One of the most crucial parts of the hiring process is onboarding. This is the point after the top talent you’ve recruited has accepted the position. When you follow employee onboarding best practices, you have the opportunity to:
- Acclimate them to your organization’s culture and work environment
- Provide them with initial training about the company itself as well as their specific position
- Welcome them as part of the team
The implications of your onboarding program cannot be understated. Without a strong onboarding program, employees often feel overwhelmed when starting a new job and are more likely to quit. However, retention and productivity tend to increase when a company takes the time to ensure that employees feel like they are a part of the team.
Here is a look at six employee onboarding best practices that go beyond a new hire’s first day and create a comprehensive experience designed to support them as they grow into their position.
Disclaimer: The information below is accurate as of August 12, 2024.
1. Fine-tune your preboarding process
The first of the most valued employee onboarding best practices happens before onboarding even begins. Accepting a job offer is typically an exciting and anxiety-producing event for a new employee. Unfortunately, not all employees and organizations get through the hiring process.
Indeed reports that 65 percent of employers have had the experience of hiring someone to join their team only to have the new hire fail to show up for the first day of work. One of the common reasons that new hires give for ghosting an organization is that the hiring process is too slow or too long. Other reasons include a lack of communication and not knowing the process’s next steps.
For the HR department to navigate candidates through the hiring process successfully, organizations must pay close attention to the preboarding phase of the process. This often involves the worker signing paperwork such as tax and direct deposit forms, as well as signing up for company apps.
But there’s more to an effective preboarding process than sending these forms electronically so they can be completed before day one. Many organizations also send out welcome packages during this time. These packages can include swag with the company logo, such as:
- T-shirts or mouse pads
- Important information, such as the worker’s start date
- FAQs for new hires
- A list of what to expect from their new role
- A checklist of what the employee should bring on their first day
Creating an onboarding checklist can help your human resources department ensure that new hires have a standard and effective onboarding process.
2. Be upfront about company values and culture
A company’s values and culture are extremely important to workers. Explaining them clearly is one of the most important employee onboarding best practices. In fact, according to a recent Gallup report, nearly half of all workers are open to finding another job and leaving the one they currently have. While there are a lot of reasons for this, one of the most common reasons an employee leaves their job is because of engagement and cultural issues, including:
- Lack of advancement and career opportunities
- A lack of alignment between the values held by the employee and the company
- Insufficient training
- Lack of recognition of contributions and achievements
- Lack of honesty and transparency
A closer look at Kiehl’s
As revealed in a customer case study, Kiehl’s was able to use their LMS to ensure that employee teams around the world received expert-level education and developed a strong understanding of brand standards. Just as when determining which skincare products to recommend to a customer, the learning of Kiehl’s employees was personalized to their own strengths and needs. In the meantime, the Social Community and Ask an Expert features encouraged mentorship, and the learning badges and awards kept employees motivated.
As Kiehl’s discovered, talking about your organization’s culture is a crucial part of employee onboarding best practices. It allows the workers to understand how the organization’s values align with their own. This alignment is not only to the benefit of the employee but to the company as a whole. Workers who connect with their company’s culture are generally found to be more productive, recommend the company to other potential employees or customers, and stay with the job longer.
The definition of “culture” can vary depending on who you ask. But the simplest way to impart this knowledge to your trainees is to simply explain “how we do things around here” and how the actions taken by the team reflect the company’s core mission. It is important to note that talking about culture is crucial not only with in-person employees but also with remote employees.
3. Introduce teammates
A list of employee onboarding best practices wouldn’t be complete without involving your team. As noted in a report on The Work and Well-Being Initiative conducted jointly by Harvard University and MIT, the quality of social relationships at work is a major factor in employee satisfaction and well-being. When a worker has supportive interactions, a sense of belonging, and the opportunity to be part of a team, productivity increases. Additionally, happy workers tend to be more effective employees, as they are often healthier workers. They’re less prone to calling out sick, incurring high medical insurance costs, or quitting.
Introducing a new hire to their teammates is an integral part of introducing them to a company culture that fosters social belonging. Having the opportunity to meet members of their team during the preboarding and onboarding process can help the workers feel welcome and more enthusiastic about their jobs. Some organizations assign an existing employee to be an onboarding buddy for a new hire. These ideas can help improve the employee experience, creating a solid first impression and integrating new team members into work as quickly as possible.
4. Avoid information overload
Paperwork. A list of expectations. Instructions. Introductions.
All of these items are necessary during employee onboarding. However, the amount of information provided to the employee can be extremely frustrating, leaving them wondering when they will actually be able to do their jobs. One of the most helpful employee onboarding best practices that helps avoid information overload is introducing new hires to your learning management system (LMS) and allowing them to handle much of the onboarding training at their own pace. Ideally, this will free the new employee up to learn the flow of work by giving them a mix of bite-sized learning tasks through the onboarding software and ample opportunity to shadow other team members.
Your LMS is a crucial part of your employee onboarding experience. It allows you to personalize your new hires’ instruction. This personalization goes a long way toward boosting employee engagement and retention. It helps workers feel that their learning goals are being met without overwhelming them with too much information at once. Having an LMS platform that embraces AI to collect and analyze data about your learners quickly can help you determine the effectiveness of your organization’s learning and development process for new employees.
5. Check in often
As you’re aware, effective onboarding does not only encompass your new employee’s first day or even their first week. It begins with preboarding and extends throughout their initial training sessions. In some organizations, the training process can extend through the first year or beyond. The continuous upskilling and reskilling of employees has been proven to improve employee retention. It provides support for each team member’s personal career goals and bridges skills gaps.
While your workers are undergoing mobile training to build their skill sets, one of the vital employee onboarding best practices is to check in often to ensure that your employees’ progress is being monitored and recognized. Senior leaders can help by providing information about the employees they are direct managers of and their goals. They can also help determine the specific training those team members need. The LMS platform can enable access to all learning materials so that employees can learn at their own pace.
Docebo’s LMS platform can grow with your new employees beyond their first day and throughout the upskilling and reskilling process. It allows companies to offer micro certifications that amount to $10,000 in increased value for the organization and create more empowered and highly trained employees. As your employee’s time with the company grows, the opportunities provided through the LMS platform grow.
6. Collect feedback on your onboarding process
Feedback is also a major component of employee onboarding best practices. Docebo’s LMS uses AI to analyze and summarize data collected during the onboarding process and the longer-term status of workplace learning. It is also important to hear from the employees about their personal experiences with the onboarding process. Did they feel supported? Did they feel like they were provided the information they needed but were not overloaded by the onboarding process?
Docebo’s onboarding and online learning modules integrate with Microsoft Teams. This makes it possible for your new hires to get the training they need in the flow of work. Through a personalized training dashboard, they can gain access to all training materials. They can also use the platform to collaborate with coworkers. Digital files such as the employee handbook can be accessed.
The Docebo platform also makes it easy for you to collect feedback on how your workers feel about the onboarding process through simple surveys. These take minutes or less but deliver important metrics about your new hire onboarding that you might not otherwise have.
Learn more about how Docebo can help
Employee onboarding best practices center around providing information that workers need in order to thrive. Docebo’s learning management system helps you create a learning culture in your organization. It assists both in-person and remote work teams in obtaining one-on-one, customized training and enables collaborative learning.
Our AI-driven platform provides access to company policies and all training materials. It even integrates with many other programs that your team uses. The data provided to HR teams helps them justify their L&D program. It also gives them information on how well the program is being received. To learn more about making Docebo part of an effective onboarding process, book a demo today.