If you’re not excited about your employee onboarding experience, chances are you’re doing it wrong.
To discover how you can transform your new recruits’ onboarding experience into one of the best employee onboarding experiences around, we recommend reading on.
Below, we take a look at why the onboarding experience is so essential, as well as identifying the various ways that you can significantly improve yours.
Can onboarding make or break a new hire’s experience?
Put simply, yes.
The way in which an employee onboarding experience is conducted can make all the difference.
In fact, research by Forbes shows that employees that go through a structured onboarding process are 58 per cent more likely to still be working at that organization in three years’ time, making the way in which you conduct each onboarding experience of the utmost importance to improving staff satisfaction and retention.
Bar the initial interviews for the vacancy, the onboarding process is the first real experience that new hires go through with a new employer. It’s for this reason the onboarding process can often feel like the first impression of an organization, and we all know how important they can be!
Making the first impression a good one can serve a variety of purposes. It can support employees while they settle into a new role, educate them on the company’s values, and help them to feel like a valued team member.
Why is onboarding important for employees?
An employee onboarding presents an ideal opportunity to grab the new hire’s attention, motivate and engage them, and introduce a new addition to the team that really cares about the company.
A lackluster, tedious or wearisome onboarding experience is likely to be unsuccessful, leaving new employees feeling uninspired and unwilling to engage. Ensuring every employee onboarding experience is as effective as possible is therefore crucial.
What makes a good onboarding experience?
To help you create the most inclusive and successful employee onboarding experience, we’ve accumulated some of our top tips below. From using the right onboarding platform to collecting that all-important feedback, try incorporating some of this advice into your employee onboarding process and see the difference it makes!
Make it an empathetic experience
Everyone has been the ‘newbie’ at some stage in their professional career and it’s no secret that this period can feel incredibly daunting and even stressful. Showing understanding and trying to empathize with new hires can prevent the onboarding process from feeling overwhelming. Assure them that there’s support available and ensure they know who to contact and the best way to get in touch with them if they need advice or want to take a break.
Plan a set program
The organizations that are known for having fantastic employee onboarding experiences tend to be those that take the time to build an effective onboarding program. Structured and strategic onboarding programs tend to be far more successful than the static, reactive and informal alternatives, so it’s well worth planning a program that nurtures employee engagement.
To do this, it’s best to avoid administrative tasks and drowning the new hire in paperwork. Instead, focus on developing a people-centric approach by introducing them to their new colleagues and encouraging collaboration.
Invest in tech
To help drive a successful onboarding process, you need the right tools. Selecting the most effective onboarding technology and software can therefore help to alleviate manual tasks, designate onboarding responsibility to other areas of the business (like finance and IT) with ease, improve training, and make the entire onboarding process as a whole far smoother.
Onboarding software can also be used to help the new hire settle into their role by listing their priority tasks, giving them something to focus on from the start.
Let them settle in
Speaking of settling in, while ensuring new employees have an immediate sense of job purpose and are aware of the tasks they need to complete, they also need time to acclimatize to the new environment. Settling into a new office with lots of new faces can be intimidating on its own – especially if the new hire has moved to a new location for the position or hasn’t held their new job title previously.
Ensuring new employees therefore have enough time and space to acclimatize themselves with their new desk and those around them can make all the difference to their mindset. After the formality of the onboarding process, make sure they’re properly introduced to their colleagues and encourage their co-workers to sit down with them for a coffee, creating a more informal introduction to the company culture.
Collecting feedback
After the employee has been onboarded, it’s important to realize that this isn’t the end of the process. In order to continually improve the way in which you onboard employees, it’s crucial that you gather feedback from the new hire using a survey or an exit interview. Giving them a chance to voice their opinion can also help them to feel like a valued member of the team right from the off!
How can Aluminati help?
At Aluminati, we specialize in bringing people together.
With a helping hand from our flexible alumni management platform designed specifically for corporate alumni and employee engagement, you can instantly connect your community and make employee onboarding effortless.
Created to mold itself to the specific requirements of your organization, our innovative platform supports mentoring, group management, data updates, and even event marketing.
If you’d like to find out more about how our platform works and our 20 years of invaluable experience in this sector, or would like to sign up for one of our bespoke online demonstrations, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
You can either give us a call on 01638 676 232, send us an email to info@aluminati.net, or find us on social media – Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Alternatively, you can always fill out our convenient online contact form with your basic contact details and enquiry.
Once we’ve received your enquiry, we’ll ensure a friendly member of our team gets back to your shortly to arrange a date and time for your bespoke online demonstration that works for you.
