Barbara Ashton
The better your onboarding process is, the faster your new hires will become productive members of your team, and the more likely they'll commit to being valuable long term business builders.
A good onboarding program makes all the difference in how quickly your new hire steps up to the plate and really shows their stuff. Not convinced you need an onboarding strategy? Sit down with your hiring managers and ask yourselves:
A: How long does it take for you to know when a new employee is going to be a long-term productive member of your team?
B: How long does it take for a new employee to exhibit the values and competencies that make you feel comfortable enough to have them work with a valued customer?
If your answers don’t quite measure up, you’re not alone. In fact in most companies one third of people are job searching within less than six months of employment, and almost one-third of externally-hired executives miss expectations in the first two years.
Let’s review the essential components of employee onboarding:
#1 EMPLOYEE HANDBOOK
Organizing this handbook in an easy to follow reference format – and published online –will encourage your employees to have a link on their smart phone so they can find important information as needed on the job. This also gives more time for the new hires to focus on training with tasks at hand. Beware of too much industry jargon, do’s and don’ts, as this can be a sure fire way to put new hires to sleep, and deter longer term employees from properly using it.
Tip: Always keep your bus book up to date. This is the book that tells others what to do in the event someone on the team, for whatever reason, and hopefully not because they were hit by a bus, simply doesn’t show up.
#2 WORKSPACE PREPARATION
Nothing makes someone feel more welcome than when you do things to prepare for them, and to make their arrival feel special. Common first day essentials to have in place: email account, business cards, security badge, keys, access cards, cell phone, credit cards, computer with passwords and networking protocols in place
#3 ENGAGEMENT FROM DAY ONE
Making your new hire feel they belong is at the very heart of employee onboarding. Team involvement, relevant, interactive and fun should be top of mind.
New hires feel much more secure knowing that you care enough about their well-being to ensure they have others to safely turn to with their questions. Consider a mentor, someone established in the company - not their boss - but someone at a level that your new hire will feel comfortable seeking assistance and learning the ropes from.
Tip: Building engagement is about being consistent. Values clearly communicated and consistently committed to throughout your organization leave little room for misinterpretation.
#4 A REAL TRAINING PROGRAM
Today’s hires are looking for employers who will invest in them in return for their commitment, drive and loyalty. Let's face it. An employee's pay cheque turns cold pretty quickly when care and concern for their emotional well-being and professional development is overlooked. Your training program needs to be clearly laid out and documented to avoid misinterpretation, and will often form the first of their performance benchmarks.
#5 ASK QUESTIONS & LISTEN
Asking relevant questions and actively listening demonstrates you care what your team likes (or not) about their work and the company as a whole, and where they see their career goals fitting in with the goals of the organization. New hires and seasoned employees alike will be talking about this and deepening their commitment to you because of this during break times.
Tip: Asking these questions can be tricky, as many employees won’t freely volunteer the whole truth for fear of losing their job or being bypassed for a promotion. Here’s where anonymous survey software is a great resource. A FREE and easy tool for this is SurveyMonkey. You can set up a core of ten questions to assess what some or even all levels of employees think about current workplace problems, concerns, and their wish list for career development. That will give you meaningful insight and get you and your team off to some very important, and engaging, dialog. ■
Barbara Ashton is CEO and Executive Search Consultant with Ashton & Associates. Offices located in Kamloops and Kelowna serving industry leaders throughout BC’s Okanagan Interior.
800-432-6893
