Best Practices To Design An Onboarding Process

Onboarding is more than just the practice of welcoming a new employee to a company. It is the process that involves bringing the newcomer up to speed about your company’s work culture, expectations from their job roles, and of course making them feel welcome and comfortable at their new workplace. It also involves training them to learn and master relevant skills and tools required for their job.

User onboarding is one of the indispensable practices as it helps in turning amateurs into high-performing individuals. It inculcates in them the values and traditions of your company, helping them feel that they belong. This feeling of belonging makes way for meticulous performance in their job roles. Orientation is not onboarding but just a part of the process — as many confuse the former with the latter.

There are various benefits of investing in a smooth and comprehensive onboarding. Let’s take a look at some that stand out:

  • It provides new employees with all the information needed to perform their job roles, which lays out clear expectations.
  • It helps them learn work culture, policies, and rules — making it easier for them to adapt
  • It increases employee engagement leading to decreased time to productivity
  • It helps reduce turnover for companies

An effective and well-designed onboarding process can make a huge difference to a company in the longer run. Therefore, we must learn a few best practices involved in designing a successful and effective onboarding experience for the incoming newbies. So, let’s take a look: 

  • Make a roadmap

Like any other strategic undertaking, always work on determining the goals and purpose of onboarding. What impression do you want to leave on the new hire about the culture and environment of your company? Find an answer to that question. Make a roadmap to deliver this message effectively.

  • Plan the first day

The first day can be a little intimidating for the new hires if they don’t feel comfortable at the new workplace. A new employee would want to get acquainted with their new workspace, locations of various departments, parking spots, the method of finding supplies, etc. Therefore, it is imperative to design a well-planned first day for a new employee — to make them learn and adjust to the new environment. The aim should be to make the new employee feel welcome and comfortable.

  • Identify and add to the natural strengths of the individual

Every new employee brings to the table their various strengths. It’s necessary to identify and learn about their strengths to focus their learning and development around them. When we focus on the already existing strengths we can bring out the best of the new employee, and also instil confidence in their personality. Therefore, recognizing and adding to the natural strengths of new hires is paramount. 

  • Assign mentors to new employees

Having a mentor eases the process of learning and getting up to speed with the work culture and their new roles. Mentors provide knowledge and inspire confidence in the new hires. With the help of mentors, new employees feel more invested in the working process. It also helps them form a bond with their mentor, making them feel supported in the new environment. 

  • Increase engagement using gamification

Gamifying the onboarding process can make it way more engaging and interesting. Incorporating games involving challenges, bonus prizes, leaderboards, etc. brings fun to the process of onboarding and helps employees interestingly learn about their job. The Gamification approach helps motivate and engage employees right from day one.

  • Collect feedback from the newcomer

Most importantly, take feedback from the newcomers at different steps of the onboarding process. Feedback helps identify the flaws in the process and work on them for improvement.

  • Invest in a onboarding and training software

Training is an essential part of the onboarding process to allow the new employees to learn and polish required skills for their job roles. It’s imperative to invest in onboarding cum training software to make the training process straightforward and more effective. For example, Bites Onboarding and Training features a set of easy to use tools for assisting newcomers and smooth onboarding.

Conclusion  

When a company follows the best practices to design the onboarding process, the outcomes are promising. New hires feel more confident, comfortable and welcomed at their new workplace. Employee confidence is a must for better productivity and output. Therefore, onboarding is not just a buzzword, it’s a necessity.