Onboarding Employees: Driving Success and Loyalty in New Starters

Doing a great job when it comes to greeting and integrating new employees is vital to their performance and longevity at the organization. Failing to do so is a sure way to turn off new employees, hinder their productivity and potentially even drive them away.

It’s important to make new starters feel welcome and reassured that they will be given all of the tools and resources needed to excel in their new role. Research shows that an effective orientation program has the potential to increase employee retention rates by up to 40%.

Here are steps to ensure effective employee onboarding:

Before Day One

1. Plan: Management teams should work together to understand the first few weeks and months on onboarding from the new starter’s perspective, and collaborate to create a plan that covers onboarding for that important time period. This plan should include orientation, as well as important onboarding activities that are spread out to avoid new starters feeling overwhelmed in their first few days.
2. Assign a Mentor: allocate a mentor or peer who can act as a guide for your new hire over their first few weeks or months. This mentor needs to be someone who will be able to answer any questions that your new hire might have, and help them integrate with their new team. It’s important to give the mentor time off from their other tasks so that they are able to allocate enough time to assisting your new hire.
3. Set Up a Workspace: Prepare a neat and organized workspace for the employee with all of the tools that they will require to perform in their new role.
4. Contact: Check in with your new starter before their first day to discuss any additional requirements or concerns.

Day One

1. Greeting: Make sure that your selected peer or mentor is available to greet your new hire when they arrive on their first day. The employee should get a tour of the premises, including their pre-prepared workspace. Make introductions to your team, necessary managers within the organisation, including the president and senior executives where possible.
2. Orientation Package: Provide your new starter with a company orientation package that includes their job offer or employment contract; an outline of company policies and procedures; and information on the brand behind your organisation. It is also important to provide any needed passwords, access cards, company attire and devices or equipment to your new starter, to ensure that they are given all of the tools that they need to get started on taking on their new role.
3. Introduction: Host an introductory meeting with your new starter, to cover some essential information and host important introductions. Your selected mentor should take part in this meeting as well, to answer any questions that your new starter might have. This meeting is a great opportunity to cover training, administrative processes and the company culture.

Integration into the Future

1. Training: During the first week and throughout the employee’s time at the company, managers should always ensure that the employee receives any needed training to excel in their role. Within the first week, teams should begin to integrate the new starter into job tasks that fall under their role.
2. Check-Up: Managers and mentors should make a point of following up with the new starter often, to find out if the employee is integrating successfully, answer any questions and check in on the employee’s training and work. More formal, in-depth meetings can be organised routinely with the employee, to ensure a good understanding of responsibilities, expectations and business processes. This also creates an opportunity to find out how the employee is feeling about their onboarding and integration into the business, as well as their confidence within their job role.

Remember that feedback on your orientation processes is vital in the development and improvement of processes for more effective onboarding in the future.

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