Professional Documents
Culture Documents
How Great Organizations Welcome New Employees
How Great Organizations Welcome New Employees
How Great Organizations Welcome New Employees
Introduction
Table of contents:
Introduction Are you making a great first impression?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
The business impacts of onboarding processes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Introduction
Introduction:
Are you making a great first impression?
Think back to your first few days, weeks and months in your current job.
Did your organization make a great first impression?
?
Or did the experience leave you wondering if
youd made a big mistake?
Yet how you onboard a new employee can have a significant impact on both
the employees and your organizations success.
You dont just need to make a great first impression, you also need to lay the
foundation for a strong, lasting and productive working relationship.
Introduction
The bottom line: employee onboarding is something you cant afford to ignore.
Introduction
MONTHS
Set the employee up for success with 30-, 60-, and 90-day reviews
Each of these practices helps you lay the foundation for a strong and
lasting working relationship because they help you set up a new
employee for success. And that leads to success for you too!
Now, lets look at each of these five best practices in more detail.
5 | How great organizations welcome new employees
Introduction
MONTHS
Best practice #1
Introduction
Extended benefits
It depends on the individual role, its complexity, and the nature of your
organization and its products/services.
Allow the organization and employee multiple touch points where they
can get to know each other.
Provide more opportunities to clearly communicate expectations for their
role and performance.
Give the employee the support they need to become proficient and high
performing in their role.
When you invest time and resources into ensuring your new employees
success, you communicate their importance and value to the organization.
The results:
Only you and your employees can determine the optimum length and mix
of activities.
Generally, research tells us that a process lasting 6-12 months is more effective
than one that lasts 1-3 months.
For an overview of some of the activities you might want to include in your
onboarding process, read 7 steps to effectively onboard a new employee.
Introduction
Should you start onboarding activities before the employee actually starts work?
Some companies are choosing to begin onboarding activities before
the employees first day of work, having them complete paperwork,
administration and training sometimes via an onboarding portal.
While there can be some advantages to this, it means the employee can
focus on work rather than on forms and administration on their first day. It
also gives them time to reflect on things like benefit options, and can build
excitement for their new job. But just a word of advice: you should be careful
in adopting this practice. In some countries or jurisdictions, and with some
classes of employees, it may not be legal to require an employee to put in
time completing onboarding tasks and activities before they are in your
employ, and on your payroll.
And even where it is legal, completing this work on their own time, before
theyre actually employed by you, might cause your new employee hardship.
A conscientious employee whos given their notice will likely be busy
finishing off work and transitioning their responsibilities at their former
employer. The extra workload brought on by your onboarding process may
not be welcome.
You also need to think about what this required pre-work work says about
your organization and your culture. Do you expect all your employees to
regularly complete unpaid work on their own time, evenings and weekends?
Does your organization respect the boundaries between work and life
outside of work, and encourage work-life balance, or not?
Introduction
MONTHS
Best practice #2
Its a lot of information to take in all at once, so you need build in ways
to communicate expectations over and over again.
Communicating expectations requires a conversation. The employee
needs to be able to ask questions and receive guidance when they need it.
The manager needs to coach, clarify and guide the new employee on an
ongoing basis.
DOWNLOAD
Introduction
Best practice #3
Introduction
One simple way is to ask new employees to reflect on these four basic
questions* and then share their answers:
Its also important to, as quickly as possible, get the new employee working
and contributing to the organization.
Why?
Introduction
Best practice #4
Introduction
Best practice #5
Set the employee up for success with 30-, 60-, and 90-day reviews
Finally, the fifth best practice related to employee onboarding is to
conduct performance reviews with the employee 30, 60 and 90 days after
their start date.
Regularly scheduled reviews also help to drive greater manager and employee
engagement right from the start, by encouraging ongoing, two-way dialogue
about expectations, performance and development.
By doing so, you ensure the employee gets the early direction, feedback,
coaching and development they need to succeed and to become high
performing in their new role.
These interim reviews help the new employee know how theyre doing, and
flag any potential performance gaps early, so you can address them earlier
than later.
30-, 60-, and 90-day reviews also provide the ideal opportunity for the manager
and employee to progressively set goals and development plans, adjusting
them as the employee becomes more proficient and productive in their role.
Its important to remember that the focus of these meetings shouldnt on
rating the employees performance. The focus should be on assessing the
employees progress in their new role, and making sure they receive all the help
and support that they need to get up to speed quickly.
Introduction
MONTHS
Introduction
MONTHS
Best practice #1
Create onboarding
learning paths
Introduction
MONTHS
Best practice #2
Introduction
Every employee has fingertip access to all their goals from their
Halogen TalentSpace My Performance page, and can easily
make notes on their progress and status.
To make sure every new employee is clear about whats
expected, and is receiving all the ongoing direction, feedback,
coaching and development they need, managers can leverage
Halogen 1:1 Exchange, to schedule and facilitate regular oneon-one meetings with their new hires (well, actually all their
employees really!).
Halogen 1:1 Exchange conveniently pulls an employees current
feedback, goals and development activities into an automated
agenda, so managers and employees can review performance
and progress, and make notes and adjustments as needed.
Introduction
Best practice #3
The new employee can make notes on their progress and share them with
their manager, showcasing their contributions to the organization.
And the manager and employee can review and discuss goals, and set new
ones in their regular one-on-one meetings.
Introduction
Best practice #4
Introduction
Best practice #5
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
MONTHS
MONTHS
Introduction
Onboarding resources
Here are a few resources to help you learn more about onboarding best practices and
implement them in your organization:
To learn more about how to excel at communicating role
requirements and expectations, visit the Learn section of our
website.
Introduction
Wrapping it up
We hope you find this resource valuable in your talent management
journey. At Halogen, our vision is to help organizations like yours
build a world-class workforce that is aligned and engaged, and
delivering exceptional results. We know that your people can be a
sustainable competitive advantage.
If youd like to access the latest thinking on each of the talent
management facets discussed here, check out Halogens
TalentSpace Blog.
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on LinkedIn
APAC
Free Trial
Live Demo
Product Tour
Introduction
References
Aberdeen Group, Looking Ahead: Extending the New Hire Experience to Achieve Business Results, June 2012
Aberdeen Group, Three Strategies for Linking Onboarding and Learning Initiatives, May 2013
Bersin by Deloitte, Connecting the Social Talent Management Dots: Leveraging Technology to Gain Competitive Advantage, September 2012
Bersin by Deloitte, Virtual Onboarding for Todays Glo bal Workforce, May 2013
Cable, Daniel M., Gino, Francesca, Staats, Brad, Breaking Them In or Eliciting Their Best? Reframing Socialization around Newcomers Self-expression
Cooper-Thomas, H.D., & Anderson, N., Organizational socialization: A field study into socialization success and rate. International Journal of Selection and Assessment,
vol. 13, 116-128, June 2005
DBM & HCI, Best Practices for Onboarding: Ensuring Successful Assimilation, April 2011
Fister Gale, Sarah, Onboarding: Tips and Best Practices for Bringing New Workers on Board, Workforce.com, October 18, 2013
Wheeler, Kevin, How the Best Onboarding Programs Work, ERE.net, October 2008