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Employee Onboarding Efficiency

Onboarding was adopted in the 1970s as a management term for introducing newly hired employees into the organization. Onboarding is the mechanism by which job candidates are introduced to the organization by obtaining the relevant knowledge, skills, and behaviors to operate effectively. It also covers the end-to-end process of integrating new hires into the workplace to effectively meet their roles. The integration process includes: setting up new workstations and familiarization with the company’s culture, roles, and expectations. Onboarding further captures the orientation of the new hire with existing employees.

Why is onboarding important in the HRM process?

Onboarding is an indispensable component of the human resource management. The onboarding element gives life to the human resource function, enabling HR managers to meet their human capital planning needs. How?

1.) Gives New Hires Capacity

When you think about your first day at work, chances are you were excited to land a new job but nervous to learn and start right away! If you don’t receive enough instructions and guidance that resonate with your feelings and emotions, you won’t get the capacity to speed up in your new role.

Onboarding gives new hires direction, support, and guidance to succeed in their assigned roles. Employee onboarding integrates new hires, creating an ecosystem of learning and adaptation. This, in the long-term, helps new hires or employees learn and adapt to the company growth.

2.) Retention

Onboarding lets employees learn and gain knowledge of diverse cultural and behavioral issues around your organization. It is a stepping stool to your organization’s higher ideals.

Most importantly, the internalization of organizational values and cultures that happens during orientation and onboarding exercises helps with retention. Retention levels are reported to be higher in organizations that foster cultural conformity and cultural awareness.

3.) Productivity

Another benefit of onboarding in the HR process is that it enables human resources to reach productivity goals (or capacity) faster. If your employees do not receive adequate help from hiring managers or co-workers, and they constantly have to figure things out on their own, your company is likely to lose revenue that these hires would otherwise be bringing.

However, if new hires go through a well-developed and robust onboarding exercise, they will learn and adapt faster. Onboarding helps employees to settle and start adding value to the team.

How to make the onboarding experience more efficient?

There are many things you can do to help new hires when designing the onboarding process. For instance, you can send them a gift card, or a welcome package, arrange for lunch, or prepare dinner with colleagues.

Whatever you decide to include in your onboarding process, there are several steps to take to make onboarding more efficient.

Top 3 keys to an efficient onboarding program

1.) Communicate early

Communication is the cornerstone of any efficient onboarding process. If you’re considering hiring new candidates, establish potential communication channels. Ensure you communicate with them regularly and show that you’re looking forward to having them on your team.

Regular communication and outreach, coupled with feedback mechanisms from potential hires are key in reinforcing your onboarding. You can send them an employee handbook or prepare a presentation about the company’s history and philosophy. Either way, you stand to build rapport with potentially talented candidates if you foster your communication and outreach approach.

2.) Plan extensively

It’s advisable to plan if you’re to succeed in your onboarding. Prepare the new hire’s first-week schedule. Have everything laid out for them. Most new hires are uncertain of what is expected during their first week.

When hires arrive, they’re uncertain of their work. It’s up to you to show that you’re fully prepared to guide and direct them towards meeting their goals and purpose. So, it’s advisable to prepare a detailed plan for their first week at work.

Check all the important boxes like workstation arrangement, giving tools for work, and evaluating their comprehension of work requirements. Extensive planning is the key to building an efficient onboarding process.

3.) Friendly welcome

The first day has a lot of implications on the hire’s overall perception. Be positive, friendly, and enthusiastic when welcoming your new hires. Give the new hire a company walk-through – from the workstation, kitchen, washrooms, rec room ping pong table – to the manager’s office.

It’s advisable to provide a feedback platform or channel. That’s because most new hires are faced with challenges they can’t overcome. And without a proper feedback mechanism or communication channel, they may fail to execute their duties effectively.

Friendly gestures are an important incentive for the onboarding process.

Why is effective onboarding important?

Effective onboarding is the secret to excellent human capital planning. When human resources hire and onboard effectively, they help organizations properly manage their human resources and optimize their workforces.

So, why is effective onboarding important?

1.) Employee experience

An efficient onboarding process leads to a strong employee experience. After the Covid-19 pandemic, job openings are at an all-time high, meaning job seekers have plenty of job opportunities around.

If your new hires don’t enjoy their first-time experience, they can find better opportunities that suit them. A great onboarding process sets out the foundation for employee experience and engagement.

Remain focused on aspects like frequent check-ins, employee culture, and employee professional development to improve the job candidate’s first-time experience. Indeed, being actively engaged in the onboarding process reinforces the overall experience – from hiring to retirement!

2.) Employee engagement

Employee engagement refers to the strength of psychological, emotional, and mental connection that employees feel to their organizations, their teams, and their work. This helps employees to remain psychologically and emotionally connected to their job.

Highly engaged employees share many characteristics:

  • Better employee safety
  • Increased productivity
  • Higher attendance rates for work-related events
  • Happier and healthier employees
  • Readiness to take on new challenges
  • Improved customer satisfaction
  • Lower employee turnover rates
  • Improved business growth and outcomes

Employee engagement determines employees overall performance and productivity.

3.) Employee retention

Onboarding efficiency is critical in retaining employees. There’s a rising demand for highly skilled employees in tech – programming, software development, data architecture, and cloud computing.

Indeed, the demand for highly skilled employees in mathematics, sciences, and technology continues to highlight the need to attract and retain personnel qualified in these areas.

So, organizations dealing with data and businesses adopting the technology will have to look at onboarding efficiency as an element of employee retention. These organizations will have to view onboarding efficiency as a tool for human capital planning.

ExactHire – Streamlining Employee Onboarding and Internalization

The emergence of new automation tools and software has helped streamline hiring. For instance, ExactHire provides an applicant tracking system that assists HR managers track applications and improve the speed and accuracy of processing applications.

In addition, ExactHire provides employee onboarding software that helps you keep track of all your onboarding processes – from inception to completion. ExactHire’s employee onboarding software is a custom solution for organizations seeking to improve the efficiency of their onboarding, whether on-premise or remotely.

Contact ExactHire to access the employee onboarding software and improve your employee onboarding efficiency.

 

 

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels

What are the Phases of Onboarding?

Onboarding is your secret weapon for attaining all sorts of goals for your business. For example, taking the time to make the best impression for new hires can help increase employee retention. Having a well-rounded training plan in place can catapult your new employee from lumbering novice to an agent of productive wizardry. The onboarding process can help you take the helm of your company’s culture to increase collaboration and reduce petty grumblings.

Small to medium-sized businesses often neglect the onboarding process at their peril. But realizing the potential of onboarding requires thoughtful planning. Taking new hires on the journey from clumsy newcomer to accomplished contributor calls for a phased onboarding plan.

Employee Onboarding Process Stages

You may find yourself saying “I hate the term onboarding” once you really take a deep dive into how you can make this process better. But I assure you, if you don’t take control of your new employees’ experience, your organization will suffer.

A good onboarding definition is simply the process of introducing your new employee into the organization. Employee onboarding can help your organization reach its financial goals, and that prospect is maximized when you create a phased plan for this important process.

