How to Create the Best Employee Onboarding Experiences

Providing a superior onboarding experience will create a positive tone for the employee’s journey within your organization. However, many companies are more focused and interested in the process rather than providing any type of memorable experience during the onboarding program.

According to one survey, up to 30% of job seekers will leave a job within the initial 90 days due to the culture at the organization and because the day-to-day experience doesn’t meet their expectations. This shows that now is the time for companies – of all sizes – to take onboarding programs more seriously. This is especially important as the war for the best talent becomes even more “cut-throat.”

Here, you can find new ways to build an effective employee onboarding process that will welcome new hires to your organization. However, before we dive in, let’s consider the benefits offered by creating a positive onboarding experience.

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Benefits of an Effective Onboarding Experience

There are a few benefits offered by providing a positive onboarding experience. These include:

• Increased talent retention
• Enhanced employment branding
• Improved job and business performance
• Stronger company culture
• Increased job and employee satisfaction

Now that you know the benefits provided by a good onboarding process, it’s time to learn more about how to achieve a positive employee experience.

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Begin Onboarding Before a New Employees First Day on the Job

Some human resource professionals believe that an effective onboarding process will start long before the first day at work for an employee. It’s up to you to engage with an employee before they begin working to show that your business values them and that you are excited to have them on board.

Introducing your new hires to a structured onboarding process at the very start of the employee lifecycle allows you to set employee expectations and introduce them to your company's culture before their first day. It can also help in creating great first impressions, which matters more than anyone thinks.

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Make Day One Count for New Hires

Many new hires feel uncomfortable on their first day at a new job. If you create a productive first day, it is going to help to boost employee engagement while reducing the feeling of discomfort. It will also help ensure they can “hit the ground running.”

Create a structured program to do this. Your employee experience strategy can include onboarding checklists that lists things like showing new employees their workstations, providing them with the tools they need to do their job, assigning tasks like meeting managers and co-workers, and going through all the company’s important documents.

Also, you can assign your a member of your HR team or one of your HR managers to all new hires. This is an idea that Google uses. Google's onboarding focuses on giving a new hire someone to walk them through the culture, become their work friend, and ensure they acclimate to their new work environment. The employee that is assigned this task can also answer any questions or address problems that the new hires have. This will ensure they feel connected to the job they have been hired for and the company from day one.

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Assign New Hires a Mentor

The initial 90 days of a person’s employment are essential to their journey in an organization. Besides not understanding what is expected of them, some new hires find it hard to understand their role and how it works with the organization’s overall goals. To help ensure your team assimilates faster into the workplace culture, it’s a good idea to consider giving new hires a mentor who will help them through the onboarding process.

The main purpose of a mentor is to help guide a new hire through the initial days on the job. They will also help to outline the expectations of the company. The mentors also work to train, support, and coach employees to ensure they can reach their full potential.

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Host an Orientation for New Hires

A great way to wow any new employee is by organizing an event to welcome them to the organization. The event’s goal is to provide the perfect opportunity for an employee to learn more about the company, understand the story, and meet other people from the organization.

Companies can get a good idea about how to do this from Microsoft Corporation. This company provides new hires with a New Employee Orientation, and one of these is held each week. During this meeting, newcomers are welcomed by the company’s CEO in a prerecorded message. They are also provided with information regarding the visions and goals of the company, and they get to learn about the job’s perks.

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Leverage the Benefits of New Technology

There are manual methods for onboarding a new employee that will make the process unpleasant and long for everyone involved. Even worse, this will expose everyone to errors that may have long-lasting negative effects. To help reduce this from happening, companies must adopt a well-structured process to onboard new hires.

With new technology, you can provide a smooth onboarding process that is going to have a positive impact on the employee experience. You can also let your HR professionals customize the entire onboarding flow against different checklists and by assigning responsible team members to help with getting new hires acclimated.

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Improving Your Onboarding Process

As you can see, there are more than a few ways to improve the onboarding process and ensure that it provides new hires with a great first impression of your organization. When you use the tips here, you will have more satisfied workers better acclimated to the positions they have been hired for. It is a good idea to customize the tips that are given here to meet the needs of your organization, managers, and new hires. In the long run, the right onboarding process will benefit everyone and help ensure your company’s ongoing success.

Now is the time to make a change. Don’t lose amazing talent because you aren’t focused on providing an amazing onboarding process.