Over a third of all working people in the United States left their job as recently as 2020. You can assume most of these would want to engage with new roles ASAP, so you must bring them into a company in a smooth and seamless way. With this in mind, how do you ensure your onboarding process is both fulfilling and effective?

Below, we list the seven best ways to ensure you create a robust and educational set of onboarding steps. As you run through them, think about how you might need to change your current process to match.

1. Start Pre-Boarding as Soon as Possible

There are many places to learn about good onboarding online, though they all tend to agree that pre-boarding is essential in the 21st century.

This is the process of getting as much paperwork resolved as possible early. You can also complete all introductions before a new employee has even set foot in the door. This way, they can hit the ground running and get started with work without any bumps in the road.

The things you can do to empower a new employee in this way include:

Welcome them. Ensure the new person receives a friendly welcome and feels appreciated in the new role.

Finish paperwork. Make sure to send them a contract to sign and everything else they might need to engage with before they start. Ask for any extra paperwork you might need, like NDAs, to save time before they start.

Send them the tools they need. Ensure they have access to the systems and tools you use at your company. Work with your IT department to make sure they have the installation keys they will need to use.

Link them with a point of contact.Have someone on their team they can start to talk to before the day they join, perhaps their team lead or a colleague they will sit next to. This way, they will feel like they already know someone when they join.

Send them the employee handbook. Allow them to read through this in their own time. However, do not pressure them too much, as they may have other commitments before their first day.

2. Get Them Comfortable With Communication Channels

Give the new employee their email address and password and access to any internal communications tools they might use. By including them in such areas of the company, they will learn the office culture faster and not miss out on shared experiences.

This will also help them ask for help if they need it, increasing their speed of learning how to complete their tasks.

3. Give Them a Real Task

There is no point in giving someone a task only designed to test their abilities. Instead, give them a real thing to complete that has a real impact, no matter how small.

This way, they will feel like they are contributing to the actual progress of the company and learn from any mistakes they make. Assume they will not get everything right in this, and get someone to run through it with them when they finish. This way, you can learn how they do things differently from your current process, and you can help them pivot to your methods.

4. Give Them a Mentor

When starting at a new company, one can feel unsure if they should be asking all the questions they might have. Things that feel old-hat to current employees might be more challenging for a new person, and they might need some help with company process quirks.

Giving the new employee a specific mentor can help reduce some of the anxiety about asking such questions. The mentor should be on their team if possible and might even be their point of contact from earlier.

You should encourage the mentor to always be available while at work. Ask them to even try to include the new person in any breaks or lunchtime so the new employee can learn more about company culture.

5. Gamify the Onboarding Method

You can use several methods to create an engaging onboarding method for new people. Gamification is becoming very popular, allowing workers to track their work and push themselves to succeed. At the same time, companies can use it to view work analytics at a glance and see what processes need to change.

Examples of things you can do here include:

  • Creating a checklist of completable tasks to help track onboarding
  • Celebrating the completion of the onboarding process
  • Offering competition-style engagement between multiple new employees
  • Build on your internal image by creating a branded onboarding experience

Each of these can increase new hire engagement and help bring people on board faster.

6. Follow Up and Continue Training

Once someone has started working with their mentor, do not stop there. You need to check in at the end of the day, at the end of the week, and then the month, if not more often.

You must ensure the person is receiving all the help they need to continue to improve in their position. This might include changing their mentor, giving them extra help, or directing them toward other sources of education. Or, it might be you find the person is not a good fit for your company after all, which is useful to learn earlier rather than later.

7. Ask For Feedback and Iterate

Once the person finishes their onboarding process, you should talk to them about how it affected them. Learn what went well and what went poorly.

You can then iterate on your process for the next time someone joins and ensure you give people the best chance of success possible.

Perfect Your Onboarding Process

With these seven steps, you should have everything you need to produce a fantastic onboarding process moving forward. If you have any further questions, we would be happy to help you.

Our employment services can help you induct new employees into your company. So, learn the benefits of streamlining the onboarding process, all you need to do is talk to us today, and we can start you on your journey.