Employee Onboarding Process Phases

There are six stages to employee onboarding. The first is project management, during which you plan and break down the steps for onboarding your new hire.

The second is preparation and pre-boarding. During this phase, you complete your background checks and brief the staff who will be taking part in the onboarding process. You’ll also communicate with your new hire to help ease lingering doubts about his new position.

Next is the tedious, yet necessary step, that you’re already familiar with: new hire paperwork. Employee onboarding software can help you easily crank out this administrative detail while saving time and reducing errors.

The fourth step is new employee orientation, followed by new employee training. During this phase, your new hire will be introduced to your organization’s structure and will learn how he fits in.

Finally, the last step, reviewing productivity and performance, will help you assess the success of the previous steps.

Process Project Management

In many ways, bringing in new hires and helping them evolve into productive and contributing members of the organization is no different than any other project. You can use the principles of project management to create your employee onboarding process flow. In this first phase, you consider your goals for the onboarding process and develop the basics, such as a timeline.

The goals you set for your new employee will help determine your metrics for the onboarding process. Make the goals specific with clear standards for success.

You want new hires to feel comfortable with how things are done at your company. You can do this by identifying what new hires need to know about the company’s culture and work environment. Consider assigning a coworker to mentor the new hire in the subtleties of staff interactions.

Remember that onboarding is a key factor in employee retention. Consider each onboarding stage from your new hire’s perspective. Consider what impression you want your new hires to have throughout each phase of the onboarding process.

The project management phase for the onboarding process workflow is also when you determine your timeline. Most employee turnover happens in the first year of employment. Incorporate support for that entire first year into your onboarding plan.

The project management phase is also a good time to rally your onboarding team. These are the people who will play a role in helping the new hire acclimate to her new role. Make sure each of these people understand their role in welcoming the new employee.

At the end of this stage, you’ll be able to create an onboarding process checklist. While many of the tasks on this checklist will apply to all new hires, you want to create a detailed checklist unique to each new hire’s position.

Download ExactHire's Employee Onboarding Checklist

Employee Onboarding Preparation And Pre-Boarding

The following onboarding process steps include everything on your checklist that happens before the new hire’s first day.

Don’t forget to think about the onboarding process project from the point of view of your new employee. In this sense, bringing on a new hire is much like your customer onboarding process. In other words, extend as much consideration to your new hire as you do your new customers.

Consider sending him a welcome email with photos and welcome messages from co-workers with whom he’ll be working closely. Include information about parking. Let them know which door they should enter through and who his first point of contact will be.

During the preparation phase, the new hire’s workstation should be set up with the relevant equipment and supplies. Don’t forget some company swag. It’s also a good time for the hiring manager or supervisor to send an email invitation to lunch.

This step in your employee onboarding process is also when you coordinate with security and the IT team to make sure the employee is outfitted with appropriate user IDs and access. Don’t forget to add the new hire to calendar invites and email distribution lists.

New Hire Paperwork

While business has seen a lot of changes in 2020, the content of new hire paperwork has stayed largely the same. From tax forms to payroll forms, the data gathered from paperwork keeps your company rolling and in compliance with important government guidelines.

The most tedious part of the new hire checklist, paperwork, is prone to mindless errors. Onboarding software can automate employment paperwork to save time and reduce errors. New hires will need to enter information only once to populate multiple forms. And the data they enter can cross over to your other human resources software.

After the new hire digitally signs her paperwork, paperless onboarding software can automatically direct her to the orientation checklist and training modules.

New Employee Orientation Checklist

Orientation is your opportunity to help your new hire acclimate to your company’s culture and conform to procedures. Your employee onboarding checklist will include all the items to go over during orientation. You can automate this portion of the new employee checklist with onboarding software. 

During this time, introduce your new hire to the company’s mission and its organizational chart. Your new hire checklist wouldn’t be complete without a review of the employee handbook and safety policies. Your new employee orientation checklist should also include benefits documents and basic administrative procedures from security to the telephone systems.

Your new employee onboarding checklist should include activities and/or content to help the new hire better understand your organization’s culture. Schedule lunch outings with key employees. Personal fact sheets are a great way for coworkers to learn about each other. Invite your new hire to complete one and give her access to her coworkers’ fact sheets.

Onboarding software is a great way to manage your new employee orientation checklist templates. You can find a free checklist here if you need ideas for what to include during orientation.  

Employee Training

Employee training is when your new hire learns the nuts and bolts of his new position. How long it takes to learn a new job depends on many factors. Your onboarding process should be thorough enough to encourage success, yet succinct enough for your new hire to get up to speed quickly. 

How long it does take for a new employee to be productive really depends on a comprehensive onboarding process. You should give your new employee access to training modules. Onboarding software can make the distribution and tracking of these modules easy.

New employee training should also be collaborative. Assign knowledgeable staff members to teach the new hire how to do various tasks. If you incorporate these tutorials as items on your onboarding software, you’ll be able to track their completion and coordinate communication between the stakeholders.

Throughout the training process, you should give your new employee clear standards by which they can gauge their own success. Help them feel comfortable and encourage them to ask questions. Their productivity and performance will depend on how well they grasp key information during the training phase.

New Hire Time to Productivity and Performance

Hopefully, these onboarding steps will lead to success in the last phase: productivity and performance. All of your goals for onboarding hinge on making sure your new hire graduates into a productive employee.

Once your new hire is trained, you can continue your onboarding efforts with support and feedback. Schedule meetings to provide feedback on the new hire’s performance. This is also a good time to introduce your new hire to additional training opportunities.

Let your new hire know his input is important, too. Ask him to provide feedback about the onboarding process. Encourage him to ask questions and address concerns.

From time to time, you’ll need to part ways with a recently hired employee. You can use onboarding software to manage your offboarding checklist. The data you acquire can be incorporated to give you a clearer picture of how to increase employee retention.

If you’re using onboarding software, you can effortlessly measure your onboarding success. Over time, you’ll collect enough data to know the average time it takes to onboard a new employee. You’ll be able to use that data to measure the time it takes that employee to reach the position’s expected level of productivity and competence.

A great onboarding process will help your organization develop effective, long-term employees. By reducing turnover and reducing the time it takes new hires to be fully productive employees, you’ll have a healthier bottom-line.

 

Want to learn more about onboarding software?

Schedule a live demo today!

Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

5 Pro Tips for Quickly Pivoting to a Virtual Employee Onboarding Process

The new normal of living amidst the COVID-19 global pandemic is causing many employers to adopt new business processes…and to adopt them quite quickly.

For those organizations who are fortunate enough to continue hiring new employees, one of those business processes is to learn how to correctly onboard remote employees in a distributed workforce.

A hastily created employee onboarding process will put new hires at risk of feeling disconnected from their work and organization. On the other hand, a productive virtual employee onboarding program will forge a connection between the new teammate and the organization; thereby, positively contributing to employee satisfaction and the goals of the organization despite the uncertainty and hardship attributable to our current coronavirus reality.

