Onboarding: Setting Up for Success
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Once you’ve employed a new staff member, what do you need to get them up to scratch in their role and set up for success?
For the benefit of your organisation and to engage with an employee from the outset, it’s essential to spend time getting people up and running, learning the ropes so they can feel like part of the team and start being productive.
For many companies, getting a new starter trained up can take months, but it makes business sense to do this as thoughtfully and efficiently as possible. Easy access to automation tools and other technology can help.
Here are some tips to get results ASAP.
1. Create an onboarding schedule
You know you’ve got the right person for the role, so now is the time to set expectations and give them your onboarding schedule. The first period of their employment should be spent working to the schedule – which might include:
- Team and wider business introductions
- Product knowledge
- Competitor briefs
- Tools training
Every new employee should be given an onboarding programme, regardless of how experienced or senior they are, it will just need to be tweaked depending on the person and the role.
Managers should be actively involved in training new people so they can be on hand to provide support, assess progress and set a precedent that the business is invested in the new starter’s success.
2. Create a library of resources
Make things easy for your new starter – create a secure online library of all the resources they’ll need and share it with your entire team where appropriate.
Resources might include bespoke knowledge needed for the role, an organisation chart and who to contact for what, training guides for the tech that the person will use in their position, and further reading on the company and industry.
3. Explain what the company culture is
For a new starter to begin living your culture, it’s important that they understand and experience it from day one – or before. You might consider inviting them to join your team for a drink before their start date.
Sharing the business’ values, and walking the new starter through what those values mean in real terms to the organisation, helps to set the right expectations from the beginning.
A word of warning on culture: ensure how it’s conveyed is inclusive, so employees get a feel for the company, but also understand how they fit in as an individual. Overly prescriptive cultures run the risk of alienating people, so how you define your culture and values needs to be well considered to allow for diversity.
4. Remember that training and catch ups should be ongoing
After the first weeks of intensive training and induction through the onboarding schedule, make sure the catch ups and coaching don’t stop.
Managers need to invest time in their people to create high-performing employees. And the business should see training and skills development as ongoing, offering opportunities to develop throughout the person’s tenure.
In essence, the more you do to help your new employee engage, learn and get excited about joining your team, the faster they’ll get up to scratch, start performing and delivering results.
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Your organization's culture determines its personality and character. The combination of your formal and informal procedures, attitudes, and beliefs results in the experience that both your workers and consumers have. Company culture is fundamentally the way things are done at work.
Onboarding is the process of integrating new hires into the company, guiding them through the offer and acceptance stages, induction, and activities including payroll, tax and superannuation compliance, as well as other basic training. Companies with efficient onboarding processes benefit from new workers integrating seamlessly into the workforce and spending less time on administrative tasks.
Shandel McAuliffe
Shandel has recently returned to Australia after working in the UK for eight years. Shandel's experience in the UK included over three years at the CIPD in their marketing, marcomms and events teams, followed by two plus years with The Adecco Group UK&I in marketing, PR, internal comms and project management. Cementing Shandel's experience in the HR industry, she was the head of content for Cezanne HR, a full-lifecycle HR software solution, for the two years prior to her return to Australia.
Shandel has previous experience as a copy writer, proofreader and copy editor, and a keen interest in HR, leadership and psychology. She's excited to be at the helm of HR Leader as its editor, bringing new and innovative ideas to the publication's audience, drawing on her time overseas and learning from experts closer to home in Australia.