You have a new hire. What does your onboarding entail? Readying equipment? Meeting the team? Filling out forms? If so, it’s time to dig a little deeper. A thoughtful and thorough onboarding experience leads to better outcomes for organizations and staff. Nearly 70% of employees who experience great onboarding are at their organization 3 or more years later. Below are best practices to help you create thorough and successful onboarding experiences for your new hires.
- Begin with Preboarding: Welcome your new hire long before their first day.
- Don’t cram it all into day 1: Create a plan for the first 30 days. Need inspiration? Check out our roadmap for the first 30 days of onboarding.
- Create a roadmap for the next 30-60-90+ days: As your new hire gains a greater sense of their role, include them in creating their onboarding roadmap. Managers should outline key learnings, actions, and goals for those first 30-90 days, but use initial 1-1s to collaborate and detail these goals to increase the employee’s autonomy and alignment.
- Milestone check-ins: In addition to meeting weekly with new hires, supervisors should plan a specific review meeting at the end of each of the first three months.
- 30 Day Check-In: Review expectations and goals of the first 30 days and beyond, adjust as needed. Ask the new employee about their onboarding experience. What’s going well? What isn’t? Where are they struggling? How comfortable do they feel in their role? With their teammates?
- 60 Day Check-In: Even though the new hire should feel more comfortable at this point, make sure to ask about their experience. This is also a good chance to provide feedback on their performance over their first months. Begin discussing how the employee wants to impact and grow within the company.
- 90 Day Check-In: This is the big one! Many organizations consider employees “trained” and expect them to be proficient in their role by this point. This doesn’t mean full mastery or that they’re 100 percent integrated into organization. Realistically, they should have a good grasp of their responsibilities and understand the organization’s strengths and pain points. Continue asking about their experience and their relationships with teammates and leaders. Find out about changes they’d like to see in the near- and longer-term. Ensure they’re integrating into the culture. Managers should ask themselves:
- Do they understand workplace dynamics and politics?
- Are they aware of your organization’s goals, mission, and values?
- Do they know and use your workplace’s terminology and special language?
- Plan beyond 90 days: Most employees reach peak productivity at eight months. The most successful onboarding programs last about one year and begin prior to a new hire’s first day. Set a goal for what that 1-year mark should look like. Continue to develop your new hire by offering training (make it a team training if possible because everyone can use a refresher), expose them to leaders throughout the organization, colleagues on other teams, maintain communications with regular 1-1s, and review the development roadmap you created together.
- Evaluate repeatedly: Seek continual feedback from new hire as well as relevant company stakeholders (e.g. teammates, managers, onboarding buddy, customers, etc.) to refine and improve the onboarding process. Use a variety of methods to get the feedback to evaluate your onboarding program: surveys (30-60-90+days), 1-1s, focus group if you have multiple new hires, etc.
The overall goal with onboarding is to help new hires learn your organization, their role, and to create connection with your organization. As your organization evolves, so should the onboarding experience. Done right, onboarding not only prepares new staff but retains and engages staff. The most effective programs over communicate, connect new hires to people across the organization, set expectations, create development plans, normalize feedback, and continually evaluate the experience.