Are you ready to pivot to a distributed workforce? Whether virtual employee onboarding is a brand new practice at your company, or you’re just looking for ways to fine tune employee onboarding for distributed workforces, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, I’ll discuss five best practices for quickly pivoting to a virtual employee onboarding process.

1 – Create a “remote-first” pre-boarding experience

With so much uncertainty on everyone’s mind, your new hire’s interactions with your organization in the days leading up to his start date shouldn’t further increase his anxiety. Make a toolkit of digital assets to share with a new teammate to make sure he feels adequately prepared and informed on day one. Here are some ideas:

  • Provide an organizational chart listing all employee names, titles and the hierarchy of the management structure. If you are a part of a very large organization, then a chart of the new employee’s department and/or division may be sufficient.
  • Create a task list or training schedule for the new hire’s first few days on the job. Create this in a shared document (e.g. Google Docs) that can be edited on-the-fly to include additional tasks as time progresses, as well as hyperlinked resource documents. With this approach, the employee can follow links to conduct further research to acquaint himself with your company and its organizational knowledge as his schedule permits.
  • Task relevant co-workers with creating video welcome messages to be shared with the new employee in the days leading up to the first day. We use a variety of tools at ExactHire (ranging from completely free to very affordable) such as video capture on our smartphones, and video applications like Soapbox, Vidyard and Camtasia.
  • Share a short, hyperlinked list of your company’s social media profiles with the new hire, as well as expectations about whether he is likely to be bombarded by social media invitation requests in his first week (as this can be a common way for remote workers to connect with one another).
  • Make it clear what equipment will be provided by the company (and by what date), and/or whether the new hire is responsible for bringing any of his own devices to his remote workstation. Ensure that all devices are accompanied by robust instructions on how to use and/or setup appropriate security protocols for effective work within the organization.

2 – Leverage the unique onboarding resources now available to your organization

While social distancing has caused many of us to approach the work setting in dramatically different ways, it has also led to the installation of a handful of new laws and limited regulations meant to help the American working population and employers cope with this crisis. Aside from new laws such as the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has also recently relaxed its normal requirements for Form I-9 compliance when hiring new employees. This change will help employees who have never hired remote workers to examine and temporarily approve employment eligibility documentation with confidence.

In particular, DHS has “[deferred] the physical presence requirements associated with Employment Eligibility Verification (Form I-9) under Section 274A of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Employers with employees taking physical proximity precautions due to COVID-19 will not be required to review the employee’s identity and employment authorization documents in the employee’s physical presence.”

However, not all employers meet the criteria necessary for taking advantage of the option to initially virtually examine new hire documentation. In fact, only employers who have gone 100% remote for all employees may utilize this temporary flexibility in document examination. For more details on which organizations qualify and what documentation is necessary to participate, check out this recent Forbes article.

3 – Make a short list of near-term new hire expectations

To make this pivot toward remote onboarding manageable and relatively fast, focus on only the absolutely critical expectations that you need all new hires to know right from the start. In doing so, make sure you communicate that the current situation necessitates focusing on the “must-knows” initially, but that icing-on-the-cake knowledge and nurturing will be sure to follow as things calm down a bit.

Your new hire will appreciate your candor, and be more likely to establish trust in the organization early because it is helping to flesh out priorities to ensure the new hire’s success.

Here are some examples of employee expectations that may resonate with your team. Be sure to educate your new hire about each of the items below that may be important for his work.

  • Training prerequisites that must be completed before certain aspects of a job can be endeavored (e.g. safety, password security protocol)
  • Preferred methods for co-workers to communicate with each other (e.g. email, phone, Slack, text, video conference, project management tool comments)
  • Mission-critical reports and metrics that must be updated…and with what frequency

Remember that while your ability to equip your new employee with these essential bits of information can shorten his learning curve and improve outcomes, don’t forget that our normal isn’t so normal right now. In fact, it reminds me of an unidentified quote that my co-worker shared on our Slack channel today…one that very appropriately describes the current plight for many of America’s remote workers:

“You’re not working from home; you are at your home during a crisis trying to work.”

There’s a place for grace right now.

4 – Communicate your culture

While company culture can be somewhat nebulous to describe to others, as it is often something experienced for one’s self in-person, there’s no doubt that remote cultures exist, too.

However, it may take longer to assimilate remote workers to cultural norms if you don’t take strides to help them take seed early. Here are some ways to make your virtual culture more quickly tangible:

  • Facilitate video introductions between a new hire and fellow department members and other key co-workers. Make sure all teammates take a turn to introduce themselves, explain their respective roles, and offer suggestions on how they interface with the new employee in his job.
  • Recognize that your organization likely has a multitude of multimedia approaches for communication in different situations. Create a “cheat sheet” of common scenarios to give your new employees a head start:
    • Protocol for out of office messages
    • Appropriate channels for different types of Slack posts
    • Frequency for co-worker video meet-ups and the purpose of each (e.g. is this a project-related call or a virtual happy hour?)
    • General guidelines on how quickly to respond to different inquiries and requests (make sure to allow for time zone differences between co-workers)
    • Location of a schedule of regular working hours for different employees
    • Protocol on whether to use one’s video camera on conference calls (is it preferred or required by various departments?)
    • Acceptable format for email signatures
    • Preferred software applications for different assignments (e.g. MS Word or Google Docs when both are available?)

5 – Implement employee onboarding software for remote hiring success

Depending on the industry in which you work, you likely use a set of software applications critical to the productivity of your business–it’s your tech stack. From CRMs to POS systems, and project management suites to ticketing portals, these varied forms of technology are essential to different industries because they leverage technology to automate and improve repetitive, and perhaps otherwise manual tasks for different employers.

While health clinics may not need POS systems, and safety equipment manufacturers aren’t desperate for software issue ticketing suites, I will advocate that all employers who are currently hiring should consider employee onboarding software.

Moreover, if you are hiring remote employees, onboarding software gives you a significant competitive advantage as you can improve the new hire user experience (aka first impression) as well as minimize documentation errors.

ExactHire’s OnboardCentric employee onboarding software can be implemented either as a stand-alone solution to meet your urgent onboarding needs; or, as a hiring component integrated with our ExactHire applicant tracking system.

As employers face constantly evolving news related to COVID-19, they are adjusting priorities and re-allocating resources on a daily basis. Our team understands the need for fluidity and responsiveness, and we’re equipped to get you up and running with onboarding software quickly.

To expedite implementation and improve your new hire experience despite the current pandemic, we recommend that you start by implementing required new hire forms (e.g. state tax forms, Form W-4, Form I-9, direct deposit, etc.) and allow us to train supervisors who need access right away.

Then, as demands on your schedule decline, our team is happy to work with you to include non-essential nice-to-have new hire forms, discuss onboarding process best practices and conduct more advanced user training with all of your hiring managers. Our responsive team is ready to work as your partner through this crisis.

Demo ExactHire Onboarding Software

Are you ready to improve your employee onboarding experience and respond to the rapidly changing hiring landscape with success? Schedule a demo of OnboardCentric today.

