How To Onboard New Hires

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After the hiring process, there is still the task of onboarding your new employee so that they can become a fully engaged member of the company.

Though this varies between positions, every job requires some amount of time where your employee learns the intricacies of their job. It is your responsibility as an employer to guide them during this process.

Key Takeaways

• Onboarding new employees require preparation, pre-onboarding, time-bound goals, and consistent assessment.

• Onboarding includes legal and financial paperwork, compliance training, and an introduction to business processes.

• The goal of onboarding should be that your new employee feels confident in their abilities to perform their job successfully.

• Consider using SMART goals and assigning a mentor to help with the onboarding process.

What Is Employee Onboarding?

Employee onboarding is the process of integrating new hires into their role within a company. The goal is to get your new employees settled in, engaged, and ready to contribute.

This is because onboarding is an investment in the future success of your employee and your company. Therefore, it is important to be effective with your onboarding process because it will improve retention and productivity, which will increase your company’s value.

A poorly implemented onboarding process can have the opposite effect. Your new employees may feel lost, overwhelmed, or unwelcomed. This can manifest into low morale, low productivity, and resignations. You will have to spend more time, energy, and money correcting problems that could have been avoided with a proper onboarding process.

How To Onboard New Hires

To onboard new hires, you will want to:

1. Prepare. The first step to successful employee onboarding is to plan ahead. Without a proper plan, you may forget to provide key information or other resources to help your employee feel comfortable.

   Prepare your onboarding process by laying out a checklist of what tasks need to get done so that your employee can fulfill their job responsibilities as soon as possible. This includes training, paperwork, and introductions to other team members.

   It also helps to define success as a series of objectives relevant to your employee’s growth. Set this up by implementing attainable goals and regular check-ins to monitor their progress. From this, you can gather whether or not your employee is fulfilling their potential.

2. Pre-onboard. Provide your new hire with enough information, so they know what to expect for their first day. Be careful not to overwhelm them. Seek out only the necessities, such as providing log-in information to get them set up on your company’s email or other internal systems.

   Pre-onboarding should be used as a way to make the first day run smoothly as possible for both you and the new employee. Provide and gather essential information that prevents surprises and saves time.

3. Set goals for the first day and the first 30, 60, and 90 days. Have realistic goals that you wish to achieve with your new hire. It will help you to spread these out over a period of time, so consider using the 30/60/90-day plan method.

   Onboarding can take anywhere from several weeks to several months, so don’t pressure yourself to get everything done right away. Instead, prioritize your needs and the needs of your new employee.

   Figure out what you want to see done by the first day and the first week. From there, consider what types of projects or goals you want your new employee to focus on for their first few months at the company. This direction will make the process more efficient and effective for your new employee.

4. Set up consistent check-ins. Remember that the goal of onboarding is to make sure your new hire feels settled in and that they understand their role and how your business is run. Check-ins are critical to ensuring a successful onboarding process because you need to be aware of your new employee’s progress.

   These check-ins do not have to be long or detailed. A simple 15-minute conversation once a week can be enough to gauge the effectiveness of onboarding. You can use your plan and goals for the new employee as a framework to build the check-ins around. You should also provide your new employee the opportunity to give feedback.

   All of this combined can help you be proactive and make necessary adjustments to ensure a positive onboarding experience.

5. Arrange six-month and first-year benchmarks and evaluations. Along with the informal check-ins, set up formal evaluations based on benchmarks you set at the beginning. Make sure to keep these benchmarks attainable and share them with the new employee from the start.

   The benchmarks should not be seen as a way to set up punishments or rewards. Instead, they should be used as educational tools for you and your new employee. You want to see some tangible evidence that your employee has integrated themselves as effective member of your team.

   These more formal evaluations can help you decide if any significant changes need to be made, as well as an opportunity to reinforce desirable behavior.

Components Of Onboarding

There are a variety of factors that help your employee integrate into your company. Any onboarding process will want to include the following:

• Legal and financial paperwork. This includes documents such as:

  • W-4

  • I-9

  • Health insurance information

  • Retirement plan information

  • Direct deposit banking information

  • Code of conduct or other company contracts

• Mandatory compliance training. This is anything your employee needs to complete to be compliant with any legal regulations and can include:

  • Sexual harassment training

  • Anti-discrimination and inclusion training

  • OSHA training

  • Fire safety and first aid

  • Workplace health and safety

• Company culture, values, and mission. It is important that your employee understands how they play a role within the company. Consider:

  • Introductory presentations from founders or executives

  • Affirmations from employees or clients

  • Infographics chartering success and future of the company

  • Quizzes on the company’s values

• Procedures and business practices. You want your employee to fit into whatever systems you already have in place, so provide them with information such as:

  • Employee handbook

  • Chain of command

  • Company policies

  • Benefits and PTO policy

• Technical skills training. This is training specific to the job, and it can include:

  • Certification to use equipment

  • Orientation for tools, devices, hardware, or software

• Soft skills training. These will be interpersonal skills you find important for your employee’s success, such as:

  • Communication

  • Customer service

  • Conflict resolution

  • Project management

  • Working on a team

• Technology and systems orientation. This will be training for devices and systems that are essential to your employee’s job, such as:

  • Computer or workstation setup

  • Project or content management systems

  • Tools of communication

  • Technology related to the profession

• Introductions and tour. This part of onboarding will help your new employee feel welcomed and understand where to go and who to talk to for future needs. Have your new hire:

  • Meet with fellow employees, especially those they will be working with

  • Meet a human resources representative

  • Meet supervisors, executives, or other company leaders

  • Tour the workplace

Is Onboarding the Same as Orientation?

