We know how important onboarding is for our candidates. The wrong experience can have a hugely detrimental effect on a new starter. The process ensures new employees receive all relevant information and understand how the company works and what is expected of them. This information allows them to transition from a new joiner to a productive team member, and so is a vital process within any organisation.

So how does it change in a fully remote working world?

Really, it shouldn’t affect the fundamentals:

New equipment
Communication
121s
Introduction to the team
Training and coaching

But it does mean being organised and ensuring that everything is prepared way ahead of the new team member starting. Equipment needs to be ordered and sent to their home address, an introduction to the business, the team and regular 121s need to be diarised and the induction needs to be planned out and communicated clearly.

It’s not just about the new starter

It’s not just about the new joiner either, your onboarding process can affect existing team members who will register the way a new employee is treated.

Onboarding begins before the new team member starts – both internally and externally. Calling the new employee is clearly important to let them know the basics, but also letting the existing team members know what is happening.

Returning to work onboarding

My wife, Gemma, wrote a blog about onboarding, with a difference – the importance of onboarding returning maternity leavers. “Yes, they’ve always been employed and aren’t “new’, but when I returned to work after 10 months out, a lot had changed, and I mean a lot. It was almost like returning to a new business. This, coupled with the fear of returning to work, was surely a recipe for disaster.”

Some key points are addressed about being introduced back into the company/role after a substantial period away, including new technology, new faces and new structure. You can read the full blog here.

In any capacity, onboarding is important to your business – it makes for happy employees and better business efficiency, as it gets employees up to speed quickly.

To have a chat about your experiences with onboarding or returning to work you can contact me on carl@refind.co.uk.

You can view more about Carl Hinett our Executive search of HR professional’s specialist here.

What I wish everyone knew about candidate experience during the recruitment process. Technology has completely changed the hiring landscape, for both job seekers and recruiters. These technical advances mean that employers can more easily find candidates that perfectly fit their current vacancies, and candidates can search for more jobs than ever before.

Often you find that companies will put candidates through a rigorous assessment process, without ever making an emotional connection with the potential employee (and then wonder why they don’t accept their job offers at the end of this process!)

Due to the increased online access to information, the best candidates can often have a choice of what job to go for and will quite often consider multiple roles before deciding which one to take.

This means that engaging with candidates is crucial and a great experience should be created from the get-go – you don’t want to lose a prospective candidate due to an outdated hiring process!

This is why the first contact is so important – it should be a two-way conversation between the interviewer and interviewee to explain the opportunity to them and to gain buy-in (as well as to assess).

Other things that you may want to reconsider within your own recruitment process include:

The format and style of the interview. It isn’t always necessary to do a ‘proper’ interview at this initial stage, you can do a full assessment after the candidate is brought in (they will be more open to jumping through hoops when they actually want the role)

Getting the line manager involved early in the process, even if only for a coffee. Most people work for their boss rather than the company so doing this can be a pivotal factor in the candidate’s final decision.

You want the candidate to get a real feel for the company culture. Introducing the candidate to multiple people within the company will ensure they get a rounded view of what its ‘really like’.

Think about it, wouldn’t you be more likely to accept a job offer if the hiring process was more enriching and you felt like you already had a feel for the company culture?

To discuss further, you can email me on James@refind.co.uk.

You can view more about James Cumming our change and business transformation specialist here.

Tag: candidate experience

Employee onboarding – warm welcome or completely clueless?

What I wish everyone knew about candidate experience during the recruitment process.