more readily.
A good onboarding program will show its benefits in terms of employee turnover ratio. Having a successful onboarding experience will ensure that your new hires stay motivated for even six months after starting to work.
However, let’s not forget that the onboarding program is just the beginning of an ongoing developmental foundation that strengthens your employees’ cultural alignment, relationships across your organization, and performance in their roles.
Would you like to watch some examples of onboarding programs? Check ours!
See more articles by Ender Cárdenas.
