Employee Onboarding can be understood as a mechanism that enables new employees to comprehend, acclimate, assimilate and engage with the Social and Performance aspects of their new jobs in a befitting, hassle-free and empowering manner.
This helps the new employees become the contributing member of the organization in the shortest possible time with the right motivation, confidence and the desire to offer their best possible efforts for increasing the productivity of the organization.
Actually, when an employee joins an organization, everything is new for the person and it may take quite some time to get absorbed in the process. On the other hand, the situation can be an improved one if proper employee onboarding is conducted.
As per the stats, properly implemented Employee onboarding program can increase the employee retention rate by 25%, plus it is also the prime boosting factor that jumps up to the employee performance by 11%.
When an organization recruits its employees via a properly channelized employee onboarding process, the chances of their employees to stay with them for at least three years increase by 69%.
To know how and why it is first important to know in detail about the onboarding process and also its various benefits. So, let us start unraveling the mysteries-
Table of Contents
What Is Employee Onboarding?
Employee Onboarding is the process of Letting the new hires understand the eco-system of the organization through a mechanism that offers them a constructive environment and empowers them to work best with a positive mindset.
Onboarding is mainly the process of assimilating new employees in the company. The process comprises a number of steps such as:
- Arrangements before the joining day of the employee,
- An introduction to the system and the process that the employee will be working with,
- Office orientation
- Meeting up with the team,
- Having an evaluation of the onboarding experience of the employees later on.
Let us now have a look at the benefits that your organization is going to get by implementing the befitting Employee Onboarding Strategies-
Importance Of Employee Onboarding
Maximum of the organizations go for the onboarding program. This is because there are a lot of benefits that the organizations actually experience and enjoy due to such programs. Here are some of the important benefits of the employee onboarding program.
1) Recognition Of The Organization
Depending upon the first experience and impression that the employees get from your organization, they spread out the feeling to other peers and friends. If you are providing a great onboarding and orientation program to the candidates, they can talk about it in a positive way to others who will in return imagine great about the organization.
On the other hand, if there are no such programs conducted, people may think the organization to be lesser organized and of course, no one wishes to work in such a place.
2) Getting Productivity Faster
Every organization wishes to have higher productivity and hence they want their employees to start working at the earliest from their joining date.
Offering an orientation program actually helps the employees to get comfortable with the environment and the system of the office in a better way so that they can start working fast and can start yielding results much faster.
3) Higher Rates Of Retention
Have you noticed how a number of employees may come up first a few days and may then stop coming to the office? There must have happened something wrong because of which they must have taken the decision to not returning back to the same office.
Offering a great onboarding program helps a lot in changing such a mindset of the employees and it has been noticed that a higher percentage of employees having a proper orientation program can be retained by the organization well.
4) Better Relationships
It is quite obvious that when someone introduces you to others, there are higher chances that you will develop relationships with the people in a much better way.
Similarly, when the employee onboarding process is taken place, the employees get more comfortable with the other employees in the company and hence there are better chances of developing great relationships so that better work culture can be maintained in the company.
6 Tips To Have An Excellent Employee Onboarding Program
When the benefits of the onboarding program have been known now, it is also important to know the right ways to get the onboarding program done.
1) Start The Process A Day In Advance
The onboarding program can be started a day in advance of the actual joining date.
This can include a number of options such as taking details from the employee so that their email id and other important elements in the organization can be prepared. This is important so that the employee can feel welcome in the firm.
Letting employees understand the ins and outs of the company in advance will let them be best prepared to work in your company.
2) Providing With The Necessities
The next day should be the day when all the necessary benefits and elements should be allotted to the employee such as the desk or the computer to work on, the mobile phone for connection, and others.
There are a number of times when the employees have started working in an organization but still, they do not have a proper place to sit. This type of situation actually makes the employee talk negative about the company and also at times to leave the organization within a month.
To let them focus on the right thing, you need to tell them about the clear goals around which they should channelize their working. You need to understand their key skills, expertize and areas of interest, so you can involve them in the tasks that they do with full enthusiasm and try to offer the best that they can.
