The power of employee onboarding
Do you want happy, engaged and inspired employees? Then it’s time to make sure your employee onboarding is up to scratch. We previously highlighted how pre-boarding aka attracting the right person for a role starts before you’ve even met them can help to minimise staff turnover. Unsurprisingly the process of employee onboarding is also critical.
What is employee onboarding in the modern workplace?
While once upon a time ‘onboarding’ consisted of little more than a cursory visit from IT, a whisk around the office and being given the HR manual to read through. If you were lucky you might get lunch with the team thrown in during your first week. These days onboarding needs to be more in-depth, involved and interactive. Done well a successful onboarding strategy will ensure you have engaged and productive employees (which ultimately benefits your customer’s experience and your profitability).
Get it right and you will have a team of staff that are connected to each other and your business, and who are excited and passionate about their jobs. Get it wrong and you risk making your new employees feel uncomfortable, confused and dejected … which means you’re likely to be recruiting again sooner rather than later. Employee onboarding needs to be a proactive process over a new employee’s first year. So, what should you be doing over and above giving them an overview of their benefits and sorting out their building and systems access?
Immerse your employees in your culture
From their first day you want to be sharing the company’s vision, mission and core values. When an employee understands
the purpose of the company – its vision;
how this is going to be achieved – it’s mission;
and the beliefs and behaviours which will help it fulfil its purpose – it’s core values, they can clearly see how their personal behaviour and values can align with the company’s and help it to achieve its purpose.
Show employees what success looks like
Employees need to understand what doing a good job in their role looks like and how this will be measured. Set short term goals for new employees and review performance against these, offering helpful feedback on how they met the goals and what they did well or need to improve upon. Encourage employees to think independently and autonomously, engaging them from the start as this helps to build a culture of innovation.
Giving new employees access to mentors or buddies not only helps them to meet other people around the business, but also provides useful guidance and helps to model what
success looks like. This is particularly important for remote or hybrid workers as without this they may feel disconnected from their colleagues.
Check in with employees regularly
All employees benefit from regular catch ups but for new employees it’s vital they have access to their direct manager – so expectations can be set, the role explained, feedback given and any issues addressed before they become problems. Ideally, they should have an in depth meeting within their first few days, followed by a weekly one-on-one meeting.
Fostering a sense of community and belonging and ensuring ongoing effective communication in the early days of employment goes a long way to making staff feel valued and understood. In turn this is likely to motivate employees to contribute their best work, leading to a greater sense of job satisfaction and lower levels of work related stress.
There are a few tell-tale signs that your onboarding process needs an overall. If you notice that new hires frequently:
underperform (despite having all the relevant skills and qualifications to do the job)
seem disinterested or demotivated
struggle to fit in or build relationships
ask a lot of basic questions or seems confused
This is a sign they haven’t been give the support or information they need to navigate their way in a new job and new company.
There are lots of other things which can impact your employees’ enjoyment of their job. The environment in which we work can have a huge impact on our overall sense of well-being and energy levels. At Office Space in Town we specialise in providing comfortable, design focused, serviced offices which inspire and motivate. If you’re looking to for office space in London, Cardiff or Edinburgh get in touch to arrange a tour of your local OSiT business centre.