It is important to understand that onboarding is different from orientation. Onboarding is a long-term outlook, while orientation is a one-time event.

Orientation is the initial welcome of a new employee to a company and the completion of necessary paperwork. Meanwhile, onboarding is the process that settles the employee into their role and sets them up for success.

Do not confuse orientation with onboarding. If you focus solely on orientation, you may think you have successfully onboarded a new hire, but this is not true. Onboarding requires a greater commitment to engaging the new hire and ensuring they feel confident in their role and are on the right path toward success.

Tips for Onboarding New Employees

Consider the following tips to help your onboarding process be as effective as possible:

• Create an onboarding plan. If you set up an onboarding plan, you can proactively meet your new employee’s needs. You will be ready to provide resources as well as specifics to ease the transition. This can be used every time you have a new employee, so you don’t have to start from scratch.

  You can also use your plan to gauge the success of the onboarding process because it acts as a reference to the employee’s development.

• Make onboarding a process, not a single step. It is extremely important to understand that onboarding is more than orientation. Yes, the bare minimum may be to have your employee fill out all the necessary paperwork to get started, but without more guidance, you risk overwhelming your new hire.

  Show to your employee that you care about their success by engaging in their development as new members of the team.

• Talk and listen to the new employee. Since onboarding is a process, make sure you are engaging with the new employee. Learn about who they are, what they value, and what their goals are, and use this information to build a stronger professional relationship.

• Provide flexible reference material. Everyone learns differently, so make sure whatever resources you provide your new employee present information in different ways. Combine different forms of media, such as infographics, tables, images, and videos, to encourage a deeper understanding.

• Set SMART goals. Use the SMART method that says goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound to make sure the goals you set for your new employee are reasonable.

• Provide a peer mentor. Find someone who is willing to be the “go-to” for most questions, preferably someone in a similar position as your new employee or who has a similar experience.

  This person can be more involved with the day-to-day progression of your new employee, which frees you up to focus on the bigger picture of their development.

• Involve others. Similar to using a mentor, involve others in your company to help out. This is a great way to introduce your new hire to other employees. The delegation of tasks will also maximize the onboarding process without sacrificing too much of anyone’s time.

• Clearly outline expectations. Use the onboarding process to be clear about what success looks like. This provides direction and helps avoid any miscommunications on what your new employee needs to do to succeed.

• Encourage questions. There is likely a lot to explain to your new employee, and they will likely have questions. However, they might not want to ask out of fear of being annoying or looking incompetent. Let them know that questions are a good thing and that you rather they are informed than ignorant.

The Benefits Of Onboarding New Hires

Onboarding new hires are very important because it:

• Sets expectations. This helps with management and conflict resolution because you can be fair in future corrections or feedback. You can always refer back to the expectations you set at the beginning.

• Makes employees feel valued. This occurs when you invest time and energy into your employee’s welfare.

• Increases morale. An increased sense of value can help improve not only the morale of a new employee but other employees as well because they see that you are taking their potential for success seriously.

• Leads to focused effort. Clear expectations and onboarding resources provide direction for new employees to base their initial decisions on.

• Increases productivity. More focus and higher morale lead to more productive workers.

• Increases retention. When employees feel valued, they are less likely to leave a company, especially when one helps them through the difficult transition that comes with a new job.

Onboarding FAQ

1. What are the four C’s of onboarding?

   The four C’s of onboarding are compliance, clarification, culture, and connection. These build off each other. Compliance stands for the necessary requirements a company needs to fulfill to start a new employee, such as legal paperwork and training.

   Clarification means that an employee understands their role and what is expected of them. Culture represents the processes and procedures that define the company. Connection is the desired final result you wish to achieve with your employee where they feel they are integrated into the company.

2. How do you onboard a new employee on the first day?

   To onboard new employees on the first day, consult the following checklist:

   • Provide legal and financial paperwork, such as the W-4, I-9, direct deposit forms, and company code of conduct.

   • Provide reference material such as an employee handbook, information regarding health insurance and other benefits, and training materials specific to their position.

   • Prepare their workstation and make sure all equipment is functioning properly.

   • Introduce them to fellow coworkers and supervisors.

   • Have them meet with human resources.

   • Give them a tour of the workplace.

3. What are onboarding techniques?

   Onboarding techniques are any techniques that help you make a new employee ready to fulfill their job responsibilities. Some onboarding techniques include:

   • taking your new hire out to lunch

   • inviting them to a group discussion with other employees

   • providing them with a mentor

   • setting up a plan that charts out expectations and benchmarks for success

   Techniques should vary based on the circumstances of your organization and employee. However, in general, the goal will be the same.

4. What does H.R. do during onboarding?

   Normally H.R. handles the compliance side of onboarding. H.R. makes sure that new employees are appropriately trained and provided necessary materials. H.R. also makes sure that the proper paperwork is filled out and signed by the new employee. H.R. also handles the distribution of information regarding benefits.

References

1. Office of Personnel Management – Supervisor’s Toolkit for Onboarding

2. California Department of Human Resources – Onboarding Roles and Responsibilities

Author

Conor McMahon

Conor McMahon is a writer for Zippia, with previous experience in the nonprofit, customer service, and technical support industries. He has a degree in Music Industry from Northeastern University and in his free time he plays guitar with his friends. Conor enjoys creative writing between his work doing professional content creation and technical documentation.