How to successfully welcome new employees?

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According to a study by Brandon Hall Group, having a good onboarding process increases staff retention by 82%! The competition to attract talented employees is increasing. Onboarding is a very important and crucial part of a company’s hiring process.

Why is the onboarding process important? How do you welcome new employees and successfully integrate them into your team?

 

Hiring and signing a contract with a candidate and a potential future employee is not the only important aspect of starting a new job. Other criteria affect the way a candidate feels about the future company and its engagement. It is about the attraction, recruitment, hiring and the onboarding process and stages that directly influence the employee and his impression

 

Gallup mentions in its study on the “State of the American Workplace" that only “12 % of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding new employees”, this shows that 88% of companies don’t have a good onboarding process according to their employees. This number can have a high influence on the employee’s retention rate as mentioned before in the introduction of this article.

 

Why is the onboarding process important?

 

Some companies think that the onboarding process is just one step of integrating newly hired candidates into the company. Thus, for them, onboarding is not an important process to influence the employees’ appreciation of their corporation! This mentality can lead to high rates of turnover and restart the hiring process over and over again. Therefore the onboarding process is really important and essential. It is an important aspect of the company as the new employees and even all stakeholders can have an important opinion of their organization, making them, with the clients, great brand ambassadors.

 

So, it is not only about the interview and signing the hiring contract, but also about a whole brand image to improve your company’s reputation and attract interesting talent to your organization.

 

An employer should never forget to make the best impressions from day one when hiring new employees, whereas it will be their first judgment and opinion about the company! In addition, many employee onboarding statistics have proven that a great onboarding process positively affects the trust that a new employee will have in the company.

 

Welcoming and Integrating new employees

 

It all starts with the interview! The first impressions are made by the candidate and from then on, it is a story of exchanging information and assessing the level of the candidate. When all is done and an employer decides to hire “the one”, the onboarding process: welcoming and integrating the new employee starts.

 

Before “day ONE” and when the candidate accepts the offer, it is an important period, as communication between HR and the candidate should be at its best. Preparing the future employees by sending them information about the company and some important developments will help them get rid of the “unknown” and be more eager to start their first day. Usually, it is during this step that all the paperwork (contract and other documents) is sent, and the future employee should be given enough time to consult carefully the sent documents.

 

Some corporations go above and beyond the professional aspect and offer help to future employees that are relocating. Engaging in this type of process will greatly help the employee to be more than ready and already invested in the company, in addition to understanding and learning their needs to efficiently start their first day.

 

Day ONE: The Welcoming 

 

The first day at work should be as simple as possible. Welcoming the new hires to the company, providing a guided tour to discover the different departments on site, and presenting them to their future colleagues and working team. 

 

On the first day, in some companies, some of the paperwork is finalized to complete the first steps of administrative integration of the new employee. The processing and the administrative tasks of this paperwork can be easily done in digital forms which could be time-saving for the HR department. This shows that the company cares and acts to make a good impact on the environment. Digital platforms exist to help companies in this process.

 

In the first few days, as the new employee starts to get to know the new working environment, space and team, the HR staff can benefit from this time to better understand their employee. They can provide them with a survey to determine their professional interests and benefits in the company. This information will allow the HR department to communicate relative information on these subjects throughout the year, rather than making a long and time-consuming presentation once a year. 

 

This step can be easily done with a digital platform where surveys can be digitized and the data processing can be automated. The information diffused to the employees can be in the form of a dynamic dashboard.

 

 

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Training and probation period

 

Training the new employees is an important part of the onboarding process. Studies show that usually, new employees present 25% of productivity during the first month. They reach their full potential performance usually after one year

 

It is rare to have new employees that can directly give 100% performance from their first month of employment. This is why the training phase is so important. It allows the employees to learn about the processes, values and operations of the company. It involves coaching by other employees helping them to personally meet and work with their future colleagues. 

 

Merging new employees from different departments in the same training program can be interesting as you can create a healthy relationship between them, enhancing and encouraging better communication between the different departments of the company.

 

The training phase is included in the probation period. Managers and HR staff can monitor and check the advancement of the new employees training thanks to a digital platform. With its integrated statistical tools and dynamic dashboards, the coach can feed the data and information about the new employees’ evaluation. Reports can be automatically generated detailing the advancement and notes about the training phase. All this information is important for managers to learn more about their new staff. A digital platform will allow the centralization and harmonization of all the forms and training documents of the employees. The training documents, videos and other records related to the training for the employees can be all easily accessible on the digital platform.

 

The probation period is important for managers to continuously evaluate, monitor the advancement and adaptability of the new employees to the processes and protocols of the company. 

 

It is essential that managers book one-on-one time with the new employees. A study conducted by LinkedIn showed that 72% of new employees consider this one-on-one time with the managers as one of the most important parts of the onboarding process. This one-on-one time shows that the managers are accessible and they are easily reachable to discuss work-related issues and other aspects of the work-life. It also encourages employees to be more invested in their work and enhances their performance. 

 

These meetings can be formal and archived also on the digital platform in the form of questionnaires or reports. The evaluation also can be monitored and assessed thanks to dedicated evaluation grids customized for each employee. Meeting with the managers can help to set objectives for the new employees and ease their integration into the team. 

 

At the end of the probation period each employee can visualize their objectives thanks to dynamic dashboards to evaluate and assess their performance.

 

Interconnection between HR and other departments

 

The communication and connection between HR and the other departments in the company are important to monitor and update the status of the new employee. 

 

The HR department usually works with HR dedicated tools to evaluate, schedule and all the related other administrative tasks to the hiring and onboarding process. The managers of each department are usually alerted and notified by all this information by email. 

 

In addition, monitoring their newly hired employees is not an easy task when you have to go through emails, conversations and other communication tools to obtain information. Therefore a single digital platform will help and make the accessibility to all this information by all the departments. One of the main features of the platform is its ability to interconnect with all the existing tools and software to import the data and make it accessible to all. 

 

Onboarding evaluation and feedback

 

The end of a successful onboarding process is often followed by the evaluation of the whole process. The best way to conduct it is to have a feedback session from the employees. The feedback can be done through digital surveys or evaluation reports. This will help the new employees to feel valued and that their opinion matters to the company. 

 

Conducting this feedback session on a digital platform can help the HR department to easily analyze the data and determine new actions to be taken to improve the onboarding process. Being in a constant dialogue and self-evaluation process will help your company attract more talent and achieve higher retention rates.

 

The onboarding process is an important part of a corporation. It should be constantly evaluated to improve the process of welcoming new employees and to improve the brand image and the reputation of a company. The onboarding process can be time-consuming and a tedious administrative task. Therefore you can rely on a digital tool to help you improve your onboarding process and save time. It can also help improve the quality of work-life in your organization. 

So, is everything set and ready to welcome your new employees?

 

To go further:


> Improve the training of your employees with BlueKanGo’s digital platform and its app Operation skill (available on BlueKanGo’s Marketplace)

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