How to Automate Workflow Within Employee Onboarding Software [VIDEO]

While web-based solutions that can automate new hire employment forms and documents do exist, very few solutions also empower employers to customize their onboarding software platform to automate all the new hire and existing employee tasks associated with a robust employee onboarding process. The ability to automate workflow is one of the core strengths of the OnboardCentric employee onboarding solution. Two features that are key factors in the ability to accommodate unique client workflows are FlexFields and Roles.

OnboardCentric FlexFields Roles Video

FlexFields at work

FlexFields, as the name implies, are flexible, multiple-choice data fields that store unique information about each employee within an organization. These fields are customized on a per client basis. Examples of different FlexFields might include individual employee attributes such as

  • division,
  • department,
  • exemption status or pay type, and
  • employee level.

The values selected for FlexFields on an employee record drive two primary outcomes within OnboardCentric:

  1. tasks assigned to the new hire, and
  2. follow up tasks assigned to an internal staff member.

New hire tasks

Let’s talk about new hire tasks. We’ll group them into two categories:

  1. tasks assigned to every new hire, and
  2. tasks assigned only to certain new hires.

Tasks assigned to every new hire tend to include the completion of required federal forms such as the I-9 and W4, state tax forms, and policies and procedures specific to a given organization. Please note that FlexFields do not impact those forms or documents assigned to all employees.

However, FlexFields are involved for tasks related to forms and documents that only a subset of employees are required to complete. In fact, the criteria that define this subset of employees are determined by the values of one or more FlexFields.

For example, if new hires in the Compliance Division should be assigned items that other new hires outside the Compliance Division should not be assigned, then “Division” would be setup as a FlexField. Likewise, if new hires at the Executive Level are assigned items that hires at other levels aren’t assigned, then “Employee Level” would be setup as a FlexField. To determine the FlexFields necessary for your business, create a list of all the attributes that differentiate one group’s employee onboarding tasks from another group’s tasks.

Once your FlexFields are created, they’ll be visible as drop-down boxes for each new employee you add to OnboardCentric.

Using the previous examples, there would be a FlexField for “Division” that might have values of “Compliance”, “Information Technology”, “Manufacturing”, and “Marketing.” If “Compliance” is selected, that new hire will be assigned extra tasks that new hires in the other divisions will not. Similarly, there would be a FlexField entitled “Employee Level” that might have values of “Associate”, “Executive”, “Manager”, and “Staff.” If “Executive” is selected, that new hire will have additional tasks that new hires with other values for that field will not.

Roles for existing employees

Next, let’s talk about how Roles work within OnboardCentric.

Think of Roles as the acting parts your existing staff members play in the onboarding process. You may have as few or as many Roles as necessary to handle any follow up actions that must be completed by your staff. These follow ups will always be triggered by a task completed by a new hire.

For instance, once a new hire completes his portion of the I-9 form, that will trigger a follow up for someone within your organization to verify/approve that I-9 form on behalf of the organization. Typically this Role is referred to as an “I-9 Approver.”

Other common examples of Roles include “Countersigner”, “Equipment Provisioner”, or “License Certifier.” In each of these examples, the Role name used may be anything that makes sense within your organization. Instead of “Equipment Provisioner,” you may choose to call that Role “Supply Orderer.” The key point to understand is that the Role refers only to what type of follow up actions you’ll want that person to perform within the OnboardCentric platform.

Accommodating people with similar tasks

The intersection of FlexFields and Roles occurs in situations where you have more than one staff member performing a given type of Role. For example, let’s assume that you have four different staff members who each have the Role of I-9 Approver.

In this scenario, the FlexField values you assign to a given new hire will then be used to determine which of the four I-9 Approvers will be assigned that follow up task once the new hire completes his portion of the I-9.

FlexFields and Roles allow OnboardCentric to accommodate almost any type of workflow necessary for the unique needs of your organization’s onboarding process. We encourage you to take advantage of these capabilities so that you may maximize your onboarding efficiency.

 

Get started on the path to better onboarding.

Contact ExactHire to learn more about OnboardCentric employee onboarding software.

 

18 Onboarding Ideas Especially Suited to Part-Time Employees

In this era of increasing instances of flexible work arrangements, many employers find that an increasingly larger percentage of their workforce is comprised of part-time employees, specifically. In fact, part-time might mean anything from a periodic five to ten hours per week up to thirty hours based on the feedback I receive from peers in HR who strive to compete for talent by offering work schedules that accommodate greater balance between work and personal life.

As we shift to putting a greater emphasis on better serving part-time teammates, don’t forget to account for how their needs may be slightly different than those of full-time employees during the employee onboarding process. In this blog, and with the help of some of my human resources friends, we’ll explore eighteen ideas for rolling out the onboarding red carpet for your newly-hired part-time employees. Some tips will present a solid plan of action for engaging “part-timers” specifically, while others are best practices for onboarding all types of employees.

1 – Avoid overwhelming part-time employees

Don’t make part-time new hires “drink from the firehose” during training by overwhelming them with too much material too early. Remember, they may be on the job only half the time you are (assuming you work full-time) and so will have half as much time to absorb new content.

2 – Be supportive of self-study

Build in blocks of self-study or skills practice time within the first few weeks of the new hire’s employment tenure. Have pre-determined study or hands-on projects ready for them to tackle during the training process.

3 – Take care with time sheets

Since your part-time employees are classified as non-exempt, clearly explain the process for submitting a time sheet and make sure they have reminders scheduled to turn them in promptly.

4 – Prepare with pre-boarding

According to Linda Dausend, Consultant and Account Lead for FlashPoint Leadership Consulting, the “pre-boarding” process is just as important as the onboarding process. Pre-boarding includes:

  • sending a new part-timer a welcome kit at home–perhaps include a flash drive with a welcome video;
  • having a coffee meeting prior to the start date;
  • setting up the new hire’s desk, computer, and ordering business cards;
  • notifying your team of existing employees and asking them to sign a welcome card; and,
  • scheduling a session to officially welcome the new part-time hire during a time frame that falls within his/her work hours.

5 – Set expectations for special events

If your organization occasionally schedules optional learning or social events during lunch or a part-time employee’s regular work hours, make sure to set expectations with that new hire about whether he should consider that event part of his work time. For example, at ExactHire we have a few part-time employees, and we encourage them to join us at events such as our annual lunch outings to the Indiana State Fair or the downtown Indy Strawberry Festival on the Circle.

6 – Make use of mentors

Bradley Galin, President and Principal Consultant for Allegro HR, advises employers to assign a mentor to newly hired employees so they have someone to ask those questions that they may not want to ask the supervisor. When possible, assign a mentor who is either doing the same job as the new hire or someone who has done the job previously.

Don’t discount the importance of pairing a part-time new hire with a mentor or guide to help him get going. This may be even more important for part-time hires relative to full-timers, since they likely need a longer period of time to get to know other team members. Having a mentor gives them a consistent point of contact while they’re getting familiar with everyone. William Dykstra, Regional Talent Acquisition Consultant III and Officer at a large banking institution, says that most of the departments for which he recruits have a peer mentor paired with a new hire for the first 90 days of employment.

