Employee Onboarding

According to the Society for Human Resources Development (SHRM), employee onboarding (also known as organizational socialization) is the “process of helping new hires adjust to social and performance aspects of their new jobs quickly and smoothly, and learn the attitudes, knowledge, skills, and behaviors required to function effectively within an organization.” In short, employee onboarding involves the processes that help you ensure that your new hires get started on the right foot. These processes can be broken down into two categories:

• Formal onboarding encompasses the organized tasks and procedures that help a new employee adjust to his or her new position. Under formal onboarding, new hires are often segregated from existing employees to experience coordinated activities for orientation, in-classroom training, and socialization.
• Informal onboarding refers to the ad hoc and semi-organized activities by which a new employee learns about his or her new job. Informal onboarding can include job shadowing and impromptu one-on-one coaching or meetings with management and new colleagues, as well as the minutiae of getting started at a company, such as receiving badges and equipment.

Key Elements of Employee Onboarding While it should come as no surprise that an effective onboarding process should include tactical items such as the completion of new hire paperwork and the provisioning of employee tools, it must address the cultural activities that help a new employee feel welcome, too. As you plan for change in your organization, examine opportunities to: enable; enlighten; and, impassion employees.

• Enable: Enable your employees to be productive as soon as possible by preparing them for employment; gathering the necessary administrative documents with ease; and, providing them with the equipment, tools and resources necessary to carry out the responsibilities of their role in the most efficient way possible. Consider whether automating new hire paperwork would help you better deliver on your employment brand, as well as whether its potential impact on KPIs justifies its implementation cost. Don’t forget to better enable your process stakeholders to fulfill their assignments, as well. Get their feedback on what they are doing that could be done by a tool, instead…so that they have time to refocus on more strategic activities that will better support your employment brand. The decision to use a tool to automate many onboarding-related tasks such as equipment provisioning, benefits enrollment, payroll coordination, training curriculum milestones and mentoring relationship activities will certainly impact the extent to which your organization will be able to introduce other concurrent changes to your onboarding process.
• Enlighten: Enlighten new hires about the opportunity that exists with your organization by reinforcing their reasons for choosing you, and educating them about the potential career options available. A simple way to start down this path includes scheduling time for new hires and supervisors to reiterate the responsibilities of the position, discuss performance expectations, detail timelines for accomplishing mastery of skills and discuss the next big goals for the organization. Think of this activity as an exercise in reducing buyer’s remorse. Just like receiving a phone call from the dealership after a new vehicle purchase helps to remind you of the heated seats you’re now enjoying, a conversation between a new hire and management helps the employee to feel assured that he was hired for a reason, and the job is indeed the same role for which he was initially excited enough to apply. Employees that are aware of long-term learning opportunities, such as advanced training and mentoring, are more likely to stay with your organization, as well.
• Impassion: Can you see how employees that are passionate about your organization drive your business outcomes? Think in terms of customer satisfaction and retention, employee referrals and greater attention to operational efficiency as a start. Job passion will grow when employees are challenged in productive ways, recognized for their efforts and championed for their results. Communication is fundamental to the aforementioned activities, and it can be fostered effectively early on through frequent, intentional opportunities for new hires to engage with others in your organization. Many firms get this “social” part of the equation right, but maybe at the expense of also managing onboarding-related tasks successfully. Or, some organizations stop socializing after the obligatory new hire lunch on day one of employment. Don’t stop doing lunch…but start thinking beyond the first week for chances for new employees to collaborate with others.