10 Tips on New Hire Orientation & Onboarding A New EmployeesWelcome Guide

Start Onboarding Before Day One

Introduce New Employee to Your Team

Emphasize Company’s Current Projects and Goals

Instruct on All Company’s Systems

Use 30-Days Checklist

Assign a Mentor

Invest in Training

Try Gamification

Provide Some Branded Gifts

Invite New Employee for Lunch

TOP 10 ONBOARDING TIPS:

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World-renowned brands are quite aware that employees make up an important part of their success. Find out how these giants onboard their newcomers:

Why Do You Need an Onboarding Program?35% of the US companies spend nothing on onboarding new employees. Hope, you are not among them at least for these reasons:

of employees choose to stay in the company for up to three years as a result of onboarding program.

of millennials claim they need a better onboarding process for new hires.

an average new employee needs to become fully productive.

If you want new employee to become a productive part of your team, make his onboarding in the company easy and comfortable using our top 10 tips and best practices.

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69%

49%

1 year

1 in 6

Employees quit or consider quitting a new job due to ineffective onboarding

Onboarding starts before the Day One in a job.

1. Provide the new employee in advance with information about the company, its main products, values and internal rules.

2. Phone the newcomer a day before to confirm the details: arrival time, logistics, parking place. Assign a colleague to meet him.

3. Send the new employee his agenda on the day one in the office, so that he knows your expectations.

Bank of America’s onboarding process includes orientation program. New hires receive a welcome package and are guided end-to-end through the onboarding process with guides and a website that serves as a ‘one-stop-shop’.

There are options available from instructor-led learning and web-based training to eBooks, videos and everything in between.*

Start Onboarding Before Day One

CULTURE

CASE STUDY. BANK OF AMERICA

LOGISTICS VALUES HISTORY

* SHRM Foundation’s Effective Practice Guidelines Series, 2010. Onboarding New Employees: Maximizing Success / https://www.shrm.org/about/foundation/products/Documents/Onboarding%20EPG-%20FINAL.pdf

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TIP 1.

When a new employee comes in the office and you use a “sink or swim” strategy, that’s definitely not right. No one wants to be a stranger.

1. Send information to your team about the new employee with his photo and professional background. If you add the newcomer’s interests into this document, your colleagues will surely find something in common.

2. Introduce new employee in a creative way: add to his profile “true” and “false” statements, so that others get interested and engaged.

Introduce New Employee to Your Team

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, IBM managers realized that new employees often bring fresh ideas and help to develop the business. So, they started personally meeting newcomers on the day one, and introducing them to the entire office team.*

CASE. IBM

*SHRM Foundation’s Effective Practice Guidelines Series, 2010. Onboarding New Employees: Maximizing Success / https://www.shrm.org/about/foundation/products/Documents/Onboarding%20EPG-%20FINAL.pdf

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TIP 2.

Save an hour of your time or assign a member of the new employee’s department to tell the newcomer about the company’s processes, main stakeholders and current projects. That is the easiest way to make the new employee familiar with the situation and involve him into working process.

In case you don’t arrange such a current projects’ introduction, you or your team can spend half of a day answering questions “What is that?”, “Who are these people?”, “What’s my role here?”

What are the current projects?

Who are we working with?

What result we want to achieve?

What is a new employee’s

role?

What are the deadlines?

5 W’s Basis

Emphasize Company’s Current Projects and Goals

At Birchbox, a group of new employees goes through “Life of a Birchbox”. It is a kind of training program that provides newcomers with useful information on everything that is going on at the company.*

CASE. BIRCHBOX

*Getting New Employees Off to a Good Start/ Bryan Burkhart/ http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/getting-employees-off-to-a-good-start/?_r=1

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TIP 3.

1. Don’t let your company look unprofessional – prepare the new employee’s table with all necessary equipment in advance and ask IT-specialists to get settings ready.

2. Assign your IT-masters instruct the new hire on company’s programs and software: how to use, what are possibilities, what are the buttons never to push…

3. Already have internal social network? Invite the new employee and show its interface. This process is not just about giving newcomer a password – that’s the first brick in building communication.

Instruct on All Company’s Systems

MasterCard Inc. pays much attention to new employees. Newcomers receive a welcoming email with links to videos from the CEO, and access to the application where they can fill in their professional details, upload a photo, read about training opportunities and prepare the papers for starting a deposit account in the company.*

CASE. MASTERCARD INC.

*Onboarding: Tips and Best Practices for Bringing New Workers on Board/ Sara Fisher Gale/ http://www.workforce.com/articles/19977-onboarding-tips-and-best-practices-for-bringing-new-workers-on-board

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TIP 4.

First 30 days in the company can be presented as milestones the newcomer has to go through:

1. acquaintance with the office teams2. every week’s lunch with colleagues3. learning about company’s products4. necessary software5. safety procedures

After a month, review the list and discuss what was done and what wasn’t.

Certainly, you can extend 30-day checklist and include, say, a one-hour meeting with the company’s management. They can explain company’s values and mission in more personal and motivating way.

Use 30-Day Checklist

Toyota’s vice president Tim Platt says that such a checklist allows managers and HR-specialists to find out how the new employee can professionally develop. What is more, that’s a perfect way to regard employee’s goals and achievements.*

CASE. TOYOTA

*Get New IT Pros Up to Speed Fast With This Onboarding Checklist/ Rich Hein/ http://www.cio.com/article/2384870/careers-staffing/get-new-it-pros-up-to-speed-fast-with-this-onboarding-checklist.html

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TIP 5.

