The Importance of Having a Good Onboarding Process
In today's competitive job market, a solid onboarding process is essential for your long-term success. It's not enough to attract the talent you need to grow your business—you also need to turn them into productive and engaged employees who will contribute to your company for many years. When a new employee joins your company, onboarding is an essential process. If you want to retain your employees and improve their productivity, you must provide them with a good onboarding experience. In this blog, I discuss the importance of having a good employee onboarding process and what actions you can take to create one for your employees.
A good onboarding process should accomplish all of the following:
Make a good first impression. The person you hire may have had multiple job offers, and what makes them choose your company over another is important.
Get the new employee up to speed faster. If your company has a long, slow onboarding process, the person you hire may start to wonder if they made the right decision about accepting your job offer.
Make the employee feel welcome and build trust in their relationship with you and other employees. If an employee doesn't feel valued or welcome at a new workplace, they will be less motivated to do their best work and be more likely to search for another job soon after being hired.
Help them fit into the company culture. Each company has its own unique culture that sets it apart from others. Your role as an employer is to ensure that this culture is reflected in everything you do as a business—including how you treat employees and what behaviors are considered acceptable or unacceptable at work.
A good onboarding process can help a company reduce its turnover rate.
When an employee resigns, it costs more than just the time and expense of finding someone new to take their place, but also the time and expense of training that person. And then if they don't work out, there's the time and expense of repeating the whole process again. A good onboarding process can help you avoid this cycle by making employees feel valued from day one--which in turn makes them more likely to stay with the company for the long term.
A good onboarding process creates a great first impression of the company
First impressions are lasting impressions. When you meet someone for the first time, you always remember how they made you feel. The same applies to people's first experiences in a new workplace environment, which is why it's very important to set a positive tone with your employee from the start. If their first impression of your company is a negative one, it may be tough to improve their experience moving forward.
The goal here is not only to make sure that the new employee feels welcome, but also that they are given all of the tools, resources and knowledge needed in order to succeed at their job right off the bat because if those things aren't provided during this critical period, then employees will often feel like they aren't being supported by management and this may lead them down a path towards poor performance or worse yet quitting altogether!
A good onboarding process can decrease employee stress.
As a new employee, there is a lot of uncertainty about the job. Is there anything I should know before I get started? "Will I work well with my new boss? How do I fill out my timesheet? Who will greet me on my first day?” By giving employees information in advance, you're reducing their uncertainty and therefore reducing their stress. A great way to do this is with a welcome package and/or an orientation session that includes the following:
Company culture information. What is your company's mission statement? How does your organization describe its own culture? What are the norms in terms of dress code and punctuality? Having this information will help new employees settle into the organization more smoothly.
Duties and responsibilities. The more clear you can be about what exactly it is that your new hire should be doing, the more confident he or she will feel about getting started. This also gives both parties an opportunity to discuss any questions or concerns before work begins in earnest.
Compensation details. This document should include a breakdown of wages and benefits like vacation days, sick time off and health insurance coverage (if applicable). It may also include information on how often raises happen as well as performance-based incentives such as bonuses or stock options (if applicable).
A good onboarding process lets everyone know exactly what the expectations are for a new hire.
A strong onboarding process is a perfect way to ensure that both the new employee and his/her team have a clear understanding of, well, just about everything.
It will make sure that everyone knows precisely what is expected of the new hire. It will let everyone know what's expected from them in terms of performance, conduct, communication and deadlines.
When everyone's on the same page (or at least fairly close), it's easier for the new person to acclimate themselves to the company and their team. They'll get more done faster, and they'll feel comfortable doing it. In turn, you'll have a confident employee who can contribute meaningfully sooner – which is good news for your bottom line!
A good onboarding process will offer both online and in-person components.
Remote work is here to stay and it has drastically changed the landscape of how we work. With this in mind, it is important to build an onboarding process that contains both online and in-person components. For instance, new hire documents can be completed either in person or online. There’s no right or wrong way to have employees complete documents. It’s based on your organization’s culture. But, get creative and engage your new employee in your process by using video based content that welcomes them and provides training on anything they need to know whether they are in person or online.
No matter the size of your company, the onboarding process needs to be taken seriously. A good employee onboarding program can help your new hires feel like they are a part of a team. It will help them understand the importance of their role within the company, as well as help them become familiar with how things work at their new workplace. Most importantly, it will give your people what they need in order for them to be successful in their roles and develop positive relationships with coworkers.