Companies and organizations employ more employees as they scale up in their businesses. The human resource department usually invests a great deal of time and resources in making sure they recruit the best employees for the company. But, the truth be told, it is not just about hiring the best candidates alone, it is important to give your new employees a proper orientation to socialize them into the company’s culture. Culture and onboarding go hand in hand.
Research has proven that effective on-boarding helps to make new employees productive as soon as possible. It also has a dramatic effect on job performance and satisfaction. Research by Glassdoor has shown that companies with the right onboarding process retain the new hires compared to others by 82% and increase their overall productivity by over 70%.1 According to Digitate, employees that have a negative onboarding experience are 2x (twice) more likely to seek other career opportunities later on.2
Did you just recruit some new employees? Are your former employees changing positions? Put in a planned and structured onboarding process to make it easier for your employees to understand the specific roles in your organization. What do you do about that? Keep reading to unlock the treasure!
The onboarding experience should be targeted at making the employees bond with the company. All organizations should develop an employee onboarding guide to make the program productive. The onboarding guide should focus on orientating them to the company’s vision and mission. They need to be aware of how the company goes about achieving their goals in their everyday tasks and duties. New employees also need to be aware of their roles and responsibilities and how it affects the productivity of the company.
A company’s culture is a top priority, therefore, developing and maintaining it is very important. During the onboarding process, it is necessary to share and provide information on the company’s culture and expectations with your new hires.
The Fundamentals of an effective onboarding experience
An effective on-boarding process is divided into three sections;
- Pre-joining (The period from when the job offer is made to when the employee joins the company)
- Joining (The period within the joining day and week)
- Post Joining (The period from Day one until the employee is 3 months old in the company)
Let’s have a look at the three individually.
The Pre-joining stage
It is usually recommended to view on-boarding as part of the recruitment process. In competitive markets such as India, joining rates are low even after offer acceptance. The following are illustrative best practices that can help to make the company’s culture bond during this period
- Reiterate the company’s vision, mission, and values (organizational alignment and making sure all the employees aligns with the company’s goal, etc to make progress)
- Help the new employee understand the role better and see how good the role is (i.e. the performance focus and job clarity) and how it is important to the company
- Enable the new employee to interact with the team; this enables him/her to bond easily in the environment. It can be done by introducing the new employee to the current employees and by making social connects
The Joining stage
Receiving a new employee is not just about making a public announcement and assignment. This welcoming process starts once they report to their first day at the company, so you need to get it right. The following are illustrative best practices that can help to make the company’s culture bond during this period.
- Enable the employees with all the company’s resources (both the tangible and intangible resources). You also need to introduce your new hires to the major stakeholders in the organization to make sure they know who to reach out to if they need anything with respect to their job
- Harp on the company’s vision, mission, and values
- Understand personal goals and how do they align with the company’s objectives. You need to create a sense of purpose in your employees with respect to job clarity, performance clarity, and expectation clarity. You should also allow them to ask questions
The Post Joining Stage
It is important to make a new employee feel well-situated at work and be a part of the team from day one until the employee is some months old. This stage requires attention to make the employee a productive and effective team member. Below are some recommended steps to follow
- Assign them a mentor/ buddy. An experienced and knowledgeable employee is a perfect fit for mentoring. The sole aim is to help the new employee grow in his/her current position. This also helps the employee navigate the learning curve in their role. A buddy performs a role like that of a mentor, but a buddy is usually a co-worker
- Constantly meet with the culture ambassadors in the organization to help the new hires understand the company’s culture and the right value behaviors
- Apart from assigning them a mentor and setting up meetings with them, ensure that their manager conducts a review to access their performance. Note that your feedback should be constructive and not destructive
- Assign both short-term and long-term projects for the new employee from an early stage. This would prevent them from feeling too relaxed thereby preventing organization drag. They can start working on smaller projects until they scale up in the company to handle bigger projects
On-boarding is powerful, but only if used correctly
On-boarding is a great tool if used properly for employers to win the heart and channel the energy of their employees. It is important for employers to understand effective onboarding is useful in setting some parameters in the company’s culture. These parameters include Organizational Alignment, Performance Focus, Collaboration, Wellbeing, Ownership, and Communication.
Finally, effective onboarding increases job retention, and increases culture alignment, and reduces organization drag. As an employer, conduct your study and survey to design the onboarding guide that is just perfect for your company.
We wish you success. You can share your thoughts with us in the comment section below. You can also reach out to us at [email protected]
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