A new employee will always ask questions, and you can’t answer them all at once. Provide a mentor that will clarify the organizational rules to the newcomer and answer his questions. That’s crucial to have a person to ask in a new working environment.

A mentor can drop some useful hints to help new employee to avoid troubles that can occur during the first time. That is also a possibility for the new employee to integrate faster into your company.

Assign a Mentor

IBM provides newcomers with the Assimilation Process that includes three parts: affirming, beginning and connecting.

Affirming part consists of welcoming the new employee, preparing a workplace and assigning a mentor. This person answers employee’s questions, instructs on company’s software and tools usage and transfers the intangible company’s values.*

CASE. IBM

*SHRM Foundation’s Effective Practice Guidelines Series, 2010. Onboarding New Employees: Maximizing Success / https://www.shrm.org/about/foundation/products/Documents/Onboarding%20EPG-%20FINAL.pdf

MENTOR

INTEGRATION

COOPERATION

COMPANY’S VALUES

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TIP 6.

Training often is the most costly part of onboarding process — but it doesn’t have to be.

Consider replacing initial instructor-based trainings with interactive online courses. You will save budget, while new employees will be fully engaged in eLearning.

Create an individual training program that allows a new hire to close his most crucial skill gaps.

That’s easy: test newcomer’s knowledge and automatically get recommended training program.

You can find all these features and even more in Eduson. Try it for free and see how training becomes a part of the successful onboarding.

EMC created “Fast Start” online-program for employees that provides all the needed information about the company. What is more, it includes the so-called “roadmap to success”, that shows the new employee steps that allow him grow in the company.*

CASE. EMC

*Case Study: Fast Start – EMC’s Onboarding Program/ Carol Morrison/ http://www.i4cp.com/productivity-blog/2013/06/11/case-study-fast-start-emcs-onboarding-program

Invest in Training

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TIP 7.

If you give the new employee a huge book about your company or tell him all the company’s goals and values in one lecture, that won’t stay in his head for long. But if you make it interactive and intriguing, integration into the company’s life turns out to be memorable and engaging.

Put an employee into a game context and let him perform his future duties, learning through mistakes. Interactive simulations bridge the gap between theory and practice and obviously demonstrate where and how you can apply this new knowledge.

DBS Bank created an induction training for new recruits. The course is based on a travel theme and is driven by a mentor.

With a boarding pass, the learner starts from bank’s global branches, goes further to the corporate HO and eventually finishes at the office desk allocated to him. During the journey, he learns about organization values, internal systems, and policies that govern the bank culture.

To maintain learner’s interest, developers applied Stereoscopic 3D effects to add the element of inquisitiveness to the induction program.*

CASE. DBS BANK

*Best practice onboarding - trends and examples in managing talent acquisition/ http://www.slideshare.net/MCROPPER/best-practice-onboarding-trends-and-examples-in-managing-talent-acquisition

Try Gamification

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TIP 8:

There is a very small possibility that you hired someone who doesn’t like gifts. It’s the most obvious but still very pleasant way to show you value your new hires.

1. Think of little things which can be helpful in the office everyday life: branded notebooks, pens and laptop-stickers. You will certainly feel like a team member when everyone comes on a meeting with the same notebook as yours.

2. If you want to be more creative, consider such gifts as the company’s founder favourite book, box of sweets or gift certificate.

Provide Some Branded Gifts

Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency provides newcomers with branded red-colour boxes with David Ogilvy’s famous book “The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness” and his eight habits of highly creative communities.*

CASE. OGILVY & MATHER

*Check Out the Amazing Welcome Kit This Ogilvy Office Gives Each New Hire/ Tim Nudd/ http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/check-out-amazing-welcome-kit-ogilvy-office-gives-each-new-hire-164196

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TIP 9.

Lunch is a perfect opportunity to put employee in a comfortable friendly atmosphere and introduce to colleagues. When having meals, people can talk on subjects not related to work such as hobbies, interests, travelling experience.

That’s a situation when the newcomer can find something in common with his colleagues and become a valuable member of the office team.

A Warby Parker’s developer invented the “Lunch Roulette”. That’s an application that every week randomly chooses two groups of four people that go for lunch together. All people are from different departments.*

CASE. WARBY PARKER

*Getting New Employees Off to a Good Start/ Bryan Burkhart/ http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/getting-employees-off-to-a-good-start/?_r=1

Invite New Employees for Lunch

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TIP 10.

[In]troduction — LinkedIn’s new hire orientation program includes collective lunch for all new team members. Usually there is a dedicated table with cheerful balloons where new employees can sit and eat together.

The lunch culminates with a session called “Investing [In] You”, covering the typical orientation topics like corporate, medical and financial benefits, etc.**

CASE. LINKEDIN

**7 Elements of a Good New Hire Orientation / Stephanie Bevegni / https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/2015/03/7-elements-of-a-good-new-hire-orientation

Every employee is a unique member of your stuff with personal experience, view and style of life. If you use one approach to all the employees, it is likely to be ineffective.

To overcome such a mistake you can assess the newcomer’s knowledge and skill gaps and arrange an individual training for him.

Mistake 2. One-Size-Fits-All Strategy

2 Big Mistakes When Onboarding Employees

When a new employee comes to the company, he needs to know as much as possible about it.

However, if you try to provide all the information on the day one, a pour employee will only have an unclear mix of safety instructions combined with current company projects in his head.

Onboarding is not a one-day process — provide the new employee with some time to comfortably “settle down” in the company.

Mistake 1. Overloading with Information

Even during perfectly planned onboarding some troubles can occur. Try to avoid the next two mistakes, and the newcomer will really appreciate it!

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