As with 95% of the blogs I write, the inspiration for them come from my own experiences and mishaps inside my own businesses. Once again, life has given me another topic to discuss.
Wikipedia says, “Onboarding, also known as organizational socialization, refers to the mechanism through which new employees acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors in order to become effective organizational members and insiders. It is the process of integrating a new employee into the organization and its culture”.
What does that mean exactly? It means making sure you have all your T’s crossed and I’s dotted when it comes to training manuals, policies and procedures and your company values. The stronger your onboarding process the better the start your newest hire will have. As experience has shown, it has become an absolutely necessary process so that you, as the employer, do not pull your hair out and for the new employee that they do not get frustrated and walk down to the unemployment line.
Learn from me and check out the top three reasons you should have an onboarding process.
With any new relationship, communication is monumental in keeping both parties relatively satisfied and happy. When your new hire walks through the door on day one, they should know exactly what to expect. This is the beginning of the onboarding process. Some examples would be: giving them a tour of the office (hey there’s the bathroom), have their work station set up and ready for use and any training manuals.
This is where I went wrong. I had all the above except the training manuals & company protocols were not explained well enough. Don’t forget this step because even though it was written down, do not assume it will be read. I have trained numerous employees previously why did this step only get half my attention and effort? I was in a hurry to get them fully trained. We had a major upset with employee turnover and the employees remaining had not been properly trained by the previous manager. It was up to me to maximize training hours so people could work. In my haste, it led to a lot of dissatisfaction for both the new hire, for myself and for the rest of the team.
The other necessary requirement in a new relationship is trust. Having the ability with either written or digital documents to lay out everything from pay structure, company goals, policies & procedures, etc leaves no one in the dark and sets expectations. I do believe especially for new hires who don’t know you or your company, it’s a great stepping stone to building a solid foundation. As I have learned, it would have been more beneficial to me (even in a crisis situation) to have slowed down and really gone through all the materials besides just handing out the manual. Even if training would have taken an extra month because of this step, that is still faster than starting the hiring process all over again.
Way back when, when I was the one applying for jobs I always appreciated a company who was organized and appeared to be competent. I think that in and of itself will help communication, trust and attracting the kinds of people you want working for you. Organized, motivated, hardworking, dedicated, etc are going to appreciate the ease of transition in working for your company when the beginning stages are laid out.
Google says the top three companies for onboarding processes are Netflix, zappos.com and Mastercard…well I guess if it’s good enough for those companies it’s good enough for me.
If you are looking for some advice on how to recruit the right candidates for your practice visit our blog. Once you are ready to list your job, simply click “Sign up or Sign in” on the menu bar and start listing.