Tips and tricks for onboarding

The final interviews have been completed and the employment contract has been signed. You may still have a week or two until your new colleague spends their first working day with you and gets to know all of your company’s processes and procedures. To ensure that the onboarding process runs as smoothly as possible, there is a lot to prepare. Not just the onboarding itself, there are many important steps in advance that lead to success.

Before onboarding

First of all, it is always important to prepare all the important formalities. This includes preparing all documents that need to be signed by your new colleague. Make sure that papers such as the personnel form are signed in advance at best, if not, as soon as possible after the new colleague has been hired. Prepare all the necessary equipment and work materials, such as a laptop, keys for the office, hardware for the home office set-up and anything else colleagues might need in your company. Set up all the necessary accounts and login details so that all relevant services and software can be used from day 1. It is also possible, for example, to support onboarding with the help of software. To ensure that your new team member feels at home in your company from day one, the workplace should already be fully set up on the first working day. You may want to embellish the new workplace with some chocolate or a small welcome gift.
 

The person training the new colleague should take the time during the first week, and especially on the first day, to carry out the onboarding process correctly and answer any questions that arise. Onboarding should not be seen as secondary and should be given enough attention. Time should also be taken to show your new employee the company’s premises so that the new employee feels comfortable and knows where everything is located.

Don’t forget to introduce the new employee to the rest of the company. This way, no one is surprised when a new face appears in the company and they can give the new employee a friendly welcome.

Onboarding

As you have already put a lot of effort into the new employee in advance, it is a good idea to document the onboarding process once so that it only needs to be completed in the future. Otherwise, once the onboarding has been completed, it can simply be handed over to the new employee.

The content to be included in onboarding varies from company to company. For an IT company, for example, information about the company’s development processes should be included; if your company has special internal processes, this could be the content of the onboarding. Onboarding is also a good opportunity to answer frequently asked questions in advance. Unwritten rules or procedures can also be explained in this way, such as the fact that it is customary to greet everyone in the office in the morning or similar.

The duration of onboarding is also individual, but should not be underestimated. In a well-organized onboarding process, the intensive phase usually lasts one month. During this first month, the foundations are laid for the new employee so that they can start working independently. It can take up to a year for new employees to become familiar with all of your company’s processes and be able to contribute to them. So don’t rush the onboarding process and give your new colleague time to learn everything about the company.

 

Digitalization of the onboarding process

There are several reasons why you should digitize your onboarding. For example, especially in industries where there is a high turnover of employees, such as agencies, it is advantageous to always have onboarding at hand. The content is often needed and should always be easily accessible. The same applies to large companies that may have a high turnover of employees due to the number of employees alone. In these cases, having a digitalized onboarding process can save a lot of time and make the entire process easier.

Digitizing processes is particularly useful for companies that use complicated or extensive software. In these cases, a one-off verbal explanation is often not enough to ensure a lasting understanding of the software in question. With the help of a digitized onboarding process, a reference book is created and your new colleagues can answer questions independently as the onboarding process progresses. In addition, screenshots or short videos can be included in this form to illustrate the processes and procedures and thus generally make them easier to understand.
 
A presentation or PDF, for example, is a good way to implement digital onboarding. It is also possible to carry out onboarding with the help of a wiki function in software such as projectfacts/teamspace. ERP systems often have the option of making a wiki function available. For more information about our wiki function, contact us here!
 

After the first month

After the first, intensive phase of onboarding, it is a good idea to ask your new colleague for feedback. In the feedback meeting, you will ideally receive an honest assessment of your onboarding process from a third party. Use this opportunity to improve the process, possibly add new questions and generally capture the mood of the employees regarding the entire onboarding process. Make sure that you collect repeated feedback at regular intervals to ensure that no questions remain unanswered.
We are happy to help you with the technical implementation of a digitalized wiki! Get in touch with us here!
 

                                                                                                                               © unsplash 2024, pixabay 2024