7 – Proactive paperwork

Dykstra also indicates that it’s helpful for employers to have new hires complete traditional employment paperwork prior to the start date. That way they can focus on learning the job on the first day instead of doing tedious paperwork.

 

ExactHire’s OnboardCentric employee onboarding software makes the forms, documents and tasks associated with employee onboarding paperless.

ExactHire OnboardCentric Onboarding Software Video

8 – Be clear about benefits

Bradley Galin also suggests providing a benefits overview to new part-time hires that is customized to their position and full-time equivalency (FTE). After all, your organization may have folks receive different benefits depending on their exact FTE and bargaining unit…so avoid one-size-fits-all communication approaches.

9 – Create opportunities for interaction

If you have other staff members who work flexible shifts and/or work from home certain days of the week, consider varying a new part-time hire’s work schedule over the first week or two so that she has a chance to meet and interact with all members of her new team.

10 – Adjust recurring meeting invitations

Prior to a new PT employee’s start date, evaluate which traditionally all-company or all-department recurring meetings he should or should not attend based on his work hours. For those meetings that are feasible, make sure the new hire’s email address is added to any existing recurring calendar invitations.

11 – Standardize the swag

With experience being a part-time employee herself, Kye Hawkins, Management Consultant and Marketing Specialist for ADVISA, encourages employers to welcome new part-time hires to the team just as you would any full-time employee. Whatever your company does: a gift basket on the desk, company swag, a welcome lunch, etc. Being a part-time employee still means she is fully part of the team!

12 – Share work schedules

Hawkins also emphasizes that one of a new hire’s first orders of business should be having him update his calendar with the days and times he’ll be working. Then, share his schedule with the appropriate people at the company along with a message clarifying his work schedule. Part-time employees’ schedules are more likely to confuse those who work full-time, and keeping track of work days will help all involved.

13 – Don’t underestimate the power of perception

Remember that perception influences employee engagement. By making a new PT employee’s first day as special as a typical full-time hire’s experience, you’re showing that part-timer he is just as valued as full-time staff members.

14 – Help connect the dots

According to Catherine Schmidt, Consulting Manager at Purple Ink, LLC, employers should make sure their new part-time employees understand and connect with the value and meaning of their work by speaking to others in the company about how their positions impact the organization, clients, or the community. Having meaningful work is a large predictor for retaining an employee and in this low-unemployment job market, it’s important for companies to keep good employees regardless of whether they’re full or part-time.

15 – Plan for the potential future

Additionally, JoDee Curtis, the owner of Purple Ink, LLC, cautions organizations to note that even though these individuals work part-time, it doesn’t mean they only need to hear “part” of the orientation. It’s likely that most everything will pertain to them…and what doesn’t (e.g. certain benefits) might be good for them to learn in case they decide to go full-time within the organization down the road.

16 – Introduce employees in similar situations

Especially if you work for a larger employer, make a point to introduce new part-timers to others who may have a similar work schedule early in their employment.

17 – Paint the picture for existing employees, too

Discuss the do’s and don’t’s associated with being part-time, especially for individuals transitioning from full-time positions to part-time roles. It’s easy to place a lot of emphasis on hiring brand new part-time hires, but we can’t forget to address the dynamics associated with existing staff members who reduce hours to adapt to changing life circumstances.

18 – Show and tell

Plan sessions that allow new part-time hires a means to “reverse train” a few weeks into their employment tenure. This gives them the opportunity to share with the manager what they’ve learned and reinforce understanding.

With some thoughtful consideration of how you might incorporate some of the above tips, you’ll be on the right track to welcoming and retaining your part-time employees!

Download ExactHire's Employee Onboarding Checklist

New Hire Onboarding Success with a SWOT Analysis

The purpose of a SWOT analysis in the business planning process is to make sure you’ve identified all the possible strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to your business.  Only then can you create a business plan taking into consideration all these aspects and setting your business up for it’s best chance at success.  The new hire onboarding process should be no different.

Some aspects of the SWOT analysis are designed to act upon.  For example, you want to make sure you capitalize on and take advantage of your strengths and seize your opportunities.  Other aspects are for you to be aware of.  You must be aware of your weaknesses and competitors in the market place.

If you really think about it, doing the same type of analysis for a new hire should be no different. To a new employee, changing jobs is a “new business” operating in a new environment with different conditions. Extremely savvy job seekers will do their own SWOT analysis on the company before joining.  Why?  They want to make sure they are setting themselves up for the best chance at success.

Your analysis of your new employee should occur over the course of his/her onboarding and should be a critical part of the employee onboarding process.  Ideally you would have done most of this during the hiring process.  However, it’s not an exact science and you may have missed some items. Hopefully, at a minimum, you determined the new hire should have a seat on the bus.  Now you just need to figure out what that correct seat is.

It’s not uncommon for individuals to be hired for a certain position then find themselves in another. This happens quite frequently in organizations that focus their hiring efforts on the type of person and their strengths and abilities, more so than technical knowledge and experience.  You can only gain this much clearer understanding of the best fit for the individual once she is on board and you have had a chance to analyze her capabilities against various positions.

 

Strengths

 

This is the single most important aspect of an individual’s SWOT.  If you do nothing else, make sure you thoroughly assess strengths and figure out how to apply them appropriately. Getting a new hire aligned with his strengths is the best way to set him up for success in his new role.  

To properly identify strengths, you must allocate the proper time and training.  Just immersing someone in a new role will not yield the results you need to identify his core strengths.  Step one would be to have a simple conversation with the individual and see what he thinks his strengths are.  Consider a tool such as the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment to assist in this endeavor. Then have him work through various aspects of his role (and other roles if possible) to see where he naturally excels with the least amount of direction.  By doing this, you can identify where his best opportunity for success may be.

 

Weaknesses

 

Awareness of weaknesses will avoid early failure and miss-steps for a new employee.  It is critical that he be given every opportunity to succeed, build confidence in his new role and gain confidence of his coworkers.  This doesn’t mean you don’t want to challenge him, but you want to make sure you are challenging him utilizing his strengths.

Once you’ve identified potential weak points, note them and work to avoid them.  The last thing you want to do is try to change someone or improve his weaknesses.  It’s much easier to focus on the strengths.  There’s also a tough leadership decision in this step of the process.  If it so happens that his weaknesses actually need to be his core strengths for the position, you will have to find this employee another seat on the bus — or another bus.

 

Opportunities

 

This is the fun step.  After your analysis of strengths and weaknesses you should have a pretty good idea of the direction(s) the individual can go within the organization after his onboarding.  These are his opportunities.  By the time you get to this step, the individual has probably started to see his opportunities as well and may have expressed some desire towards those.  

Don’t forget to have this important employee development conversation.  This will likely be the difference maker between an engaged long-term employee or a short-term employee.  Most employees will look for their next opportunity within the organization fairly quickly and if they don’t see one they’ll plan their next move — out of the company.  Your job as a leader is to make sure the opportunities they are seeking within the organization align with their strengths and avoid as many of their weaknesses as possible.

