Onboarding - from the employee's perspective
You want to create the most effective employee onboarding strategy, but how do you know what your employees want? Below, I’ve summarized some ideas that I’ve found through social media posts to help you get the most out of your approach, so that the onboarding plan not only works for you, but your employee as well.
Ask existing staff to volunteer as “Onboarding Buddies” for new staff. This has to be voluntary…feedback indicates that it often isn’t effective if employees are “voluntold” to be part of an informal new employee mentorship program.
Have a senior company lead/executive meet with the new employee on the first day (can be 20 minutes over coffee to get to know the new hire and share more about the company). A senior exec taking time out of their busy schedule to do such a thing affirms that they value their employees.
Someone taking time to share cultural norms is appreciated by a new employee – like most of the team usually eats lunch at XX time; the coffee at XX is really good; bring extra forks from home because they tend to disappear here; etc. (side note – why do the forks always go missing??)
Have the new employee’s name on their workstation and print off a “welcome” sign or something to make their first day special. Having company swag for the new employee was considered an added bonus.
Most comments revolved around the importance of a team lunch or coffee break during an employee’s first day so that everyone can get to know each other. The importance of building strong relationships amongst team members, and making the new employee feel part of the team, was noted again and again.
Several comments noted the importance of an org chart with names, photos and a short description of their role (even just one word – IT, sales, HR, etc). This helps the new employee get to know faces/names faster and helps speed up the learning curve as they know who to go to for different scenarios and question.
If you have other best practices to share, please leave a comment below!
If you’d like help with your employee onboarding process, reach out; we’d love to chat!
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We’re Erin and Peter, a husband and wife team passionate about making your organization successful through employee training and engagement. Join us as we explore new opportunities to improve your workplace.