“Onboarding is a magic moment when new employees decide to stay engaged or become disengaged,” said Amy Hirsh Robinson, principal of the consulting firm The Interchange Group in Los Angeles. “It offers an imprinting window when you can make an impression that stays with new employees for the duration of their careers.”
It cannot be emphasized enough how critical it is that how your company is seen and how it advertises, as well as how carefully you screen candidates, all are to the success of finding the right employee – much has been written elsewhere about these. Assuming that you have followed those best practices, in this article we will talk about the equally critical employee onboarding experience.
Talya Bauer, Ph.D., author of Onboarding New Employees: Maximizing Success has identified four distinct levels of onboarding, from least to most effective:
- Compliance
- Clarification
- Culture
- Connection
This can be broken down as,
| Compliance | Clarification | Culture | Connection |
| HR should take the responsibility of making employees aware of legal and policy related issues | A new role has to be communicated properly to the employee | Exposing them to company values and norms is a must | Encourage networking |
| It is better to start this from the beginning, giving him/her time to adopt | Focus on mentoring vs. training (Doesn’t mean that training is not required) | The vision and mission of the company should also be communicated to them | Make them feel inclusive and comfortable in the work environment |
| Respect 30-90 days ramp up period | Give them an employee handbook | Connecting them to information networks is a must |
Following the above-mentioned tips will put you on the right track without a doubt. But it is vital to evaluate how effective your employee onboarding is. This can be done on a personal level by asking yourself questions as well as from a broader perspective by asking some questions about the company and the team.
The following can be identified as some important questions you could ask about employee onboarding,
- How encouraged are the new employees to work and to collaborate with the team?
- Do you think they feel welcome at work and they get recognition from existing employees?
- How focused are they towards the end objective?
- Do your new employees find the working environment user-friendly to carry out their responsibilities?
- Do they give constructive feedback on the process?
Following these tips should help keep the employees you carefully selected, happy and engaged and with your company for the long haul. This can reduce your HR costs, improve productivity bring other intangible benefits to the company in the long run.