Ask HR: What should I include in my new onboarding programme?
What you need to know:
- This minimises subjectivity when it comes to making a decision on confirmation. An announcement is also important because colleagues need to be prepared for the new one.
- Some companies send out a welcome email to make the new employee feel appreciated and others offer free meals in the first week.
- The employee’s workstation and all the necessary working tools must be ready.
I have started a small startup and have about 20 employees. However, most of them are dissatisfied with their first few weeks in the company because we lacked an onboarding process. I want to avoid this with future employees. How do I make an effective onboarding process for my company? What needs to be included in the onboarding process?
Onboarding is important because it helps the new employee get fully integrated into the organisation. Through it, they learn about the company’s values, objectives and HR policies that will govern their tenure while understanding the correlation between the different business units. They get to understand how their role and department will help in achieving the strategy. A very critical step in the onboarding process is to have the supervisor discuss the probationary objectives with the new employee. This minimises subjectivity when it comes to making a decision on confirmation. An announcement is also important because colleagues need to be prepared for the new one. Some companies send out a welcome email to make the new employee feel appreciated and others offer free meals in the first week. The employee’s workstation and all the necessary working tools must be ready.
The onboarding schedule is done by HR in collaboration with the supervisor to ensure that emphasis is given to the departments that the new employee will be closely engaging with. It is also good practice to introduce them to the leadership team who can further articulate the mission and vision of the company. However, even where there exists a clear onboarding process, new recruits are often rushed through or miss out on important components since their supervisors claim that they need to “hit the ground running.” This may cause the new recruit to take longer to settle down, then the same supervisor may fail to recommend the employee for confirmation.
It is during these sessions that the employees get to appreciate the formal and the informal culture by interacting with colleagues. Ideally, the new recruits should be followed up for between three months to one year to ensure that they are fully settled in the role, and to check if they require any skills upgrade to enhance their performance.
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