If you think about it, onboarding a new hire is the most important part of the hiring process. If you, as a small business owner, don’t take the time to ensure your new hire has a good handle on their position, you risk everyone’s success (even yours!)
It’s crucial to have an onboarding guide to use, as it helps integrate new hires into your business as smoothly and quickly as possible. If you’ve not put something like this in place yet, don’t worry, we’ve got a guide for you to help get you started.
So keep reading to learn 5 ways to put an effective onboarding guide into place in your business.
1. Induction Planning
You may be wondering, how do I create an onboarding guide if I hire different positions? That’s a good question. You want to work backward from the most general things to the least.
General onboarding information can include company culture, work expectations, information about hardware and software, clocking in and out, and important HR policies.
You’ll also want to discuss your post-COVID work from home and sick policies with every employee.
This is a great time to think about who will give this part of the training, how long you think it’ll take, and how to deliver all of it without overwhelming your new hire.
2. Onboarding Essentials
Your general onboarding packet should contain everything we discussed above, plus the SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) for company-wide apps and software.
It should walk them through how to set up their corporate account in your HR software, help them optimize their inbox, and have checklists for different tasks.
They could have an IT checklist for making sure they have all their equipment and all their accounts set up, an HR checklist for training, and so on howitstart
3. The First Week Timeline
Starting a new job is sometimes the worst part of a new position. You have to learn all sorts of things, not be good at something for a little while, and adjust to a new environment. Effective onboarding won’t only train employees, but if you do it right, it could improve your retention rate as well.
Plan for the first few days of employee training to be the general stuff we discussed above. Then, assuming you’re using a 5-day workweek, start getting into sales training and onboarding for their specific position on Wednesday.
That way they’ll feel like they have a solid hold on the more mundane stuff and be able to concentrate better on learning their job duties.
4. From Probation to Permanent
If your business puts employees on a probationary period before calling a position permanent, let the employee in training know your expectations. Everyone makes mistakes when they’re new, which can stress them out in a probation period.
Frequent check-ins with positive feedback will help everyone adjust better and keep anxieties low.
5. Settling In
Once the end of the first week is up, have a check-in with your new employee to talk about your effective onboarding programs. Did they work? What does the employee think you could have done better?
A great onboarding process is always improving!
Effective Onboarding Sets Everyone Up for Success
It takes real time and effort to hire a new employee. If you’re going to spend that kind of money, you want to ensure low employee turnover. Effective onboarding can help with that.
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