Study: First 90 days crucial for new hires’ rapport with management and co-workers.
Employee onboarding is the crucial period that you should be sharing your expectations with them and helping them understand what your company’s core values are. Without this support or direction, employees often don’t end up staying with a company past the four-month mark.
Beyond any company induction, our experience tells us that the most successful hires have a clear understanding of their development plan and how they will fit into a ‘new’ culture together, with a deep understanding of how they will successfully navigate the first 3 to 6 months of the new job.
While training and onboarding are not the only things that help prepare a new employee for their job, without them the chances are that new hires won’t stay at the company for very long. Many companies are aware of the benefits of onboarding new employees as opposed to simply training them. With adequate support from leaders, new hires tend to feel more positively about their job and work harder.
Whilst there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to onboarding or training, there are certain things that we’ve found that will help you successfully implement these processes with new hires. It’s also important to note that there is a difference between these two terms. Whilst training does have an important role within the onboarding process, it doesn’t represent the entire scope on onboarding.
So here are some of re:find’s top tips…
- Start the onboarding process before day one. Make sure that your new hire has been given a clear outline of their role and how it operates within the wider scope of the company. If you share this information with them from the get go, then they will be able to accurately manage their expectations of this new role.
- Make it personal. If a new employee feels supported by from all levels within the company hierarchy, then they will have a more positive attitude towards their new role.
- Be sure about who you are as a business. If you don’t know what your company’s core values are, then how are you going to instil them in your new employees?
- Make it fun and engaging! This one goes without saying…
- Assign a mentor. Why not bring in people from all levels of the training of a new employee? Not only can this reinforce training but it will also encourage office relationships.
We want to know about your experiences of onboarding, both good and bad! So tell us what you think and send us any questions that you have about the process and we’ll be happy to help – you can email me on James@refind.co.uk
You can view more about James Cumming our change and business transformation specialist here
