Companies must go above and beyond to develop an employee experience that can attract, engage, and retain people in today’s competitive job market. Employee onboarding is an important aspect of that experience.
There are numerous advantages to properly onboarding employees, including improved productivity and retention, as well as better talent attraction and stronger business culture. With these employee onboarding best practices, you can create a wholesome initial experience for your employees.
What Is the Onboarding Process for New Employees?
The systematic and purposeful transformation of potential prospects into top-performing workers is known as an employee onboarding process. Companies provide new workers with the information, relationships, and resources they need to feel comfortable and secure enough to execute excellent work by carefully arranging onboarding steps.
The shift occurs during the recruitment process when candidates see themselves working for your organization. It accelerates once an applicant accepts an offer and becomes an employee. It all comes to a head during the employee’s crucial first days and weeks on the job when they (hopefully) form strong ties with their new coworkers.
Most significantly, an employee’s onboarding experience reverberates throughout their time with your organization, setting the tone for their whole career. Early exits and high employee turnover can result from a negative experience. A positive event can set the tone for long-term contentment.
What Is the Importance of Employee Onboarding Processes?
According to research, implementing an efficient new recruit onboarding process (Which generally includes a structured orientation program) can have a significant beneficial influence on corporate success as well as employee engagement, retention, and productivity over time.
The following are some of the advantages of effective employee onboarding strategies:
Increase employee retention and loyalty: Employees who have had a positive onboarding experience are more likely to stay with a company for three years or more.
Strengthen corporate culture: An effective onboarding process will assist new team members in comprehending the firm’s vision, mission, and values, as well as reinforcing the anticipated behaviors and attitudes that make up the company culture.
Encourage a sense of belonging and inclusion: A sense of belonging is said to drive organizational success by 93 percent of respondents to Deloitte’s 2020 Global Human Capital Trends survey. A good onboarding program can significantly reduce anxiety and boost a new employee’s sense of belonging to the organization.
Increase productivity: A good onboarding process can boost productivity by up to 70% by laying out clear work and organizational requirements, decreasing errors, and saving time and frustration.
Reduce turnover costs: The average cost-per-hire in the United States was $4,129, and it took 42 days to fill a position, according to SHRM’s Human Capital Benchmarking Report. Long-term employee engagement can be achieved through excellent onboarding practices.
Attract top talent: It’s a small world, and websites like Glassdoor allow employees to share their work experiences with other job seekers. If you provide a positive onboarding experience for new team members, word will get around.
5 Best Practices for Onboarding New Employees
It can take months to prepare a new employee for the information, skills, and behaviors needed to contribute to the success of the company.
It’s nearly impossible to design a precise onboarding agenda, timetable, or template due to the vast time horizon for onboarding, which can last far into the first year of employment.
Instead, use some of these best practices to develop long-term goals and indicators that will help you assess whether onboarding is a success.
1.Conducting Background Checks
Employers choose individuals that they believe would be the best fit after conducting interviews and selecting suitable applicants. Should the employer hire the individual, they select right away? They could, but failing to complete a background check on the individual could have long-term consequences for the organization. Conducting background checks will also make your onboarding process much more efficient. Background checks are extremely important and should be conducted by all employers, regardless of industry. Here are the top three reasons to do background checks on new hires.
- Highlighting Criminal Records
Employers can see any convictions a person has by conducting a background check. They can ensure that they are not employing someone who is potentially harmful, unreliable, or untrustworthy. Traffic infractions or penalties may also be revealed during a background check. This is especially important if the job requires you to drive a business vehicle. Also, hiring someone with a clean track record automatically makes the organization trustworthy.
- Keeping the Company Safe
Background checks are considered a preemptive strategy to ensure an organization’s integrity and the safety of its employees. Background checks can reveal certain types of information that might help an employer decide where to assign an employee and where not to. Someone with a history of substance misuse, for example, would not be suitable for work in a hospital or pharmacy. Someone with a criminal past, for example, would not be qualified to serve as a security guard, and so on.
- Verifying Education Credentials
Background checks are frequently used to verify people’s educational backgrounds, in addition to their job history. It’s not uncommon for people to lie on their resumes or exaggerate some details in order to appear more appealing to employers. Employers can ensure that candidates have the degrees and professional certifications they claim by doing an education verification check on them. If the employer discovers that the information provided by the application is false, they can exclude that candidate and go on to the next. After all, no one wants to hire someone who is dishonest.
Background checks are crucial for a multitude of reasons. Whether or not your firm participates in them, it is critical to know and appreciate that they are liable and responsible for anything that occurs while their employees are on the job. You can start the onboarding process after you’ve successfully completed a background check on your applicants. Once you can trust your new employee, you will realize how much easier onboarding can be.
2.Involving Senior Executives to instill Company culture
Your human resources department isn’t the only one responsible for onboarding. While HR experts are frequently involved in the development of a new hire onboarding program, onboarding activities are the duty of the entire organization – team members, managers, and senior executives.
Involving a senior leader, such as a founder, allows that individual to assist new employees in understanding the company culture, educate them on the firm’s history, and explain company values and required behaviors.
3.Conduct one-on-one sessions on a regular basis
The major goal of holding regular one-on-one (1:1) meetings with your team members (also known as “check-ins”) is to create strong and productive connections between you (the manager) and the individual members of your team.
As soon as possible, include these 1:1s into your new employee’s daily work schedule and make them a habit. Consider holding your first 1:1 meeting with them on their first day of work as part of their onboarding and orientation program. This will serve as a foundation for future meetings.
4.Create opportunities for co-workers to interact
Being the new kid on the block can be challenging. You can assist your new employees in their efforts to connect with their new co-workers and build emotions of belonging and inclusion in a variety of ways, including:
- Short introductory meetings with co-workers should be scheduled.
- Request that a current team member serves as a mentor or buddy for your new hire.
- To establish a more casual, informal environment for getting to know each other, host a team lunch or team-building event.
- Before the new hire’s first day of work, send them a welcome video that introduces them to their new team.
5.Conduct an “off-boarding” exercise to learn why people quit
Off-boarding consists of a number of activities, many of which focus on understanding the employee experience. This is typically done by gathering feedback through mechanisms like exit interviews and surveys.
One of the goals of an effective onboarding process is to maximize employee retention and loyalty. When an employee does leave, it’s critical to understand why and what could have been improved in the onboarding process to prevent that from happening.
Conclusion
You can ensure that you’re covering all of the relevant information efficiently and effectively by constantly striving to enhance and update your onboarding efforts. Following these onboarding best practices will hands-down guarantee that each new hire is ready for the job and pave the way for their success.
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