Onboarding New Employees – 5 Ways to Make a Great First Impression

Making a good first impression with new hires is essential for employee retention. The best way to showcase how professional and well-organized your business can be is to rethink your onboarding process. Onboarding new employees are just as important as finding them in the first place.

According to People Managing People, engaged employees exhibit 21% higher profitability and 59% less turnover as a result of their employers’ curated training and development. Let’s discuss the intricacies of onboarding new employees, how you can benefit from it, and the mistakes you should avoid when inducting new staff members.

The Fundamentals of Onboarding New Employees

To understand the real value of onboarding new employees properly out of the gate, we should take a look at the definition of onboarding. According to Wikipedia, onboarding represents “…the mechanism through which new employees acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors in order to become effective organizational members…”. In other words, onboarding represents the introductory process through which every new employee must go through before being assigned tasks in your company. What does onboarding typically consist of?

1. Thorough preparation and training before their first day of full employment
2. Training in the use of all hardware and software tools necessary for proper work
3. Office and business culture orientation to assist new hires in workspace integration
4. Workspace tour and meeting of existing staff members to establish mutual communication
5. Post-process evaluation of the new hire’s onboarding experience to assess how successful it was

You should create the framework for onboarding new employees so that everyone who joins your company feels equally welcome in it. Published data speaks volumes of how onboarding can change your employees’ perception of your business if it’s handled correctly:

• Companies who onboard employees properly are 60% less likely to lose their workforce within four years
• Up to 20% of staff turnover happens in the first 45 days of employment due to improper onboarding
• Up to 25% of companies let go of up to 60% of their staff within 12 months of hiring them
• Based on 2020 findings, implementing proper onboarding can increase staff retention by 25%
• Good onboarding can guarantee that up to 69% of employees will stay with the company for 3+ years
• 35% of companies spend $0 on employee onboarding and thus experience high turnover rates

The process of onboarding new employees is just as essential for small firms as it is for international companies. Whether you operate in the IT, marketing, or sales industries, new hires will want to be inducted into your company properly. That is why you should explore the following ways to onboard new staff the right way and thus contribute to a healthy business culture within your company.

How to Make a Great First Impression with New Employees

1. Prepare a Welcome Package for New Employees

You only get a chance to make good first impressions once. After you’ve interviewed and accepted certain candidates into your company, they will inevitably visit your offices shortly thereafter. A great way to greet them into your corporate family is to present them with a small but meaningful welcome package.

You can prepare a small box, bag, or package filled with corporate goodies such as a notebook, a mug, several pens, or even a t-shirt. Creating an invitational brochure or a quick-start pamphlet can also work wonders to engage new employees. While this won’t cover all of the bases of onboarding new employees, it will certainly kick off your relationship on the right foot.

2. Assign a Senior Staff Member as a Mentor Figure

You are bound to have senior members and experienced employees already on your roster. Why not use them as mentors and coaches for new employees to help fresh staff get accustomed to your company more successfully?

There is no better source of information and useful tips for new employees than those that are already fully engaged. Senior staff members can help each new employee settle into their role better, even more so if the senior employee belongs to the same department.

3. Assist your New Hires with Setting Their Professional Goals

Regardless of whether you’ve hired a junior assistant or a senior executive, the person who joined your company did so for a reason. You can have a manager or an HR specialist arrange for a meeting with them to discuss that.

Once you discover why someone joined your company, you will have a much better idea of how to utilize their talents and competencies. Creating long-term KPIs for the staff to track on their own time is a great mechanism for onboarding new employees. These goals will give new hires a purpose to fulfill as an integral part of your business from their first day on the job.

4. Educate New Employees on How to Use Internal Tools and Data Systems

Every business inherently relies on a set of tools and resources which its staff is using daily. Onboarding your new staff to properly use said hardware and software are essential if you want to retain them.

New hires will want to get accustomed to using your computers, software packages, and services so they can contribute to ongoing projects. This is especially important if you work in the service or customer support industries where direct customer/client communication is expected. Waiting for new staff to learn how to use your toolset on their own won’t lead you anywhere and at best cost you the employees you just hired.

5. Be Open to Feedback, Suggestions, and Comments About your Onboarding

Finally, onboarding new employees also mean being open to criticism and objective feedback. Most new hires won’t have open comments about your process of onboarding new employees until much later in their employment. However, others will speak freely and tell you what they think about the onboarding you’ve provided them with.

Don’t take their feedback the wrong way and view it as a learning opportunity instead. The people you hire are your best resource for constructive comments on what to improve and what to eliminate from onboarding new employees. By listening to your staff, you will let them know their voices are heard and that your company will become that much more inviting to future hires.

Critical Mistakes to Avoid When Onboarding New Employees

We’ve explored how you can onboard new employees more smoothly to engage them from day one. However, there are also some things you shouldn’t do. Onboarding new employees, when mishandled, can backfire and cause new hires to leave your company. Try and avoid the following onboarding mistakes to make the most out of the previous tips and guidelines we’ve explored:

• Ignoring onboarding new employees altogether if the candidates are “senior” or “experienced” – they are still completely unfamiliar with your business and need some guidance to get started
• Fast-tracking onboarding to get it over with quickly – onboarding is a learning process and trying to speed it up will only confuse new employees and lead to inevitable mistakes
• Lack of tangible goals or KPIs during the onboarding process – your new hires need to understand what is expected from them during training at all times
• Expecting new employees to adjust to your business culture overnight – this is especially impossible when hiring international employees with dramatically different backgrounds
• Expecting new hires to onboard themselves through PDFs and videos – continuous coaching and mentorship from senior staff members can increase the onboarding process’ effects
• Failing to have a clear job description or office space allocated for new hires – new employees will have certain expectations from a company that hired them, prepare the space for them
• Mixing up onboarding with orientation – onboarding is meant to introduce your business and specific job description to a new employee. Orientation serves to decide what exactly they’ll do in your company. No employee should ever be hired without your explicit understanding of what they’ll do in your company once hired.

Wrapping Up and Onboarding New Employees Properly

Regardless of whether you manage a small startup or plan to expand into foreign territories by hiring international staff, onboarding new employees properly matter. You want to retain talented staff as quickly and effectively as possible without them leaving your company for better opportunities.

The easiest way to do that is to begin your professional relationship on the right note and introduce them to your business adequately. Prepare suitable learning materials, acquaint them with other members of your team, and provide them with plenty of support during the first few months. Many of your hires will be fresh graduates, millennials, or people who lack in-depth experience and knowledge about your industry – that’s OK!

You can use oneglobe.life to start searching for the right candidates to fill your job vacancies in 2022. These candidates are some of the best you will find on the job market because of their potential long-term loyalty to your company. Don’t let valuable individuals slip through your fingers due to improperly onboarding new employees on your part.