- March 27, 2023
How to Onboard New Employees
1. Craft a Compelling Job Offer
A good offer letter will go a long way: In a recent BambooHR study, we found that employees who receive a highly effective offer letter are more than 17x more likely to feel emotionally connected to their organization.
Digital offer letter templates can streamline this process. If your applicant tracking system includes template options, you can easily customize them to include personal, genuine, and specific details from your new hire’s interview process.
Timing also matters. Be prepared to send the offer immediately after your final phone call with the candidate. Your applicant tracking system will also help you manage deadlines for candidates’ decisions so you can stay on top of next steps.
A year from now, your new employee might not remember what the letter said — but they’ll remember if it made them feel good about joining your team.
2. Use Onboarding Software to Create a Standardized Process
To create a truly effective onboarding experience, you need a standardized process.
Onboarding software is the key — and the quality of your software matters. A thoughtfully designed system allows you to automate time-consuming tasks and create a consistent process you can easily repeat throughout multiple hiring seasons.
For example, BambooHR’s onboarding tools can help you craft offer letters, digitally distribute new-hire packets, collect e-signatures, create automatic reminders, and more.’
3. Go Paperless
A big part of onboarding involves collecting information about a new hire — and while we don’t have any proof, we’re confident it’s often the most dry and boring part of the process.
An emailed preboarding packet with e-signature software can save time that’s better spent on valuable training and introductions.
In fact, a company with 100 employees can save as much as 40 hours per month by using e-signature software.
Make it convenient and flexible by speeding up the process with electronic pre-boarding and e-signature software. Easily gather new employee information in a way that’s trackable, organized, and fast.
To test our theory, ask any new employee if they would rather:
• Spend an hour filling out a stack of printed forms and signing paperwork by hand OR
• Clicking through digital forms and automatically applying their e-signature
We’re guessing the second answer will be popular with most people — excluding, perhaps, people in the pen, pencil, and printer industries.
4. Make a Good First Impression
To get up to speed, new employees will need instructions on company policy, benefits, compliance, procedures, and more. In many cases, this training will be the first extended face-to-face interaction new employees will have with your HR team.
This training is critical because it:
• Establishes what the company stands for and against
• Outlines expectations for employee behavior
• Showcases the human side of the organization
An effective onboarding process will cover these topics in engaging, inviting, and even funny ways. A well-written and up-to-date handbook or a funny video on IT procedures can go a long way towards showing your organization is made up of real people, not robots.
Making issues like standard procedures, mission statements, and other important information engaging also makes them memorable, furthering the primary goal of any training exercise.
5. Establish Your Organization’s Culture and Values
Whether your business is onsite, remote, or hybrid, it’s important to help build connections between coworkers.
Small companies often handle introductions intuitively, with zero instruction or issues. Shake hands all around, make some small talk, then take the new guy or gal out for lunch where you can ask whether they’d rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or a single horse-sized duck. Simple!
As companies expand, welcoming new employees gets harder. You want to make sure the new hires feel valued, but personalized introductions can become time-consuming or even overwhelming on large teams.
Still, introductions are important no matter the size of your organization — and set the tone for your overall culture and values.
To help solve this challenge, BambooHR offers templates for get-to-know-you questionnaires. These informal surveys make it easy to gather personal details, such as a new employee’s hobbies, favorite foods, or hometown. By distributing new hires’ answers, current employees will have plenty of opportunities to initiate conversations about common interests.
Meeting executives face-to-face is a rarity in larger organizations and can be tough to coordinate. But it’s a great way to make new employees feel valued — not to mention it safeguards against the embarrassment of a missed greeting later on. After all, there’s nothing worse than finding out you passed the CEO in the hallway without saying hello.
6. Provide Ongoing Support
New hires will be frustrated if they’re left to sink or swim. While HR should support onboarding, especially with paperwork, managers have the most impact on whether onboarding is a success or not.
We found that one-third of new hires (33%) want their manager or direct supervisor to show them the ropes.
Managers should set up regular check-ins with the new hire to make sure everything’s going well. This is especially important if the employee is remote and won’t strike up a conversation over coffee or at the copier.
New hires need to have a clear vision of the expectations so they understand what success looks like. Err on the side of over communication, especially if the new hire is remote.
While managers play a critical role in onboarding, new hires also appreciate support from someone who isn’t their boss. In a BambooHR survey, more than half of new hires (56%) say that having an onboarding buddy or mentor is one of the most important factors that helps them get up to speed and begin contributing.
Pair up your new hires with seasoned employees who will take interest in their careers.
This person should also be available to answer questions, especially those they may feel silly asking (like where the best lunch spot is or when most people log off).
Assigning a mentor also creates an automatic “friend” who can give new employees a connection. If the new hire is remote, try to match them with a mentor who is in the same city so they can meet for lunch or outside of work.
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