How To Onboard New Hires Efficiently: The Ultimate Guide
When you have finally found and hired a perfect candidate, you should not let the their adaptation in the company run its course. It is essential to properly build a process for introducing new employees to the organization, or, simply put, to onboard them.
Onboarding is the process of integrating new workers into a company which involves introducing them to new responsibilities and team members, learning about the company’s goals and structure, receiving professional training, and other initial activities.
Onboarding is fundamental for assisting new employees in adapting faster and encouraging them to perform more efficiently. Many studies emphasize the relevance of the adaptation of new employees, especially when it comes to the long-term perspective. Thus, according to data of Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), up to 20% of staff turnover takes place in the first 45 days of work.
However, if new employees successfully passed the adaptation stage, up to 69% of them are more likely to stay at the company. In this blog post, we will discover how to build proper onboarding and improve the new hire retention.
SHRM experts have identified four main levels that make up a successful onboarding or Four C’s:
- Compliance is training of new employees on a company policy.
- Clarification means that employees should know what their responsibilities are and how to properly perform them.
- Culture refers to integrating the new employee into the formal and informal norms of the organization.
- Connection is relationships with colleagues and a sense of being part of the team.
On average, onboarding can take from several weeks to three months. During this period, new workers become acquainted with their roles, prepare to fulfill their responsibilities, and acquire the knowledge and skills required to succeed.
How To Use Flowlu For New Employee Onboarding
With the introduction of online tools and collaboration apps, the process of adaptation can become more straightforward and structured, both for the employer and the new team member. Furthermore, well-designed onboarding can help you save resources—financial, human, and time—on employee training. Let’s take a look at several ways for successful onboarding of new team members with Flowlu.
Step 1: Build a Process for Orientation
To save time on mundane activities like doing paperwork and providing basic organizational information, make a step-by-step guide for the new team members. In Flowlu, you can do this using a dedicated module — Onboarding. Record all the steps in the checklist and provide additional information on each of them. After you create such a checklist once, you can return to it every time when hiring new personnel.
Feel free to edit the checklist or add new steps to it whenever needed. Accompany your onboarding with videos and documents. A well-built onboarding can minimize the HR team’s workload and increase transparency of your operations.
Learn more: How to create an onboarding
Step 2: Assign Initial Tasks
Besides, you can create a project workflow for new recruits that will contain tasks for the first 30/60/90 days on the job. Supplement your tasks with the extensive descriptions, files, and links to important websites to streamline their transition to a new role.
And when a new employee joins the company, you may quickly create a project using a pre-defined template. Once this person has completed his onboarding checklist from Step 1, he or she can start performing more role-related tasks indicated in their project.
Find out more: How to add a project workflow
Step 3: Create Manuals and Guidelines
Using a company’s knowledge base allows you to store all your accumulated data and create a separate section of standard operating procedures and training documentation for new workers. You can include the FAQs regarding job duties, insurance policy, key phones, a business summary, key team members, etc.
In a knowledge base, you are able to attach any pictures or videos, create tables, links, as well as change the layout of the text using an editor. And thanks to the hierarchical structure of the articles, the content will always look well-structured and logical. Articles that need special attention might be labeled as important for easy access.
Learn more: How to create a knowledge base
Follow these easy tips for writing content while publishing KB articles:
- Break down the information into smaller, more manageable chunks. This is especially relevant for large amounts of data. Simplify reading for a new person and divide all the information into three or four key sections. Give essential articles to learn for the first 2-3 days, then add more to broaden the new employee’s understanding of his role and your organization.
- Use infographics, charts and tables. This way, it will be easier for the reader to navigate through the content.
- Make a list of questions to aid the reader’s comprehension. When the employee reads the articles, the list of questions will bring him or her back to the content. By answering them, the new team member can improve their comprehension.
Step 4: Set Up Permissions
If you do not want to overwhelm a new employee with the information, you can configure their access rights according to your needs. The permissions can be expanded with the growth of the new hire’s competence. For example, in Flowlu, you can hide modules from workers, granting them access to the initial information they need.
Find out more: How to set up permissions for the team members
Step 5: Create A Separate Chat or Workspace
If your company tends to hire several new employees at once, you can create a special chat for them to encourage collaboration between new employees and ease their adaptation. You can even add a new, dedicated workspace for them to announce relevant news or post any information for them using Feed.
Step 6: Utilize Record Lists
With lists, you can organize information, such as login details to useful courses and tools. You may quickly add additional resources, store them securely in one place, and protect them with customizable access rights. Whenever you need to, give the new employee access to the necessary custom lists. This way, all resources will always be at their fingertips, gathered in one platform.
More Tips For Successful Adaptation
Provide Feedback Promptly
Constructive criticism and appreciation of achievements can help you establish trust with new hires and give them an opportunity to improve. Remember to conduct a performance review at the end of the new employee’s initial 90 days to evaluate their development and provide suggestions on how they can continue to grow in their position.
Identify a Mentor
Consider a mentoring program as a part of the onboarding process. Pick a few proactive workers who can guide new team members. Keep in mind that it’s preferable if the mentor is not a direct supervisor. By doing this, the new employee will feel a lot more at ease asking questions, particularly mundane ones that they wouldn’t want to bother anybody else with. To discuss current progress and set further goals, mentors should schedule regular check-ins with new team members.
Set Measurable Goals
Your goals will encourage the employee’s engagement in the work process and act as benchmarks for evaluating the effectiveness of their adjustment. Give each new hire a list of objectives to meet, for example, to read the entire knowledge base by a particular deadline or successfully complete a task on their own.
Keep Them Up to Date With News
To feel being a part of the team, a new employee should be familiar with the company’s news agenda. Inform them about upcoming events, meetings, company achievements or recent wins. You may achieve this with Flowlu by using a chat or feed so that each user is aware of current events.
Ask For Their Opinion
When adopting onboarding in the workplace for the first time, feedback will be extremely helpful in adjusting and improving this process. Once onboarding is finished, find out what the new recruit missed, enjoyed the most, and thought might be improved. You can schedule a 15-minute feedback session or utilize software for gathering feedback like Google Forms, or professional employee engagement tools such as 15five, Officevibe or Culture Amp. In
Conclusion
Effective onboarding is essential for successful recruitment and effective employee acclimatization. If you implement efficient onboarding procedures in your company, your business will lower the cost of attracting talents and improve new employee retention in the long run.
Whether you utilize one, a few, or all of the onboarding tools at once, they will all help new team members adapt to their roles more successfully. With a built-in onboarding management module in Flowlu, you can provide your workers with an exceptional onboarding experience and help them better prepare them for their new positions.
The purpose of onboarding is to integrate new workers into the company by introducing them to their responsibilities, team members, the company's goals and structure, and providing them with the necessary training and initial activities. This process is fundamental for helping new employees adapt faster and encouraging them to perform more efficiently.
On average, the onboarding process can take from several weeks to three months. This period allows new workers to become acquainted with their roles, prepare to fulfill their responsibilities, and acquire the knowledge and skills required to succeed in their new position.
Flowlu can be used for onboarding by building a process for orientation through a step-by-step guide in the Onboarding module, assigning initial tasks with detailed descriptions, creating manuals and guidelines in a knowledge base, setting up permissions, creating a separate chat or workspace for new employees, and utilizing record lists for organizing important information.
