With 22 percent of employees leaving their new job within the first 45 days, it's more vital than ever for employers to provide a cohesive and comprehensive onboarding process. You want new employees immersed in the culture and connected to the staff to keep them satisfied and excited about their career move. Still, your onboarding process may not be hitting the right notes. Use these tips to improve your current process to help new employees transition into your company.
Schedule Adequate Time
Onboarding isn't instantaneous. The goal of onboarding is integration with the employee's co-workers, company culture and management team. You want new employees to feel as though they have the information needed to accurately perform their job duties. No matter the workplace, that requires time. Ensuring that the onboarding process is given adequate time for completion and success is essential. Work onboarding into the training process throughout those pivotal first 45 days.
Provide a Plan
If you wouldn't start training without a plan, why would you start onboarding without one? New employees need time to reflect on what information they need to master their new position. They need to know who they'll be meeting and the goals of those meetings so they can ask the right questions. Formulating a comprehensive schedule for the onboarding process helps employees understand what information will be provided and what questions they'll need to ask. If you haven't come up with an onboarding plan, now is the time.
Start a Mentorship
New jobs are stressful and often new employees become frustrated when they feel they have to go it alone. Building a mentorship program that matches new employees with more seasoned employees is a great way to acclimate new employees and give them a contact during that first year. Pick only your top employees and match by personality as well as experience. Providing a work buddy not only helps morale but it helps productivity by giving your new employee a resource to go to when they have questions.
Make Introductions
While you know that Deb in Accounting does check requests and Billy is the IT person to talk to about system upgrades, new employees don't. Introductions are a simple but effective way to smooth the path for new employees to find success. Work with employees to create a list of colleagues who are a vital contact for the job and make sure each new employee meets those people or is introduced to that department. Spread this process out over days or weeks rather than doing a whirlwind tour of the company so new employees can talk and make connections, strengthening their bonds within the organization.
Monitor Progress
How do you know when a new employee is fully onboarded? If you don't have a data set that accurately determines the answer to that question, you're already one step behind. Onboarding is a concrete process and it should be treated just like training or job performance reviews. Create and monitor onboarding metrics to determine whether the process is working and where new employees are in that process. Follow up on that progress at regular intervals not only to ensure new employees are getting the full benefit of onboarding but also to see where that process is failing.
A successful onboarding process helps employees feel engaged and gives them the information to do their job effectively. For businesses, it ensures that new employees are given the skills to perform their job effectively and quickly. Take the time to consider whether your onboarding process is taking these steps to foster new employee success.
