Onboarding Best Practices:
Onboarding is an important process for ensuring success in retention, reducing turnover, and maximizing the productivity of new hires.
With an effective onboarding strategy in place, we can acclimate new hires into company culture, policies and provide them with training, feedback, and support. An effective onboarding process will rapidly make a new hire feel welcome and prepared to settle in to become a functioning, contributing part of the company. However, creating and delivering effective onboarding programs can be difficult, exclusively in a remote or hybrid work environment.
Why is onboarding so important?
Poor employee onboarding is one potential explanation for why 28% of people leave their jobs within 90 days. It’s an unfortunate outcome, considering the time, resources, and funds companies invest in sourcing, interviewing, and training new hires.
Companies with effective onboarding procedures see an 82% increase in new hire retention. Because of the hybrid nature of post-pandemic labor, it's crucial to have both an effective onboarding program and an automated, standardized onboarding procedure. Improving your new hire onboarding process brings numerous advantages to the business, extending outlying the important factor of new hire retention.
Preboarding New Hires:
Preboarding is the process of beginning the onboarding process for a new hire before their first day. Even before they start working for you, it's necessary to convey to potential employees that your company is organized and friendly. Send a welcome package that include tools like a laptop, an ID card, and any other branded items that are emblematic of your company.
Get Joining Checklist done:
The best practice of the onboarding process includes creating an email ID, employee ID, preparing a training plan, completing HR papers such as nondisclosure agreements, signing employment forms, insurance forms, and adding bank information for the payroll system.
Positive welcoming culture:
Onboarding is not just a process of training and paperwork, but it’s a process of building culture, relationships, and trust. To create a positive and welcoming culture, you should provide opportunities for socializing with managers, mentors, peers, and HR such as welcome meetings, virtual coffee chats, and team-building activities.
Assign a Mentor:
When new hires are paired with a mentor they feel comfortable asking them about the culture and team. Choose mentors who are positive role models and are excited to show new employees their hopes. Onboarding is not a one-time event, it's a continuous process that lasts for several weeks or months. Organizations should provide new hires with ongoing support and feedback to help them grow, improve, and learn the job better. Mentor should also monitor their progress and performance, and adjust their onboarding program accordingly. For instance, if you discover any gaps or difficulties, you can provide further training, coaching, or resources.
Setting goals and career path:
Work with your new hire to identify where they could improve, how they like to learn, their goals, and what you can do to support them – not just for their current task, but for the jobs they would eventually like to move into. New hires should know exactly what is expected of them by the company. Set out clear Key Performance Indicators (KPI), Key Result Areas (KRA), and necessary skill, and use standard organizational tools to communicate progress to the new hire. It’s also a good quality to give them feedback.
Feedback collection from New Hires:
Collecting feedback from new employees periodically helps to refine the Onboarding process in your company. You can get opinions and ideas for improvement from new hires by using open-ended inquiries.