Easy Ways to Improve Your Onboarding Process
A new hire’s first day can set the tone for the rest of their time at your company. Putting your business’s best foot forward and showcasing your efficiency, loyalty, and personability are vital to making a strong first impression on your new employee. A great way to do that is by implementing a robust onboarding process.
Onboarding a new employee can be challenging for both the employee and the employer. It can be a seemingly endless storm of handshakes, introductions, filling out paperwork, and navigating your new office. By developing an onboarding process, you can introduce your new hire to your company in a more systematic and organized manner.
The Onboarding Process
Unlike employee orientation, employee onboarding is a process designed to introduce new hires to their daily responsibilities, technologies, and procedures. This process helps them fully integrate into the company and can take several months to a year to complete. Onboarding may include personalized training, tours of the building or job sites, shadowing other employees, and more. While this process can quickly become an overwhelming experience, there are several ways to simplify it.
Pre-board the Employee
To ensure that your new hire doesn’t feel overwhelmed on their first day, employers should consider pre-boarding them before their official start date. This allows employees to complete administrative tasks and necessary paperwork ahead of time. Required documents typically include tax forms, direct deposit forms, and nondisclosure or non-compete agreements.
Additionally, providing the necessary materials or equipment that they will need for their role can help ease them into their new position. These materials might include their computer, mouse, business cards, or uniform. By sending the required paperwork and materials before their start date, new hires can focus more on the onboarding process when they arrive and make the most of their first day.
Set Up a Meet and Greet
One of the most overwhelming aspects of an employee’s first day is meeting their new team. Depending on the size of the workforce, the level of stress can vary, but memorizing names and trying to make a great first impression can be a challenging task. To ease this burden, consider scheduling a designated time for the new hire to meet and talk with their coworkers. Organizing a team lunch or happy hour is an excellent way to bring everyone together in a more relaxed setting. This approach will help foster stronger connections among your workforce and make everyone feel more comfortable collaborating.
Incorporate Job Shadowing
Every employee is unique, which means that their training and learning styles may vary. Some people learn best by reading, while others excel through hands-on activities, and some retain information better when they hear it. Incorporating job shadowing into your onboarding process can effectively address these different learning styles by combining them. This approach allows new hires to experience their roles firsthand, ask questions, and gain practical experience. Additionally, employers should consider having new hires shadow employees across various departments. This practice will help them understand the business as a whole.
Practice Open Communication
To fully understand how the onboarding process is going for your new hire, it’s best practice to consistently check in with them. Scheduling weekly meetings or quick check-ins can help you monitor their progress and provide a safe space for them to share any concerns or questions they might have. This can also strengthen your relationship with them, fostering a greater sense of trust, camaraderie, and loyalty. It can also help you identify gaps in the onboarding process, allowing you to improve it and make changes if needed.
GMS Streamlines Employee Onboarding
Employees are the foundation of every successful company. While business owners know their operations inside and out, training new hires can be time-consuming and expensive. But with the help of Group Management Services (GMS), you can simplify and improve your onboarding process while reducing training costs.
Our online training programs are tailored specifically for small and mid-sized businesses and can be customized to meet your company’s unique roles and team responsibilities. Our Learning Management System can streamline your onboarding process by allowing your employees to easily access online training courses and resources. We also simplify onboarding through our Human Resource Information System (HRIS), enabling new hires to complete essential paperwork and orientation tasks online quickly and efficiently.
Proper onboarding can be the difference between a long and short-term hire. Learn how GMS can improve and simplify your onboarding process here!