Employee Onboarding Process: Steps, Best Practices And Tips

If not careful enough, it could cost your company dearly

A great Employee Onboarding process can Improve Employee Retention By 82% and Productivity by over 70%. ⁽¹⁾ 

The good news is that there are multiple ways to ensure a smooth employee onboarding process, especially with the kind of technological options we now have – the software tools that are built for this purpose. But, the not-so-good news is that if you are not careful enough with your employee onboarding process, it could cost your company dearly. 
 

Like so…

A Negative Onboarding Experience results in new hires being 2x more likely to look for other opportunities. ⁽²⁾ 

Before we get into the details of what can be done to constantly ensure the success of your onboarding process, lets understand the fundamentals of what it meant in the past versus what it means today…

What Does Employee Onboarding Process Mean? 

A few decades ago, one may have defined it as “the process of completing new employees’ paperwork and joining formalities”. However, even the most traditional workplaces have long moved from that.

On a very broad level, today we can define employee onboarding as the process companies set in place to help new employees familiarize themselves better with the organization, the workplace, its policies, processes, their own individual roles, responsibilities and expectations. It is what helps the new employee to adapt to the organization’s environment and culture. 

Plans to Ensure Effective Employee Onboarding Process

Depending on how invested and how employee-centric your organization is, you can either have a day-to-day checklist of how you would like your employee onboarding process to be, or have milestones to track and tick off the list every week or so. Either way, a plan is needed and here is one that can serve as your base. 

You can have checklists based on your organization’s specifics for all firsts that the employee will complete with you– 

The First Day - Orientation formalities, handing over of their IDs, machines, their desks, appointing a buddy, introduction to the team and other handy personnel.

The First Week - Run them through the company goals, values, policies and procedures; performance review details and KPIs; clearly communicate role, responsibilities, expectations and deliverables; team lunch with a senior colleague or leader; assigning and completion of employee’s first task (simple and achievable) to keep them motivated. 

The First Month - All necessary training needs to have begun; arrange for first one-on-one with team lead to understand progress and get feedback from employees on their experience for the month; first HR check in to see if they have integrated well, if they understand their role, team and company well.

The First Quarter - KPI feedback meet to see how the employee’s progress looks; training to be redone as and where applicable; Tools to improve skills to be looked into. Encourage cross-functional participation to improve cultural orientation.

The First Year - Recognize the employees’ efforts and contributions; One-on-one to discuss if their interests and company’s interests are aligned; Offer necessary training to support better alignment; Annual performance review. 

These are the standard items that belong in almost every organization’s onboarding checklist regardless or company size, location or vertical. But again, like we discussed, depending on your employee-centricity you can go a lot more in-depth to ensure that the employees get the best experience from you as an employer. 

Employee engagement is directly linked to performance and productivity. So, if anything, this plan should only be your “bare minimum” checklist. The more you drill down and refine your employee onboarding process, the higher your employee engagement rate and the more productive and happier your employees will prove to be! 

Best Practices and Tips to Create a Winning Employee Onboarding Process

1. Humanize the process 
Empathizing with your candidates to proactively cater to their needs can go a long way in building their trust. Treating employees as “resources” does not work out in today’s world. Millennials and Gen Zs will walk away from a job if they do not feel like they belong there. Contrastingly, they will also continue to be in a place despite all odds if they feel like the company listens to them and values them. 

Humanizing the employee onboarding process will not only help you gain their trust but will also give them the confidence that they have, in fact, made the right choice by accepting an employment with you. 

2. Have a checklist 
A goal without a plan is just a wish. You may want to have a killer onboarding process, but unless you chalk out the process and make checklists, you can say goodbye to any chance of success! Because of how many layers there are to an onboarding process, and all the variables involved, having a physical checklist is a must! 

You may have been onboarding for a few years to know it like the back of your hand, but even the best of us have bad days and that cannot be a reason to mess up a new employee’s onboarding process. So, create checklists for you and the team, so everybody is always on top of their stuff . 

3. Get rid of silos
A successful employee onboarding process needs not just the management’s buy in but also every team’s! This is not an HR activity but a pan-organization effort. It’s true the onboarding team will make sure the process is being followed and everything works as planned, but every team needs to support their efforts by welcoming their colleague and being there to guide them through their initial days. 

It is natural for a new employee to be more comfortable to their neighbour or a familiar face in the company. But with genuine effort on behalf of the team, it will take the new employee much less time to integrate and kickstart their journey. 

4. Make the most of technology
The best part about technology is you can use it to cater to whatever your exact needs are! Today, there are specific software solutions to cater to your every need. While this has its own perks, it is also wise to invest in solutions that can handle multiple mundane tasks but tasks that have a significant impact on your business! 

An onboarding software is a must-have for every modern business for various reasons. Most obvious of which is that they can take care of the entire onboarding process for you, they can assist employees with tasks that they are unfamiliar with or have forgotten, retrain them as and when they feel like they need it, give them the right push at the right time and so on! 

There are times when new employees may hesitate to ask someone for help fearing judgment or just because they are shy to ask for help! Especially, in large enterprises where hundreds of people share a floor, new employees might not know whom to approach or if they should at all! 

A solid onboarding software takes care of all of this for you. Also remember that onboarding and training is not a one-time initiative. Continuous learning and training is necessary and an onboarding solution assures you that! 

Leveraging technology and using them to our advantage to such a detail, is a luxury we have that no other generation can claim. Employee onboarding process is always a work in progress and with most of the repetitive tasks taken care of, it allows you to focus on the more human side of onboarding that only we can. 

References
^1,2 - https://www.saplinghr.com/10-employee-onboarding-statistics-you-must-know-in-2020

Divya Bhat works at Apty as the Marketing Generalist & Content Strategist and has years of experience in Customer and Employee Experience. She loves reading about all things technology and writing about how it can help make lives easier. With her journalistic background and penchant for languages, her curiosity to learn is ever evolving.  Connect Divya Bhat