How to onboard a new employee: Tips for quick integration

Everything you need to know about how to onboard a new employee

To ensure a successful onboarding of newly hired employees, there must be an optimistic mindset in the workplace and detailed planning. Additionally, whether you have a small, average, or large company, you need to know how to onboard a new employee and make them feel valuable from the get go. Here are some possible steps that will assist you in the onboarding procedures:

Utilize checklists

Checklists during the onboarding process will assist you in systemizing your company. Through this, you will improve a specific scheme that can be awe-inspiring to some personnel. Having an onboarding new employee checklist also focuses on the significant hiring steps.

Onboarding new employee checklists include procurement of new hire devices or equipment, setting accounts, scheduling new hire orientation, performing a company tour, preparing new hire paperwork, and many more.

Curate an onboarding guide

Companies manage an internship that begins with a five or six-month stint. To manage this internship program, it is best to curate all the most effective reading materials on the field, the external content, and the company’s internal process into bite-sized pieces in an all-inclusive guide.

Through curating an onboarding guide, newly hired staff will be guided on what to do and how they are expected to function in the company.

Work directly with the new hires

Having a new employee at the office needs direct supervision, especially during one or two weeks. As an employer, it is best to shadow new employees for a couple of days. Through this, newly hired staff will know that there is someone who is willing to assist them. They can freely ask some questions needed to complete their tasks and know how the company works.

This scheme is also a perfect avenue to know more about your staff. Moreover, you will analyze their skills and level of understanding during the orientation process. You can also use this to check whether that newly hired employee needs more training or can directly work on their own after a week or month.

Provide a mentor

Having a new staff at the office is quite a challenging task. You have to orient that person and need to ensure that they are aware of their functions and tasks. To ensure that they will meet your expectations, it is a must to provide a mentor. A mentor will serve as their ultimate guide in completing the things that they need to accomplish.

However, there is always a limitation when mentoring a staff. It is best to let them work on their own after a series of training and orientation. An empowered employee should practice minimal supervision.

Advocate a repeatable procedure

If your company is growing fast, it is a must to enforce a repeatable and scalable process. It means that you will put your new hires through a structured, organized onboarding procedure. The main purpose of this is to ensure not only getting everything they need to be productive but also to ensure that each staff begins the same way. This prevents new employees from being branded into their units from the beginning.

Let them meet the customers

This is one of the best ways for a newly hired staff to understand your offered products and services better. By placing them in customer service, they can know what your company is offering to the target clientele. This is also a perfect way to learn basic operations in your business.

Above all, they can easily become more empathetic to the needs of the most valued customers. Placing them in customer service also makes them better equipped for their hired tasks.

Expose them to your business

An ideal way to integrate a new staff is to expose them to your company right away. Say, for instance, you can get a staff on a team that will serve as the middleman in the project. Then, let the newly hired staff show off their skills by putting them as a member of the team. 

To ensure that you will have a competent staff that is not procrastinating at work due to lack of knowledge, it is best to set up your new hire to engage at a high level of business exposure.

Monitoring and feedback

Every new employee has the right to know whether they are doing their tasks or not. A week after the orientation and supervision, you need to set up a one-on-one talk with your staff. You need to tell them the strengths and weaknesses that you have observed. You may also provide some tips and proper intervention to improve their work if needed. 

Talking to your staff is also a perfect way of building a more human connection. You will know them deeply and understand their behaviors as well. Other ways to onboard a new employee include proper communication and allowing them to be part of multiple teams.  

Bear in mind that onboarding a new employee can be a stressful and overwhelming process. It would be a case scenario if the newly hired will feel the same way during the process. So, maximize the benefits of mentoring programs to ensure that you will have a successful onboarding.

Conclusion

If a company is not effective in onboarding new employees, it can lead to reduced confidence, low employee morale, a decline in the level of employee engagement, and many more. All of these results can lead to missing revenue targets and company milestones. Having a concrete step by step approach on how to onboard a new employee will allow the new hire to integrate with the core team faster and without any drama.