When a company hires a new trainee, it's expected that they fit in with the company culture and understand their responsibilities as quickly as possible. However, this isn't a process that they can do alone. Acclimating an employee to their role and the company's culture requires the help of you and your staff. This process is known as onboarding.
Onboarding is an important consideration to keep in mind especially when you start to grow your company. Without a proper onboarding process, it can be difficult for a new hire to fit in with the rest of the company. You should be aiming to engage new employees so that they have an easier time fitting in with everyone else.
Sadly, there are many companies that find it hard to create an effective onboarding process. In fact, studies have shown that as much as 20% of staff turnover occurs in the first 45 days of someone's employment. A good onboarding process can drastically improve employee retention rates and even boost a new hire's productivity.
But how can your company create an effective onboarding process? In this post, we'll be taking a deep look at onboarding, how to use it effectively, and also discuss some of the major benefits you can expect to see.
What is effective onboarding?
Onboarding can be as simple as handing your new hire a document to read, or it could involve walking them through their tasks in a detailed manner to ensure they understand everything. However, there's no “best” way to handle onboarding. Every company works differently, and they all have different resources at their disposal. This means that every company's onboarding process will be slightly different, hence why giving advice on effective onboarding can be quite challenging.
Instead, let's talk about the reasons behind onboarding and the goals that you should aim to achieve.
What is the purpose of onboarding?
The technical definition of onboarding would be to help new hires integrate with their fellow co-workers and office culture. A new hire doesn't have to be a completely new employee either. It could be someone that has transferred from one department to another, or even a returning employee that has been away from work for an extended period of time.
Is onboarding different from orientation?
While similar, the two have completely different goals. Orientation is a much simpler consideration and it's often used as an introduction to the company and the new hire's tasks. On the other hand, onboarding can last an indefinite amount of time and focuses more on the new hire's day-to-day activities while also helping them fit in with their colleagues.
Key elements to an effective onboarding process
Effective onboarding involves many different components that should be tweaked to suit your company. Here are the basic fundamentals of an effective onboarding process:
- Have a goal in mind with each step of the onboarding process. Each step of your onboarding process needs to have a clear goal. Outline these goals and create a timeline that will help you map out your expectations for the new hire.
- Personalize the onboarding process to suit both you and the new hire. The onboarding process should be customized to suit your new hire and their mentor. Consider the qualifications of the new hire and where their strengths and weaknesses are so you know how to help them acclimate.
- Encourage clear communication between the new hire and their mentor. It's important to establish clear lines of communication between both the new hire and their mentor. This can be accomplished through sharing mobile phone numbers, and email addresses, or even encouraging contact over programs such as Slack.
- Get your entire company involved, not just the mentor. While the mentor will be responsible for the majority of the onboarding process, it's also important to get the entire company involved to some degree. For instance, you should encourage existing staff members to help the new hire feel welcome. You should also invest resources into making the onboarding process smoother, such as creating a test work environment to help your new hire get acclimated to their tasks.
- Understand the importance of integrating with the company's culture. It's easy to feel lost and overwhelmed when joining a new team of people that have their own quirks. Make it easier for your new hire to integrate with the company culture by inviting them to events and hangouts, getting friendly with them, and giving them space to express themselves as well.
- Provide long-term support. Don't forget that onboarding is a long-term process. It could take weeks, months, or even over a year to reach your goals. As such, make sure you provide long-term support to the new hire so that they're always on the right path to becoming a valued member of your team.
The onboarding process can be difficult to plan, but as long as you keep these key elements in mind, you'll have a much easier time designing it to your exact needs.
Onboarding and legal compliance
Onboarding isn't just designed to welcome new employees into their roles–it's also used to teach them about the responsibilities and expectations of their roles. A great example of this is in legal compliance. Effective onboarding helps to ensure that your new hires receive the necessary training that will help them comply with any legal requirements and standards that you are bound by.
Anti-discrimination training
Employers should provide anti-discrimination training to employees when possible. It's designed to prevent any potential discrimination in the workplace but also stops it from happening to clients and customers. Anti-discrimination training could also pivot into sexual harassment awareness training. This will help your new hire understand how to identify cases of sexual harassment, how to report it, and also how to prevent it.
