A good onboarding experience works wonders for your new hires and sets them up for success. Here’s how you can improve yours!
A good onboarding experience is effective, consistent, and simple. The experience will help you make a good impression on your new hires and maintain the momentum and excitement from the start. Additionally, investing in a positive onboarding experience will help you to: -
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Build a positive office culture
Creating a strong office culture in the workplace takes a lot of time and energy. Moreover, if you are unable to retain the employees that you already have, the process gets longer. A structured onboarding experience is likely to boost your employee retention and strengthen the already existing office culture. Having a positive and strong office culture plays a big part in motivating the employees and setting a positive mood in the workplace.
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Retain employees
When the employees feel welcome and motivated from the get-go, they will assimilate into the office culture faster. The business will retain more employees with this welcoming system. Always remember that your employees are the Company’s biggest asset and retaining them should be one of your top priorities.
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Boost productivity
When the new hires go through a positive onboarding experience it will help them be up to speed faster. They will be equipped to tackle their job responsibilities sooner in comparison to new hires who don’t undergo training. In fact, a study conducted by the Brandon Hall Group showed that creating an effective onboarding experience boosts productivity by 70%. The new hires will work under minimal supervision and operate within the company culture.
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Saves time
A welcoming onboarding experience integrates new hires into the company. If the new hires are well integrated, they will start making their contribution to the Company program faster. This gives everyone else in the team time to meet their deadlines and make their contribution. It’s time to change your onboarding experience if it lags for weeks and prevents the other team members from meeting their deadline.
The ultimate guide for improving your onboarding experience
New hires need an onboarding experience that is short, simple, and a more personal workplace relationship with the managers, peers, and stakeholders. Gone are the days when a simple form and video explaining how everything in the organization works… Now, new hires need a more personalized experience with the management playing an active role in the process. However, most companies are not capable of supporting a strong onboarding program. In fact, most do not even offer new hires mentorship programs to help them develop their skills and assimilate into the workplace culture.
If you have a management role, it is your duty to ensure that new hires get a positive experience. But how can you do this, if you don’t know the steps to take when creating a strong onboarding system? We have created a step-by-step guide, which will help your organization improve retention, boost creativity, and build a strong office culture.
1. Create clear goals for success
You need to create an onboarding experience from the ground up by setting up goals for the program. Your goals should be clear and should address the 4Cs, which are:
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Connection
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Compliance
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Culture
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Clarification
Once your goals are listed, create a system that you can use to measure the success of the program. The measures should have a direct link to the goals. A good example is analyzing the percentage of new hire retention and the feedback of the new hires about their onboarding experience. Before you move forward with implementing your goals, ensure that you meet with the other stakeholders in the organization and that they agree with your next steps.
2. Set up a multi-department onboarding committee
The onboarding experience should involve everyone in the organization, not just the human resource department. New hires should be introduced to their department as soon as possible. Additionally, the team should be informed why the new employee has been hired and the roles that they play in the organization. Since the new hires will be working with other teams in other departments, they should get informed of this connection. As a manager, it is your duty to foster this relationship with other departments and help new hires know how they will interact with the other departments.
Connecting new hires with the entire organization gives them a sense of inclusion and strong roots. Furthermore, they will directly experience the company culture and increase their overall performance and retention.
3. Offer support through the onboarding experience
Your new onboarding experience should focus on creating connections and performance coaching. Create an onboarding system that helps you track each system of the experience in real-time. For example:
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When the new hire comes on board, create an onboarding portal that allows the employee to sign in. Once they are in, they can view the welcome package that may include a video and get their daily scheduled tasks.
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Take the time to monitor the progress of their onboarding experience. The new hire can check in once they complete a task in their daily schedule. Additionally, you can implement a feedback option that allows the new hire to provide their feedback in real-time.
Integrate this platform with the current human resource system for tracking purposes.
Conclusion
Organizations are struggling with creating a positive onboarding experience and retaining talented employees. By spending time, energy, and resources to improve your onboarding experience, managers can increase employee engagement, boost productivity, improve retention of employees, and build the confidence of new hires.
