Three Onboarding Ideas Every Company Should Use
Welcome to the #culturedrop. Every Tuesday, Galen Emanuele emails tools to advance leadership skills, team culture, and personal growth. No spam, just great content. Sign up now to get it in your inbox.
The onboarding experience for new employees is so important to get right.
A first impression is a lasting one.
The onboarding experience sets the tone for every new hire, and it shapes their initial relationship with the company. It’s the beginning of any employee’s career at their new organization.
A valuable shift in mindset for companies and leaders to make is towards the idea that onboarding is not just a few days, or week long event. When companies view onboarding as taking place over the first few months of an employee’s experience, it creates a way better experience. It naturally expands awareness and intentionality to make sure that new employee’s first impression is a high priority.
If things start messy, they stay messy. And if they start off great it has an impact on that employee feeling good about being there, which contributes to a happier employee that will stay at the company longer. In order to start off on a great foot, here are some ideas that companies should implement to level up new employee experience.
1. Create an opportunity to meet the team and make connections.
Remember that the new employee’s coworkers didn’t go through the interview process the same way that the hiring team did, so they won’t know much about this new person, and vice versa. Be intentional about bringing the team together for a chance to introduce and meet their new colleague.
Create a format for a quick 360 on what they’re all about. Previous jobs, hobbies outside of work, what makes them tick, how can coworkers earn a gold star with them, etc. Give a chance for the existing team to share some tidbits as well.
These questions shouldn’t be overly personal or intrusive, but help folks on the team to learn more about their new teammate. This helps build connections and understanding and adds to a sense of togetherness.
This is especially important to do on remote teams. On remote teams, employees won’t get as much face to face time with each and less opportunities to know each other on a more personal, human level.
2. Job shadow: Create a buddy system
Have the new person job shadow and learn other roles and departments while making personal connections outside of their own direct team.
As easy way to go about this is over the first month or two, have the new hire buddy up and job shadow different people from different departments. Once a week or so they could spend a few hours job shadowing with someone else in the company, and then rotate so that they have a chance learn other roles, teams, departments, inside the organization. In the process they’ll also make a bunch of personal connections throughout the company which is great.
There are so many benefits to doing this:
It allows the new employee to make connections with others and build new acquaintances, work relationships, and friendships
It gives them a bigger picture of the company to understand how different departments operate and how everything works together
It goes a long way to eliminate ‘Us Vs. Them’ feelings and attitudes by not having everyone just operate in their own silos without much interaction with other departments
It makes them feel welcomed and provides them with a sense of belonging to a whole instead of just being part of a smaller, isolated team
It helps them understand how other departments function and how their job impacts that as well as how their role contributes to the big picture
Last but not at all least, it proves to the new employee that you care about their experience and are intentional about them feeling connected and like they belong
3. Survey them at 45 or 60 days.
Survey. Your. New. Employees. this is massively important.
Of course over their first couple months you be checking in with them and having one on ones to make sure you’re tracking their experience and making sure they have what they need.
And also, survey them officially so that you can collect data about their experience so far in the company. This data is key for you to gather their perspective from fresh eyes as a new employee.
Ask them these types of questions and gather both quantitative data like a score from 1-5 and qualitative data like open ended comment boxes.
How is your experience so far? What’s the best part of your job? Is there anything that we are or aren’t doing that we should start or stop? How have you experienced our culture, are we really living it? What could we improve?
This feedback is so valuable to collect because it gives you a look at how your company is functioning through someone whose experience is fresh and new. You want to know what you’re doing right, and you definitely want to hear about any opportunities to improve.
Final thoughts
If you do onboarding right, people will last longer at your organization. Make them feel heard and valued, show them that you care about their perspective, provide opportunities for them to build connections and rapport with others and build networks across the company. Prioritize and be intentional about their experience, it matters A LOT.
Related Articles:
7 Brilliant Onboarding Ideas for New Hires
19 Ways to Retain Great Employees
Want more?
This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop