Starting a new job feels like drinking out of a fire hose. There’s a whole lot of new being thrown at you all at once. 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 on-boarding strategy in place to make them feel comfortable and a part of the team. A study by Aberdeen Group found that effective on-boarding increased retention by 52% and productivity by 60%. Yet, only 32% of organizations have a formal on-boarding program in place.

You can take a look at onboarding statistics that are available online to help you in creating a solid on-boarding program for your employees. You can also take a look at this article to assist you in such matters, even if you are just looking for some 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. Honestly, 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. If you run a trucking firm, for example, you can use Trucking Paperwork Services to do the paperwork for you. Remember, it’s the 21st century and there are some awesome technology providers out there that can help you get the required paperwork and forms squared away days in advance of 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 surprisingly cut down the paperwork and streamline the overall 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. 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. And, according to Aberdeen Research, 9% of new hires say they do not have the optimum level of 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. To give you an example, for any software development job, your new employees might not necessarily be familiar with the cloud hosting platform that 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.

• Clear understanding of company culture and values. People want to understand your organization’s underlying values and mission. It helps them identify with your business goals and feel like a contributing member 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. If you’re interested in investing in an LMS, check out our whitepaper “7 Steps to Selecting the Right LMS.” If you want more insights on how to improve your on-boarding efforts, check out one of our recent L&D Hangouts with Fistful of Talent, “On-boarding 101: It’s more than 1,000 pages of new-hire paperwork.”

What do you think? Is there anything else you think employees want from on-boarding? Leave a comment below.