Information security training
Depending on the role that the new hire is expected to fill, they may encounter situations where they have access to information and data that is highly sensitive. In order to prevent any mishaps with data leaks or the mishandling of customer information, it's vital that you provide safety and security training to your new hires as part of the onboarding process.
Health and safety training
There are health and safety risks in virtually every workplace in the world. Whether it's tripping over wires or misusing power tools, you should alert your new hires of any potential dangers in the workplace and give them the necessary health and safety training so they have peace of mind. You should also review any security or health and safety protocols that the rest of your business follows so that they know how to respond to certain situations.
These are just a few examples of what you can do as an employer to help your new hires understand the legal responsibilities that they are expected to adhere to once they join your company. Not only does this make it safer for your new hire, but it also reduces the chances that your business will be seen in a negative light due to the reckless or misinformed actions of a new hire.
How onboarding saves time and money
So far, we've talked about onboarding being a benefit to new hires, but what can you expect to see as a company that is investing time and money into creating a smooth and effective onboarding process? The two biggest benefits are saving time and saving money. When you start focusing on the onboarding process and help your new hires acclimate to your company, you'll find that it becomes cheaper to hire new staff members, and your hiring process will become tighter and more efficient.
But how exactly does a good onboarding process achieve this?
- New hires become productive sooner. When you hire a new employee, it's understandable that it can take a few days for them to settle into their role. With an efficient onboarding process, you can drastically speed up the process so that they become productive sooner.
- Lower training costs. Training employees can cost money, but you can reduce those expenses by helping your new hires acclimate to their role through the experience and advice of existing employees.
- Fewer complications. Helping new hires settle into your business results in fewer complications later down the road. For instance, teaching them about compliance means less chance that they'll make a mistake and cause legal trouble.
- Improved retention rates. New hires that enjoy their first month at your workplace are far more likely to stay. If you create a good first impression and continue to provide support to help them with their tasks and responsibilities, there's a good chance that they'll stay longer and build up a greater sense of loyalty to your company.
- Better customer satisfaction. If your new hires are expected to engage with customers and clients, then having an effective onboarding process can greatly increase their satisfaction. You can offer them advice from experienced staff members on how to work together with customers, and they'll provide a much better service without the need for trial and error or learning from their mistakes.
- Reduced risk of errors. Lastly, a new hire that has gone through a great onboarding process is far less likely to make mistakes on the job. With the right training and information provided to them early on, the chances of them making costly mistakes can be drastically reduced.
In short, creating a good onboarding process is a fantastic way to boost employee productivity, lower training costs, and prevent errors and mistakes. This helps to save money in the long run, but it also saves time since you're less likely to replace an employee that is well-versed in how your company runs and what their responsibilities are.
Moving the onboarding process online
Let's say that you've been taking notes and putting together the framework for a solid onboarding process at your company. That's great! But how do you put that plan into action? What steps do you take in order to transform those ideas into something practical?
Most onboarding involves working closely with employees in a face-to-face manner. However, this isn't always practical and will heavily depend on the availability of you and your staff. A great alternative to this is to move the onboarding process online.
What makes an online onboarding process effective?
Online onboarding is effective because it provides informative resources on demand. Your new hires and existing employees can both review these important materials whenever they want, and you can encourage them to speak with you to clarify various points if they're unsure about something. This creates a fairly hands-off approach to onboarding, but it still imparts the wisdom of you and your senior staff because you get to create it yourself.
An online onboarding process still offers the same level of personalization that a traditional onboarding strategy would have. However, there are a couple of digital benefits that make it slightly more practical.
- You can edit the onboarding resources whenever you want. It's easy to make amendments and even add new resources when required. For instance, if you've recently added a new piece of technology to your workflow, then you can include instructions and guidelines on how to use it effectively as part of your onboarding resources. In short, it becomes a persistent educational resource that everyone can use.
- It saves a lot of money because your employees only need to contribute to the creation of the onboarding resources. They can continue to spend time on their regular duties instead of being reassigned as a mentor in addition to handling their usual responsibilities.
- Lastly, you can also take advantage of reporting and analytics with an onboarding platform. You can keep track of what resources your new hires have read, you could test their knowledge, and you can even analyze the onboarding process itself to see where it can be optimized.
Some closing thoughts
The onboarding process doesn't have a template or guideline that will work with every business. It's important to consider your company's circumstances so that you can create an effective onboarding process that suits your needs.