Essential Onboarding Checklist For New Hires
As a seasoned HR expert, there’s no denying that onboarding can be a daunting challenge. As new hires come on board, it can be hard to know where to start and how best to ensure they’ll become valuable members of the team as soon as possible.
In essence, every company should have a proper onboarding checklist for new hires. This checklist is like the bible for all things orientation-related. So, without much ado, let’s jump into some of the essential items that should make up any good onboarding checklist:
1) Give Your New Hires A Proper Welcome
First impressions matter! So, starting by creating an environment that welcomes and makes the new hire feel at home is essential. Get started by ensuring their workspace is cleaned out and ready for use; throwing up some decorations or leaving swag with your logo can help create excitement about joining your team or company culture.
2) Clearly Outline Their Roles And Expectations
Giving newly hired employees clear job descriptions and expectations will help them hit the ground running and avoid misunderstandings in the future. Talking through key responsibilities along with notes about departmental processes or procedures can be pivotal in setting them off on the right foot.
3) Highlight The Platform You Use For Employee Communication
In today’s remote work climate, real-time team collaboration apps like Slack have seamlessly replaced traditional emails as the preferred communication method amongst teams globally. Therefore integrating these platforms during orientation would go a long way. Make sure they understand how to download/install any necessary applications before they even start working remotely, which means you’ll gain an active user & productivity from day one.
4) Assign Them A Buddy To Help Them Acclimate Quickly
Orientation shouldn’t just happen one-on-one with HR professionals — having someone within their team assigned solely responsible for ensuring they find their footing helps ease anxiety after joining a new company. This ‘buddy system’ is especially useful in remote working conditions and will help connect them with the team culture faster.
5) Emphasize Your Company’s Vision & Culture Beyond Touring The Facility
For most people, joining a company goes beyond gaining in-depth knowledge of their processes but also understanding what streams from the management style to your core beliefs and engagements.
The more they understand what makes your company different through language, social media engagement profiles, or newsletters, the better they’ll be able to make intelligent decisions on behalf of employees/customers.
6) Remind Them Of Procedures For Conflict Resolution
Workplace conflict is inevitable. However, downplaying it as insignificant hardens relationships instead of fixing gaps. It’s essential to cover potential scenarios a new hire may encounter while at the office and address how they should approach these situations professionally.
7) Explain Your Feedback System
Feedback is essential for personal growth among team members, not just employers – It’s not about pointing blame or highlighting errors! Proper feedback facilitates improvement in performance levels. Clearly outlining how your feedback policy works would save misunderstandings down the road.
In conclusion, creating an onboarding checklist for new hires that tailors specifically for each employee give them a head-start advantage in understanding expectations, leading to happier employees that are retained longer. Now, who doesn’t want that?
Bonus pro-tip: Follow-up is key
Follow-ups like after their first month on job review have proven helpful. They have the power to double productive levels. Ergo, they can enhance loyalty & bonding among remote teams especially.
So, be sure to use the above onboarding checklist for new hires as a foundation to create your unique orientation program designed for each employee. Give your new hires wings!