If you’ve ever started a new job and felt like you were left to your own devices without a proper welcome, then you’ll remember how frustrated and lost you felt.
By having a proper system in place for employee onboarding, you’re able to make the process a lot smoother and comfortable for everyone.
Why is having on employee onboarding system in place important?
When a new employee starts, there are a lot of things that need to happen before they can start to do their job. They need to meet other team members, learn about the software that they use, understand their place in the company and fill out various paperwork.
Using a streamlined process will ensure that your new employees feel welcome and part of the team from day one. For you as a business owner, you know that the employee understands what is expected of them, time is not being wasted in their first few days, and that they will be able to get on with their role as soon as possible.
What your employee onboarding should include
Exactly what your employee onboarding entails will depend a lot on the type of industry you are in, the role the employee will be doing and the size of your company. The onboarding for a receptionist in a < 10-person firm will look different to a middle manager for a medium-sized international corporation for example.
Onboarding activities should be a big part of the first day and may stretch through the first week for larger companies and more complex roles.
Some of the activities that are worth putting into your onboarding system for the first day include:
- Welcome meetings with key personnel
- An office tour
- Completing of paperwork with HR
- Employee shadowing
How to manage the process
Creating a checklist that shows all the activities you need to do and information you need to give your employee is an effective way of keeping track of what stage of the onboarding process you are at.
This checklist can include things like:
- Ensuring team members are available to spend time with the new employee, whether its for a meet and greet or shadowing.
- Ordering ID badges and/or merchandise
- Making sure that the employee will have the log in details for their computer and access to software/online training programs.
- Having a desk set up the tools they need to get started
- Creating an employee handbook
- Setting up an action plan of onboarding activities
One person in your company should be responsible for managing the onboarding process, and tick off the checklist as actions are completed.
Welcome pack
Having a welcome pack ready for when your employee arrives shows you are organised and ready for them to start. This pack can contain:
- The onboarding action plan with meeting times for the first week
- ID badges
- Merchandise
- Employee handbook
- Computer/email log ins
- Forms that need to be filled in such as bank account details
- Company prospectus, annual report, or other appropriate reading material
Putting together an employee onboarding system is an important part of making your new employees feel welcome and ensuring that you set them up for success. To find out more about how System Hub helps small and medium size businesses streamline their processes in order to scale to the next level, click here.
