Starting a new job feels like drinking out of a fire hose. There’s a lot of new being thrown at you all at once. There is new information, technologies, and processes to learn, not to mention all the new names and faces to remember!
New employees can feel overwhelmed and lost during their first few days, especially if you don’t have a solid onboarding strategy to make them feel comfortable and a part of the team. A study by Aberdeen Group found that effective onboarding increased retention by 52% and productivity by 60%. Yet, only 32% of organizations have a formal onboarding program.
You can look at online onboarding statistics to help create a solid onboarding program for your employees. You can also look at this article to assist you in such matters, even if you are looking for tips to strengthen your existing one. Here’s a list of what people want in their first few months at a new job!
- Not to be buried in new-hire paperwork. No one wants to spend their first day buried in 1,000 pages of new-hire paperwork. Nowadays, there are plenty of services to get this all sorted before the new hire even starts. For example, you can use Trucking Paperwork Services to do the paperwork for you if you run a trucking firm. Remember, it’s the 21st century, and some awesome technology providers out there can help you get the required paperwork and forms squared away days before their start date! Optimizing the whole recruiting process is not a hard process these days. Using the services of recruiters similar to Alex Gotch, especially for legal recruitment. You might be able to cut down the paperwork and streamline the hiring and onboarding process for new employees.
- An office tour and overview. It isn’t easy being the new guy or gal. The first day of work brings back anxious memories from the first day at school. Give your new hires a lay of the land. Show new people around the office and introduce them to individuals outside their department or team. If the employee is virtual, set up a conference call with your department on their first day to introduce them to the team and give everyone a chance to get to know them. Showing new hires that you are excited for them to be part of your organization is so important, yet often glazed over. I can’t stress that enough.
- On-the-job training. Here’s a hard pill to swallow: 40% of employees who receive poor job training leave within the first year. According to Aberdeen Research, 9% of new hires say they lack the knowledge and tools necessary to do their job. With that in mind, it’s safe to say offering on-the-job training as part of the onboarding process is extremely important. For example, for any software development job, your new employees might not necessarily be familiar with the cloud hosting platform you use. In such cases, providing the necessary cloud fluency through AWS training and certifications, or equivalent training for other cloud platforms, is crucial to the job. You need to give employees the skills they need to hit the ground running on their first day. This means it’s vital that you have a formal training program in place to get them up-to-speed with the necessary skills and competencies to perform their job. Set them up for success, not failure.
- A clear understanding of company culture and values. People want to understand your organization’s underlying values and mission. This helps them identify with your business goals and feel like contributing members of the team. Don’t forget to include an overview of your mission and values in your new-hire orientation.
- Continuous development and mentorship opportunities. Learning, development and mentorship opportunities are no longer a nice-to-have, they’re an expectation. Employees are demanding opportunities to learn new skills to help them be more productive contributors and advance their careers. They want to be mentored and coached by leaders who are invested in their future. They are committed to their ongoing professional development, and want you to be too.
Improving and automating on-boarding programs and processes isn’t as hard as it looks. Almost all of your on-boarding efforts can be automated, tracked, managed and delivered using a learning management system (LMS). A flexible, scalable LMS makes it easy for you to schedule and deliver targeted learning and training courses, offer ongoing professional development paths, and continue on-the-job training.