5 Tips for improving your employee onboarding process

The most important decision you’ll make as a manager is how well you keep your team together. Your team is the key to your company’s success.

Most people want a new employee to hit the ground running. The ramp-up process often doesn’t account for urgent departmental needs.

You hired someone to immediately fill this need not go through endless training. But employee onboarding can be effective and fast.

Follow these 5 tips for getting your new employees acclimated faster.

1. Start with an Employee Onboarding Checklist

Have your HR team create a checklist of everything the employee needs to do before hopping onto a major project. What are these tasks and how much time will each take?

Having the list upfront gives the employee a chance to coordinate their own tasks without a lot of hand-holding. Chances are, they’re also eager to stop watching human resources videos and get to work.

Knowing what’s ahead helps with their time management.

2. Meet the Team

On day one, you’ll need to show the new employee around and let them know their resources. Since the biggest resource is people, getting to know everyone is key.

In fact, this is one of the most important steps in the employee onboarding process. New employees have questions.

They can’t guess at solutions without risking making costly mistakes. Having other employees as a resource helps them stay on task while learning the ropes.



3. Plan Retreats

If your employee onboarding usually happens around one time per year, you can try to also schedule your company retreats around the same time. You get a dual benefit of allowing employees to get to know newcomers in an informal setting.

This is a major bonus when looking to promote an inclusive company culture. Company retreats show you who might work well together as a team and who might need more coaching.

Use the time away with your team as the training and your new employees will come back to the office ready to get started right away.

4. Go Digital

Gone are the days where every HR document needs a paper copy. You can save tons of employee onboarding time by making important documents digital.

These can be typed into instead of handwritten saving precious minutes on paperwork.

5. Wear Name Tags

The easiest way for your new employee to remember everyone’s name is to have everyone wear name badges. This encourages communication since your team won’t be embarrassed by asking constantly for the new employee’s name.

The same applies vice versa since the new employee can see the name badge and address their teammates accordingly. Studies show that addressing someone by name builds an emotional connection that you couldn’t just get through a generic conversation.

You can see here that name badges are ideal for just about any office setting.

New Hire Checklist

The most important decision you’ll make as a manager is how well you keep your team together. Your team is the key to your company’s success.

Keeping them happy and engaged means profits for everyone. For more information and tips, visit our blog for updates.