For a new employee, the onboarding process is often as overwhelming as it is exciting. They’re stepping into a brand new environment and may have many questions about your company, their role, and their benefits during the process.
It’s your company’s responsibility (and in its best interest) to make onboarding as seamless and engaging as possible, creating a process that is as straightforward for you (or whoever manages HR in your business) as it is for your new employee.
As a business owner or administrator, a good onboarding experience can help ensure your new hire has a successful first few months at your organization while helping you keep track of their important details and documentation.
Here are some ways to make your new hires feel comfortable from day one:
Start Before Day One
Before your new employee walks in the door for their first day, make sure to send them all paperwork needed in advance to minimize any surprises on that first day. If possible, send this information electronically to make a better first impression. This simplifies the process and lessens the intimidation that can come from a stack of new employee paperwork!
Also, it’s helpful to give them an idea of what to expect on their first few days at work so they aren’t caught off guard by anything, like how many hours they can expect to spend in new employee training, etc. Let them know the documentation they’ll need to bring and be transparent about any other important details they should know as they step into their new role at your company.
Create a Central Hub of Information for New Employees
To streamline the onboarding process, create a central information hub where new employees can find key documents and connect with internal tools. This hub could be a general landing page on your website, intranet site or online space specifically dedicated for new hires.
This central hub should have all necessary documents, like employment agreements, training materials, videos and other pertinent resources and links that will position them for success.
Plan out the Onboarding Process
Don’t leave your onboarding process to chance — plan it out beforehand. Organize the documentation you’ll need your new hire to sign, schedule their onboarding training sessions, and create a roadmap for yourself so you have a seamless process for integrating new employees. Planning out the process will help you keep track of everything you need, without falling behind because you missed a step in the onboarding process.
Make Communication a Priority
Effective communication is important in any relationship, whether personal or professional. When you communicate well with your team, it sets the tone for how they communicate with one another and with customers. This example should be part of your onboarding process from day one.
Get reliable contact information from your new hire and reach out with questions you have during the onboarding process. Be clear with your requests, and be transparent about their progress in the onboarding process, so they have a clear sense of the next steps as they transition into their new job.
Eliminate the Paper Trail
One of the best ways to streamline your onboarding process is to go paperless. Technology advancements offer numerous ways to convert older manual processes to digital, saving costs and time while improving the user experience. New employee paperwork is one example where this can be applied. Another is new employee training.
Focus HR makes this easy for business owners and administrators with our robust, cloud-based HR system. Rather than dealing with paper-based packets that leave more room for human error, both from a completion, tracking and data-entry perspective, Focus HR has everything you need in one place. New hire paperwork is now a simple digital workflow that reduces time, error and risk for your business. You’ll never have to dig through physical files to find an address, Social Security number or other important employee information. This will all be at your fingertips.
Transitioning to online applications is another effective way to make managing the onboarding process easier while reducing the amount of paper your team needs to manage. While many businesses have already transitioned to online applications, doing so for your own company can have a meaningful impact on productivity when recruiting and onboarding new employees.
Learn more about Focus HR and how we can make onboarding a breeze for you. Chat with our team and request a consultation. We’re happy to discuss your company’s needs to learn how we can help.
