Employee Onboarding: The Basics
Employee onboarding is the process by which new employees join your team, from their first day of employment to the end of their induction period. It can often be neglected within working teams, but it’s an essential step in the recruitment process, and the best route to ensuring new team members join smoothly. The induction experience and first few weeks or even months in a new role can be incredibly stressful for existing and new joiners alike. However, offering a considered and supportive onboarding process for new employees can help ease the process, fast-tracking new hires to a space of competency and confidence, and ensure optimum company success with the best talent onboard.
Often, our recruitment processes can be left unreviewed until we come to recruit - when we don’t have the luxury of time to change working habits. Understanding the importance of effective employee onboarding and knowing how to create a strong onboarding process ahead of a recruitment period is the key to recruitment success. Let’s explore the ins and outs of employee onboarding a little further, and find out how we can make it work for you.
What Are The Benefits of Onboarding?
Developing a purposeful employee onboarding process has both morale and commercial benefits. New employees can experience a higher rate of confidence in their new role, quicker adaptation and productivity to new working systems, stronger workplace relationships, and a strong feeling of company cohesion and team camaraderie. In terms of commercial success and positive brand development, successful employee onboarding can reduce hiring costs, improve talent retention rates, boost brand engagement, and company image.
When team members feel secure and confident in their work and expectations upon them, whilst also feeling valued and supported by comprehensive, compassionate onboarding, they’re more likely to commit to a company and stay long term. Longer-term team members lead to fewer recruitment drives and reduced associated costs, with greater retention of nurtured and passionate talent. What’s more - happy employees talk. Gaining a reputation for a positive employee onboarding experience will lead to an improved company image and an overall boost in brand engagement and company commitment from customers and workers alike.
How To Create An Engaging and Successful Onboarding Process
Recognising the importance of onboarding is the first step - but how do we create tangible steps to develop an engaging and successful onboarding process? Ultimately, the steps to onboarding success are relatively simple; if you know how and when to use them.
For internal and external use, develop timelines and checklists to outline the onboarding journey, and allow new starters to check off stages as they go. Honing your preboarding experience is also essential - preparing new hires for their first day of onboarding with clear communication, social invites, introductory meeting preparation, and even welcome gifts or company branded hampers can help set a welcoming tone for new starters. With such a competitive job market, companies with weak pre-boarding processes can lose new recruits even before they start the onboarding process. Recruits who have accepted a job offer may well jump ship before day one if they feel undervalued or find communicative clarity lacking after an accepted offer.
Alongside these steps, ensuring a clear and comprehensive way to gather feedback from new employers regarding their preboarding and onboarding journeys can ensure your recruitment processes are continuously effective.
Creating A Stronger Brand with Employee Onboarding
From recruitment preboarding to employee onboarding, creating a strong and nurturing onboarding process is your next step to a more productive team, a more successful company, and an all-around stronger brand. By understanding the benefits to be reaped from revitalising recruitment procedures, and how creating the tangible steps to progress can be deceptively simple, we hope you can be inspired to make positive changes for your team.