Mastering Onboarding Part 2: Best Practices for Successful Onboarding

Although companies today recognise that onboarding is a critical element of the new-hire experience, it is not adequately prioritised in organisational or HR strategic objectives.

Often, onboarding is confused with basic processes such as getting set up with a workspace, laptop, email account, etc.

Unfortunately, a common, fatal flaw organisations tend to make is to treat onboarding as a "new employee orientation class" or "the first 30 days," rather than a 90 days or year-long process that helps employees get up to speed in their job and integrate into their new team and organisation. This ramp-up time is when employees learn their roles with the intention of being fully capable of performing all critical functions at a high level.

About a third of all new employees don't even last 90 days on the job!

To avoid the high cost linked with failed onboarding, here is a list of 

Best practices of Onboarding

• Onboarding starts even before the hiring process.

Employees are being onboarded the moment they visit the career page of your company website or talk to a recruiter or hiring manager.

• The optimum time frame for a new hire to be onboarded may vary by role and industry.

It can be the first 30, 90, 150 or even up to and beyond the first year of employment.

• Onboarding needn't only occur at the start of an employee's time with a new company.

There may be a need to onboard employees as they make critical transitions within the organization to new roles, be that a change of location or function.

The Key Objectives

• Create a sense of belonging.

New hires want to know if your company is the right place for them. They need to form a connection with the mission and purpose of the organisation as well as feel accepted by their coworkers.

While many onboarding programs today tout the company's vision, mission, and culture, they often fail to bridge the gap for employees between those concepts and how every role can make a difference.

• Deliver the right information, the right way.

Sometimes the training within an onboarding program tends to provide too much information and too many materials in a short time frame.

This approach doesn't give new hires enough time to digest and internalise what is presented to them.

• Make technology and processes easy.

Using new onboarding technology platforms might be tempting, but these tools have a short life span if they differ from the company's core system or intranet. What's more, some are difficult to learn.

This results in your new hires spending most of their time learning technology with a shelf-life, as opposed to getting effectively onboarded at the organisation and in their role.

You can develop effective onboarding programs by following these four key considerations:

1. Find the right balance between gathering data and processes

It is important to monitor but “survey fatigue” is real , beware of asking people to report and survey on top of their work. Modern technology can allow..

2. Involve the supervisor and team.

Communicate with the new hire's supervisor before their first day at work.

Make sure to schedule adequate time with the supervisor to have meaningful conversations about clarifying expectations, describing what success in the role looks like, as well as discussing implications for career growth.

Team members can be involved through meet and greet activities, job shadowing, as well as other informal networking and learning opportunities to better understand how other functions of the business work.

When the manager takes an active role in onboarding, employees are 3.4 times as likely to feel like their onboarding process was successful.

3. Create a framework and apply themes to the onboarding program.
4. Express the organisation’s DNA

New employees need to quickly understand the company’s uniqueness. The mission of the company, its values and objectives are all part of the DNA of the organisation. Fortunately you don’t need a complex DNA test to expose that but rather a way to start meaningful conversations. 

2. Do new employees know exactly how their job helps fulfil your company's mission?

Companies need to connect the employee to the organisation's mission or purpose and demonstrate how that employee personally impacts the brand or customer experience. Only four in 10 employees strongly agree that the mission or purpose of their company makes them feel their job is important.

Feeling like your job matters is an underrated aspect of performance. It not only influences brand advocacy, it also reduces absenteeism and improves safety and quality of work.

3. Do new employees experience your brand, mission, and values during onboarding?

Undoubtedly, some facets of onboarding will vary from company to company, regardless of a new hire's role or team, three elements should be central: the company's purpose, brand, and culture.

Companies can provide more memorable, brand-bolstering employee experiences by assigning professionals or hiring outside consultants in this area to optimise new workers' touch points with the company. In partnership with HR, this role strategically crafts communications and action items to manage employees' experiences -- often developing experience maps to better organise and execute their plans.

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