3) Implement a Mentorship Program for Employee Onboarding
At the very beginning, employees have their own anxieties, nervousness, enthusiasm, and intimidations.
All such feelings have their own type of energies inculcated in them, and a mentor can show the path to the employees where all these energies can be directed in the right direction.
With a mentor, employees will have someone who is there just to help them, so they can work in the most productive and empowering manner possible.
Mentorship program turns the employee onboarding smoother and more productive.
4) Having A Check Of Different Projects
The employee should know about the company in detail.
Hence, it is the responsibility of the company to let the employees know about some of the important projects of the company. There are a number of companies that spends a whole day taking the new employees on a trip to visit the various projects of the company.
If there are many other projects that do not belong to the same city, an onscreen presentation can also help them in knowing in detail about the projects of the company.
5) Meeting With The Team
Meeting up with the team is the most important thing of the program so that the employee can feel comfortable at the office since the very first day.
When the employee knows who the reporting boss is and who are the seniors and the colleagues, it becomes quite convenient for the employees to react accordingly.
A wrong move can bring a bad impression about the employee on the other employees of the office.
But it is the responsibility of the organization to help the new employee know about the team so that he can act accordingly and avoid conducting certain mistakes that can be harmful.
6) First Week should be Empowering, Constructive and Amazing
While starting off in a company, it is important to make sure that employees are doing that on the right foot. The first week plays a key role in this.
It will be more productive to set up all the things that they need to work in advance. This will be the impetus that can start their working in the right frame of mind. In addition, making them cordially welcomed in an organic manner is also significant here.
Decorating their desk with the creative goodies that can inspire them, taking them out for lunch, making them be a part of any meeting, introducing them to the team members are some of the activities that can make their week full of excitements and empowering experiences.
For letting your employee onboarding result driven, it is also important here to know some of the mistakes that the few companies make while implementing onboarding strategies-
Common Employee Onboarding Mistakes you need to Avoid
1) Not being clear about the expectations
It is very important to clearly let employees know about the things that you expect from them. Not being clear about this befuddles employees, and in confusion, they sometimes do stuff that is not needed at all.
2) No having a well Organized Onboarding Process
Doing just for the sake of doing and not having a well-drafted procedure is the prime reason behind the backfiring of many initiatives. Having a checklist, plan, goals, check-ins incorporated in an onboarding strategy will be helpful here.
3) Not having any interaction before the first day
This can also be a common mistake that many organizations make. You need to have some interactions in advance, and for this, you can mail them company history, some good projects, special guides or other creative welcome emails.
4) Not Having Regular Feedbacks
Not taking feedback of your onboarding strategy will never let you understand how valuable your strategy was in inspiring the new employee to offer his or her own best. So, do collect feedback based upon their skill set, expertize, knowledge, and experience.
Let us now see some of the examples of the best implementation of Employee Onboarding Strategy-
Examples of Employee Onboarding
1) Facebook
Facebook has its own Facebook Bootcamp onboarding program that has been quite successful in channelizing the workforce offer their best in enhancing company grown from their day of selection.
2) Twitter
Twitter comes with an onboarding strategy that starts from the very day an employee accepts the offer. With an onboarding program named as ‘Yes To Desk;’ that covers everything, an employee would be required to go through once he or she say Yes to join the company.
Twitter celebrates the arrival of new employees with lots of creativities and panache.
3) IBM
IBM also has an effective onboarding program named as Succeeding@IBM that last for two years. Via this, the company offers its employees a good amount of time to understand everything about the company. This has been very effective in increasing the retention rate.
In Conclusion
Whenever an employee joins an organization, he or she expects to have a respectful joining so that the rest of the ahead days can be spent comfortably.
For such a situation, it is important for the organizations to take up necessary steps such as conducting an employee onboarding program. There are a number of benefits that both the employees as well as the organizations enjoy out of this program.
It is only that the organizations should make sure that the onboarding program is conducted in the right way so that the employees can feel at home while in the office and can also provide their best in yielding the best results for the organization.
So, what do you think about employee onboarding? Share with us how important it is for you if you run a business, or how crucial do you consider it, if you are an employee.
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