 

Threats

 

Typically addressing threats in a SWOT analysis takes into account competition.  We don’t want to think of competition in terms of an individual’s employment SWOT.  Rather, you want to look at what potential roadblocks stand in the way of his success.  The roadblocks you should try to identify are resource issues, process and procedural issues and potentially other individuals.

Ever wonder why they sweep the ice in front of the stone in Olympic curling?  They are grooming the ice and creating the best possible conditions for the stone to travel further and straighter.  As a leader you must continue to sweep the ice in front of an employee to ensure his optimal onboarding experience and continued success.  What you are doing is eliminating or mitigating the threats you know will stand in the employee’s way.   

 

If you’ve properly integrated a SWOT analysis into the new hire onboarding process you will be setting the stage for initial and continued success for the employee and your team/company.  It takes a little bit of discipline and practice to master, but really isn’t that difficult.  The most difficult part is evolving to the point where you only focus on aligning his strengths within the role, or a different role, and completely avoid any assignments that will draw on his weaknesses.

Done correctly, and applied correctly, a SWOT analysis will ensure a business stays on course, remains competitive in the market and services customers profitably.  This directly correlates with the same success of a new employee, his level of engagement, productivity and length of retention.

Looking for tools to improve your employee onboarding process? Contact ExactHire to learn how our employee onboarding software can automate your new hire paperwork and workflow.

 

Rewrite Your Talent Onboarding Story In 7 Game-Changing Steps

Once upon a time there was a talented, optimistic marketing professional named Simon. An exciting, fast-growth technology firm was fortunate enough to woo Simon during a flashy interviewing process and he was pleased to accept its offer of employment shortly thereafter. His new position would offer him more responsibility, more pay and a chance to learn some new technologies. Sounds like a storybook ending for Simon, right?

That’s what he thought, too, until he began to experience the firm’s employee onboarding process. While the tech firm had many things going for it, it had a few things to learn when it came to giving its new hires the best opportunity to be successful and productive in their working environment. Let’s see how Simon’s story unfolded and consider what the tech firm might have done differently to make a positive impression on him in the critical early days and months of his employment.

1 – Wait, What’s Pre-Boarding?

Once Simon accepted his offer, he still had to give his current employer a few weeks’ notice before finishing his job there. While his new employer was hiring frequently, and at such a pace that it often had employees start just days after accepting an offer, Simon was an anomaly in that he had some time to kill before his start date. Unfortunately, his new tech firm was radio silent during this period. Simon actually had to proactively reach out to confirm details like start date and arrival time. He wondered if his new company had forgotten about him.

Rewrite the Story: Simon’s new hiring manager could have called or emailed him to welcome him to the fold and prep him with some housekeeping details prior to his first day. This “pre-boarding” scenario (aka the period before official employee onboarding) is also a golden opportunity for an organization to send a welcome kit to a new hire with goodies like a prepared training schedule, visual organizational chart, fun facts about the company and some branded company swag.

A best practice during pre-boarding is to make sure that your company’s existing employees know about the forthcoming start date of your new employee so they can be ready to make him feel at home. This also gives the onboarding process stakeholders a chance to update recurring meeting requests and email distribution lists to include the new employee. Otherwise, Simon might feel silly if he was the only one that didn’t know to show up to the monthly corporate meeting.

2 – Learning the Unwritten Rules

Simon was an organized guy and liked to be prepared. During his interview, they told him that they had a relaxed dress code, but he still hadn’t seen any evidence of that and didn’t want to be the only guy in jeans on his first day. So, he showed up in business casual to be safe meanwhile contemplating the extent of the company’s flexibility when it came to the “flexible work schedule.” In addition, he was still in limbo with how daycare arrangements would work for his daughter, too. He would continue to feel a little stressed about that until he could adjust her drop-off and pick-up times to accommodate his new schedule. Of course his nerves weren’t helped when a bunch of his new co-workers asked him why he was so dressed up for his first day.

Rewrite the Story: Starting a new job is stressful enough; don’t make it worse by keeping your new hires guessing. At a minimum send new hires a Q&A sheet of commonly asked company culture-related questions before their first day.

  • Go the extra mile by pairing a new employee with a mentor buddy who can give him the real dish, and
  • assembling an attractive book or website full of pictures of your employees enjoying the unique aspects of your culture (for example, hitting the gong to celebrate a goal achievement or modeling work-appropriate attire).

Better yet, create a video office tour in which you interview employees that answer these burning company culture questions. Give employees like Simon the confidence to know when it’s actually okay to play ping-pong during work hours.

3 – You Mean I Don’t Even Get a Red Stapler?

Once Simon was shown to his working space, it was remarkably bare. While thankfully his laptop was awaiting him, there wasn’t much else other than tedious employment paperwork. His cube neighbor said that the supplies he needed were around, and that he could show him the office cabinet. So, Simon grabbed some sticky notes, a pen and a notepad since he wasn’t sure how much was appropriate to take. Back at his desk, he passed the time waiting for further direction (his boss was in a meeting on the morning of his first day) by investigating a new “twiddle your thumbs” finger workout on his smartphone…or at least he felt like that was what he was doing.

Rewrite the Story: Not having supplies ready on a new hire’s first day is frustrating and makes a poor first impression on a new employee. Stock a new hire’s space with all the essentials…have email setup, browsers downloaded and include a handy guide to applications that will be used on a regular basis. Complete the staging with a thoughtful welcome sign with the employee’s name. To make this setup easy on existing employees, too, have a basic onboarding checklist or template in place that can be quickly customized based on departmental needs. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with every new hire.

Identify additional employee onboarding best practices like implementing software to automate both the workflow-related checklists for existing employees, as well as the actual paperwork completed by new employees. Instead of taking up two hours of a new hire’s first few days on the job with boring, redundant paperwork, give him a web-based portal to enter that data in about fifteen minutes. Make sure your onboarding process brand matches the sleek corporate brand that people have come to expect from a fast-growth tech firm.

4 – Be More Innovative Than Lunch

Simon was pleased to learn that he wouldn’t have to figure out lunch on his first day. His manager, as well as some other members of his department, did take him out to a nice restaurant to get to know him better. There’s nothing wrong with lunch as long as that’s not all you do to learn about new hires.

Rewrite the Story: Use your organization’s industry, resources and/or culture to create a unique experience for your new employees. For example, a technology firm might have a space for all employees to share their favorite mobile app along with comments about why each app was selected. A design firm with graphic artists on staff might choose to commemorate the arrival of newer employees by adding their caricature to a wall of fame after 90 days. An organization of travel buffs could have a giant world map and invite new employees to mark the exotic places to which they have traveled with pushpins. Be imaginative and discover each employee’s passion.

5 – My Brain is Only So Spongy

Once his first few days had passed, Simon had to admit that his training schedule did become quite rigorous…full of people to meet all day everyday. He was hustled from one office to another, desperately trying to absorb all the information he heard like the latest chamois cloth mop from QVC. Alas, cramming isn’t generally effective; however, sometimes employers still feel compelled to fill all the gaps in the first few week’s of an employee’s training schedule. While the firm did gain some points for doing its best to expose Simon to a number of areas in the hopes that he’d be more productive sooner, they should have allowed some time for his early foundational knowledge to soak in and then solidify.

