Please avoid these onboarding mistakes!
Click loves onboarding. Not only does the process engage and prepare employees for their roles, a successful onboarding program unifies organizational goals and quickly brings your talent to their highest proficiency. With our onboarding software, our mission is to help companies create the best first day experience for each of their new hires. Planning a program like this isn’t always easy, which means many organizations are leaving a little to be desired. Are you making one of these eight employee onboarding mistakes with your new hires?
1. The onboarding program has no organization.
Onboarding takes planning. There will be mishaps, scheduling conflicts, missing paperwork and anything else that can be imagined. The only way you can hope to overcome those obstacles is by having a solid plan in place. Create an itinerary meant to show the new hire how their first day, week and month will look. Include information like maps, unwritten rules, resources, contact information and other tips to make their first few weeks less confusing. Bonus points if the itinerary is emailed to the new hire before the first day of their employment.
2. The position lacks purpose.
It’s really unfortunate, but 60% of companies fail to set milestones or goals for new hires and when employees have no clue what their time or projects do for colleagues or the organization, they lack urgency and productivity. The quality of their work may suffer and the attention to deadlines might not even exist. To avoid similar issues, be sure to express just how important a new hire’s role is to the success of projects. Explain why there’s a hole without their position and continue to drive that point home at every performance review.
3. There are too many paper-filled hoops for new hires.
Still requiring all new hires (and applicants for that matter) to fill out mountains of paperwork? It may not affect all candidates and employees, but more and more, the experience of redundant information and multiple signature lines are leaving people frustrated. The best part is, in addition to helping the candidate experience, a paperless onboarding process ensures compliance and security, while saving resources and money.
4. No one introduces new hires to their colleagues.
Ever enter a room full of strangers? Even the most extroverted individuals can feel a little uncomfortable in those situations, especially when stakes are high. Starting a new job is exhilarating and absolutely terrifying. It’s a huge relief to know a few of your co-workers, especially those who have similar job duties and can offer some direction. Speaking of which…
5. There’s no point of contact or information resource.
New hires will not know what they are doing. They need guidance in what projects are needing their attention, which meetings are necessary for their weekly goals and to who they are reporting. Establishing a point of contact will ease the pressure and help them feel a little less lost. They have skills and won’t need hand-holding, but a few signs to ensure they’re walking the right way is necessary.
6. There’s no office tour.
Make it a point to show new hires where the bathrooms are within the first hour or so of their arrival. Maybe they already know, maybe they have already found them…show them anyway. As a tenured employee, it’s easy to forget what it was like on your first day.
There was a time where you didn’t know there’s a line at the east wing bathroom at noon or that meanwhile the second floor is a ghost town. When the tour reveals tips along with location, the new hire feels cared for and included. It’s a small gesture, but it leads to big time gratitude.
7. Company goals aren’t explained.
New hires need personal goals when joining your team (see number 2), but those goals need to align with more than just their position. Employees, new and old, are inherently more motivated to work towards their own goals when they are aware of how it builds the bigger picture. When they know the company’s mission, values and incremental goals, they can begin to think of methods that will improve their work and team processes.
Goals set deadlines and aspirations, which are the perfect parameters for healthy innovation. To ensure all people are on the same page, discuss company objectives along with mission and values from day one, taking time to remind everyone throughout the year. If you don’t know what your overarching goals, mission and values are, it’s time to do some internal evaluations.
8. The worst onboarding mistake of them all: An employee onboarding program doesn’t exist.
Do you even have a new hire onboarding process? If new hires are walked to their desk and told to “wing it,” they might just fly their way right out the front doors and never return. Orientation can equate to an organized, structured onboarding program. When new hires participate in an onboarding program, they are 58% more likely to be with the organization over three years.
It seems companies without onboarding believe new employees will get more work done if they just start working. That’s absolutely false. Employees who are onboarded reach full productivity faster than those who are expected to learn their own way around. Don’t fall into the belief skilled, educated or experienced new hires will not need some guidance when they first reach your organization. Even the most knowledgeable employee benefits from a little direction.
Onboarding new employees is a big responsibility, but somebody has to do it. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and know your company is guilty of any of the above 8 struggles, hope is not lost. Take a moment to schedule a one on one demo of our employee onboarding platform.
