Last Updated on December 19, 2023 by Mubashir Rafique
Whatever the size of your business, welcoming a new employee remains an important step toward growing your organization.
When you give new employees the attention and support that they deserve at the start of their journey, you guide them toward a successful career. However, if you fall short, you leave them feeling stranded from the start and constrained for however long they remain at your business.
In my years of navigating onboarding, I’ve seen its critical role in shaping an organization’s success. It’s not just a process; it’s an investment in your company’s future.
To ensure you do right by your workforce, here’s our quick guide to onboarding new employees.
Involve stakeholders to create a plan
If you’ve ever brainstormed with your workforce, you might be well aware of the advantages of appreciating different viewpoints within your company. This remains true in onboarding, where listening to the suggestions of department heads, recruitment specialists, and human resource personnel can help you create an optimal welcome process that takes care of all essential onboarding requirements.
Put together the necessary paperwork
Besides taking stakeholder suggestions for designing your onboarding process, you should also make a point to gather paperwork at the start of your employees’ journey. Apart from identification and banking documents, this also involves filing details from any cheap background checks that you performed or any non-disclosure contracts that your employee signed. This not only keeps important information in one place but also prevents future miscommunications.
Assign Managers and Mentors
Introducing your employee to their reporting heads is a major part of the onboarding process. After finding successful employees for your business, connect your new team members to their managers and mentors. This helps your new employees become more comfortable at their new work home while allowing them to learn the ropes from experienced professionals who know the ins and outs of your business.
Set Up Employee Accounts and Devices
To help your new employees feel more at home, pay special attention when setting up their company accounts, such as email, chat, and other work-related login credentials. You should also provide them with any devices they’ll need to perform their work. If your IT department has limited resources, you can also get help from a managed IT services provider.
Design a User-friendly Employee Portal
Supplementing your onboarding process with an employee portal can work wonders for streamlining the process. By introducing your employees to your portal and delivering necessary material to them through it, you make it easier for them to get acquainted with your company’s policies. If you don’t have an existing employee portal, you can have one designed by software development companies in Atlanta, Houston, San Jose, or wherever your business resides.
Create a Detailed Orientation Program
Orientation allows your new employees to learn more about your company, your policies, and their responsibilities before they begin. You can either have a department manager take care of this process or have someone from human resources supervise it. You can also execute it via your employee portal with helpful media that you create through an internal video communications service.
Make Training a Part of the Process
For most businesses, onboarding remains incomplete without job-specific training. If you want your employee to be equipped with all the tools that they need to perform their job, you need to adopt this perspective yourself. The best part? You don’t have to brainstorm the best training program names to create a good training module. By using a learning management system, you can easily design ideal training programs for every employee.
Encourage Questions and Feedback
To show employees that you are there to help them succeed, you need to foster an environment of open communication and encouragement. Motivate your employees to ask questions and provide feedback anytime during their onboarding journey. By making this an unwavering part of the onboarding process, you lay the foundation for a harmonious relationship with your workforce.
These suggestions for onboarding 101 give you the necessary tools to educate your new employees and support them with the tools and solutions that they need. As a result, you can count on your workforce to rise to expectations with higher chances of success.
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