Rewrite the Story: Consider a shortened training schedule for the early days of a new hire’s employment. By empowering an individual to train and shadow with others for just part of the day, you enable him to take the rest of the day to reflect and absorb the information gleaned. He can form questions, review the most recent lessons and be better prepared to be a true participant in the rest of his training activities. Incorporate gamification elements into the training and orientation phase by creating company- and/or department-specific quizzes to assess the employee’s learning while also providing entertaining education.

6 – That’s the End?

A month into his employment experience, Simon was starting to feel like a member of the team. Especially when he was thrown into the training mix for three newer hires that were starting the coming week. That’s right, Simon’s fifteen minutes of new hire fame were already up. And while it’s not a bad idea to help new hires hit the ground running by involving them in improving the onboarding process for future hires, you also don’t want to let your hair down too early with your newer employees. The firm was riding on its own cultural coat tails too aggressively. Keeping employees for the long-term requires a learning and development culture that doesn’t end after a new employee’s first three weeks on the job.

Rewrite the Story: Chart an onboarding course for the long haul and remember that the good stuff happens at milestones you intentionally plan for new hires along their entire employment journey…whether it is three weeks or one year into employment. Beyond new hire paperwork and software login credentials, build in triggers for activities like

  • more advanced learning “courses” once initial onboarding prerequisites are met,
  • exposure to other departments to better learn how one’s own job impacts others,
  • individual assessment in order to uncover opportunities for synergy between the newer employee, his hiring manager and/or other department members,
  • succession planning conversations, and
  • personal achievement recognition at notable anniversary dates.

7 – Get What You Expect

Being organized and self-motivated, Simon already had his own ideas about what he wanted to accomplish in his career with the tech firm. He certainly knew his own job responsibilities and had a vague idea of the potential career path available; however, he was foggy on his firm’s expectations when it came to targeting dates for specific skills mastery and project completions. He was looking forward to really producing now that he had a few months behind him, but he would have appreciated more detail about what success had meant for other top performers in the past.

Rewrite the Story: Having a culture of performance management doesn’t mean forcing a performance review every 90 days, or perhaps ever. But, it does mean having candid, personalized conversations with employees about their passions, developmental goals and the organization’s expectations for achievement. Create a job success factors document for all positions so that new and existing employees alike have a benchmark for comparing their own performance to the model for success for their role. Include details about initial job priorities, expected time frames for project completion and resources available from the organization to support the employee. Then, work with employees to align their strengths and passions with opportunities for increasing responsibility and rewards. Providing a map to success will set employees up to have a true sense of accomplishment once they’ve reached important job milestones.

Where Will Simon’s Story Take Him?

Is your organization guilty of any of the onboarding oversights that befell Simon in his new position? If so, take action now so that when your newer employees get a recruiter InMail message after seven months on the job they politely decline the chance to learn more about the next exciting, fast-growth tech firm.

This blog originally appeared on elementthree.com/blog.

Image credit: Swoosh Goes Swish by slgckgc (contact)

The Onboarding Game

Employee onboarding is no game; it’s serious business. But sometimes our well-planned processes breakdown, and it seems as though employee onboarding experiences are determined by a roll of the dice. Will everyone on our onboarding team execute this time??

*fingers crossed*

It can be maddening for HR professionals when inconsistencies creep into the onboarding process. I like to compare it to the board game, Chutes & Ladders. So in the spirit of that classic board game, I’d like to offer 5 dangerous ”Onboarding Chutes” and 5 helpful “Onboarding Ladders” that can determine whether your onboarding process is a winner.

The Chute: Weak Pre-Boarding

This is the first mistake you can make with a new hire–and it could also be your last. You’ve put so much time and effort into finding the right candidates. It was a hard decision. But after coming to an agreement on compensation, you finally hired the perfect fit for your organization. You’ve come so far!

But now, you decide to take it easy and relax. You go radio silent with your new hire for the next two weeks.  Your “perfect fit” hire is left wondering whether your organization is really the perfect fit for them.

The Ladder: Bridging The Gap

Rather than leaving new hires out in the cold for two weeks, invite them in as soon as they accept your offer. The time between job offer acceptance and the first day can be used to strengthen the employer-employee relationship and get a jumpstart on required HR tasks.

Determine which forms or documents can legally be completed before an employee’s first day, and then offer the new hire the opportunity to complete these ahead of the first day. If you use onboarding software, many of these tasks can be done from home–without paper and pen. This will free up the new hire’s first day to include exciting and engaging activities.

Beyond paperwork, organizations can bridge the gap with creative welcoming gestures. A “welcome card” signed by future co-workers arriving via mail? An invite to a company after-work social? A quick, quirky “welcome video” shot with an iphone? Grand or tiny, welcoming gestures that occur before the first day will elicit excitement from new hires.

The Chute: No Written Training Schedule

Your new hire has arrived! Yay! You pull out all the stops for your new hire in those first few hours: bagels and coffee, grand facility tour, co-worker glad-handing, and big-wig sit-downs. The whirlwind welcome ends with the new hire arriving at a clean, nicely appointed desk. The computer is ready. Email is set up. Now what?

If the new hire’s next five hours and the remainder of the week are characterized by a hodgepodge of ad hoc meetings and supervisor drop-ins, then your impressive welcome may be all for naught. New hires need to learn and do a lot quickly–this can hardly be avoided. But to leave them in the dark is a step–or several steps–in the wrong direction.

The Ladder: Proactive Transparency

A written training schedule sets expectations–expectations for the organization and expectations for the new hire. This provides context and confidence for new hires, as they are able to see the big picture and anticipate how best to manage their free time. It also reflects well on the organization, in that it illustrates thoughtful planning and adds transparency to the onboarding process.

A training schedule can cover the first few days, weeks, or even months. The length will vary based upon the unique needs of the position and organization. The important thing is that it’s designed to be accurate and useful; otherwise, the schedule will confuse new hires–the exact opposite of its intended purpose.

How to present it? Hard copy schedules will work, but electronic documents that are hyperlinked to relevant digital resources will save time, paper, and money for your organization. Going paperless will also provide a more seamless experience for your new hire. Bonus points!

Download ExactHire's Employee Onboarding Checklist

The Chute: Internal Communication Breakdown

So everything is sailing right along with the onboarding of your new hire. A warm, enthusiastic welcome? Check. A written training schedule that outlines the new hire’s next few weeks and is in the hands of said new hire? Check.

The blue ribbon is as good as yours!

But then something quite unexpected happens. Larry from IT forgot to order and set up your new hire’s computer before leaving for his month-long spiritual trek in Nepal. Larry from IT!!!

Apparently, Larry didn’t get the memo or email, or hear in the weekly stand-up meeting, that a new hire was coming onboard during his absence. Whether it was the mode of communication or Larry’s understanding of his role in onboarding, the ball was dropped.

