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.



5 Ways name badges help a company succeed

There is power in great branding, and wearing a name badge is one branding strategy. Employees wear a badge that promotes company visibility and fosters harmonious work relations.

There is power in great branding, and wearing a name badge is one branding strategy. Some business owners adopt a modern culture without uniforms and nameplates. While this setup works, operations-wise, it overlooks the power of great branding that comes with wearing a name badge. Employees wear a badge that promotes company visibility and fosters harmonious work relations.

A badge, however tiny, is your brand’s silent ambassador. Hence, companies spend resources perfecting and innovating name badges. Learn the five significant impacts of name badges on your company’s success.

Winning Customer Experience

Customers find it odd sometimes to address frontline staff with a generic Miss or Mister, especially in the service industry (e.g., restaurants, salons, and hotels). Name badges allow customers to address staff by their names, and in a way, allow a more personal interaction.

Name badges that reveal the names and positions of the staff are even better. They establish credibility. Customers will then take the staff’s words with trust, knowing they are in a position of authority. So overall, name badges foster a winning customer experience, which potentially translates to repeat purchases or visits.

Professional Branding

Name tags are extensions of your company’s brand. Companies even use badges to display taglines or logos. Hence, marketing teams spend time and effort finding the right colours, fonts, designs, and materials for name badges. They know that a bad-looking badge can affect the customer’s trust. Perception matters, as it influences the intent to buy or avail from a company.

Sometimes, sophisticated name badge designs end up looking comical because the supplier chose the wrong material or delivered unpolished surfaces. Hence, marketers go through the arduous task of finding the right supplier, and so should your marketing team.



Enhanced Staff Relations

Staff benefits from name badges, too. Wearing name tags fosters group cohesion, especially for companies with over a thousand employees. It likewise promotes a culture of inclusivity. Trainees, for instance, will feel a sense of belongingness when addressed by their names. To a greater extent, it becomes a symbol of personal pride and accomplishment such that employees confidently wear them even in public.

Better Staff Accountability

Besides name identification, badges also display positions. Employees are likely to exercise greater accountability when they have something to identify themselves with, such as a name badge, a desk plaque, or any other visuals. Managers, supervisors, technical staff, support staff, and maintenance – all will feel a sense of ownership when reminded of their crucial role in the company. In effect, the business will run efficiently, and the employees become more productive.

Networking Opportunities

Field employees who wear a badge effortlessly become brand ambassadors. They carry the company logo when they drink a coffee in a distant state. They also promote brand recall when they attend conferences or even when they go out for a quick dinner in between meetings.

During those times, they may meet clients, employee recruits, business magazine editors, investors, or other people who offer networking opportunities that benefit the company. It will be a waste of opportunity if an investor, looking for an IT growth company, fails to connect with your badgeless manager, who sits right next to him at a conference.

Conclusion

Success is certainly etched in a name, especially in a well-crafted name badge for employees. If you want to serve your customers in a better way, create a more inclusive and productive company culture, or cost-effectively promote your brand without being pushy, then invest in name badges. You can even extend the naming system to your visitors, apprentices, and seasonal/project staff to promote workplace safety, especially during emergencies.