The Ladder: Clarity In Role and Expectations

Too often, employee onboarding is looked at as an HR function. True, HR takes the lead in creating, reviewing, and improving the process. But employee onboarding must be owned by everyone in the organization–especially Larry in IT.

Communication breakdowns are the result of either an ineffective mode–email, memo, voicemail, etc.–or unclear roles and expectations. Barring technical difficulties, it’s most often the latter.

Building an efficient and effective onboarding process is not enough on its own. All stakeholders in the process must understand the role they play and the expectations that come with that role. And when it comes to expectations, these need to be as specific as possible–meaning deadline driven. Namaste, Larry in IT.

The Chute: All Work And No Play

With a fine-tuned onboarding process, your mind might explode with ideas for leveraging new efficiencies. Some onboarding stakeholders may set their eyes on the time-to-productivity metric and urge you to pack in more time for training. This makes sense; the faster a new hire is up to speed, the sooner your bottom line benefits. But there is a danger in that approach.

If you work your new hires to the bone, you might find that another important metric is negatively impacted–your employee turnover rate.

The Ladder: Work Hard, Play Hard

With the cost of re-hiring equal to roughly 20% of a new hire’s salary, HR professionals are wise to consider leveraging onboarding efficiency to provide opportunities for training (work) and social interaction (play). This approach balances the two important metrics of time-to-productivity and employee turnover rate.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

The Chute: Monotonous Inefficiency

Sometimes organizations boast very consistent and reliable onboarding processes that result in adequate outcomes. And adequate is good. But don’t you want to be the best? Number one?!

If your onboarding process consistently and reliably provides new hires with a tower of forms and documents to read, sign, and submit…you’re good.

If your onboarding process is characterized by co-workers who consistently and reliably request, remind, and follow-up on required onboarding tasks via email…you’re good.

But if your process consistently and reliably results in a “meh” experience for new hires…you’re not the best.

The Ladder: Paperless HR

A paperless onboarding process is characterized by efficiency and highlighted with excitement.

When you eliminate stacks of paper, automate form completion, and enable e-signatures, new hires spend less time on monotonous tasks.  Similarly, when you eliminate document production, automate task reminders, and enable e-countersignatures, your onboarding stakeholders save time too. That’s where the excitement comes in!

With all the time saved through the use of onboarding software, there is now the opportunity to inject more fun into the the onboarding process. And if you have an efficient, consistent and reliable process that is FUN…you’re looking at “best” status.

Competent HR professionals understand how vital the onboarding process is to maintaining a healthy employee lifecycle–one that spans years and not mere months. However, too often an organization’s well-planned employee onboarding process morphs into a real-life game of Chutes & Ladders. Sure, even the best organizations will have unforeseen circumstances (chutes) that cause process inefficiency, but when those chutes outnumber proactive, value-added measures (ladders), the organization risks being the loser.

Onboarding success should not be a game of chance. Success can be ensured when organizations take the time to plan and gain employee buy-in for an onboarding process that engages and inspires new hires early and often.

ExactHire offers HR technology to help small- to medium-sized business recruit, hire, and retain top talent for their organizations. To learn how you can add efficiency and excitement to your employee onboarding process, contact us today!

Feature Image Credit: Chutes and Ladders by Thor(contact)

Onboarding Employee Love

New hires should love your organization. You offer a flexible work arrangement, matching 401k, generous PTO, and health insurance–among other benefits. Salaries at your organization are above average for position, region, and industry. You’ve given your new hires everything they need to love you…right?

Wrong. One of the biggest–and first–mistakes an organization makes with a new hire is assuming that acceptance of the job offer equals love of the organization. It does not.

The hiring process barely gets an organization and new hire past the “first date”. Sure, they both find each other attractive in important ways, and so they’ve agreed to continue dating, but love? Not just yet.

Acceptance of Job Offer equals love onboarding leads to love

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

Talented employees who love their employer…will brag about their employer. Employers who are bragged about…will be envied. Employers who are envied…will attract more top talent.

Love is everything. But organizations often fail to cultivate this love until it’s too late. In order to gain employee love, employer’s must invest time and resources in the employee onboarding phase. This is when employees will decide whether the organization is a keeper or just another fish in the sea.

Only Fools Rush In

Many organizations will direct all resources toward finding and hiring the best, but then relegate employee onboarding to a mishmash of emails, paper stacks, and afterthoughts. They rush through onboarding because they assume employee love has already been gained. Fools!

Rushing employee onboarding is like splurging on a romantic 5-star restaurant for the first date, and then following it up with McDonald’s…no, actually, it’s like knocking on the date’s door, and then throwing a handful of McDonald’s coupons in the air and walking away. “Hurry up the car is running.”

Cultivating employee love takes time and consistent effort. An organization should never assume that one action or the mere passage of time will result in that love. To gain and keep employee love, an organization must consistently show love. And that starts with employee onboarding.

A Culture of Love

A unique, compelling employer brand is usually one reason why a candidate accepts a job offer. And an organization with an effective recruitment strategy likely invests time in promoting this. But everyone seeks to make great first impressions, and everyone dresses up for the first date.

It is during the onboarding phase that new hires learn whether or not an organization can deliver on what its employer brand promised. Did they promise a friendly work environment? Transparency? Open-door policy? A work-hard-play-hard philosophy? Well, then, the organization better deliver. And it needs to deliver early and often.

According to SHRM, half of all hourly workers will leave a new position within the first 120 days. That leaves precious little time for an organization to back up its employer brand and cultivate employee love. To succeed, it cannot rely on gimmicks, giveaways, or once-a-year public displays of affection. On a daily basis, it must manage an employer brand defined and driven by an authentic and exceptional culture of love.

Cultivating Employee Love With Technology

An organization with a culture of love is a wonderful thing. But that love can go to waste if a new hire does not return the love or is not feeling the love. Technology can be invaluable in ensuring that:

  1. an organization hires an employee capable of love;
  2. an organization succeeds in showing love to new employees.

It’s in the best interest of every employer to hire individuals who can love them because re-hiring is costly. The Center for American Progress (CAP) puts the cost of replacing an employee at around 20% of that employee’s annual salary. That’s why organizations invest in hiring technology to efficiently find the “perfect match” for the position and the organization.

A similar investment in onboarding technology helps organizations show love and efficiently move new hires from “first date crush” to “longterm love”. Quite simply, onboarding technology makes an organization look good and a new hire feel good. It does this by automating time-consuming tasks and drastically reducing–or even eliminating–those groan-inspiring stacks of paper.

The Game of Love

Love can be cruel. Your organization can do all the right things in hiring and onboarding new employees: present yourself honestly, patiently seek the right match, make the first move, plan the perfect first date, and commit to a relationship…

But damn if that new hire doesn’t leave you for some fun, young start-up with a fake brand!
Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. But at least you’ll know that you did it all in the name of love.

 

ExactHire provides HR technology to help employers hire, onboard, and retain top talent for their organizations. To learn how our solutions can help you get the employee love that you want, contact us today!

Feature Image Credit: Love Colour by Thor(contact)

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