Great Onboarding: Eliminate the Cooling Off Period
There used to be this silence between an offer letter and an employee’s first day. Where new hires would receive counteroffers from their current employer, phone calls from competing companies, and questions from their loved ones about making a wrong career move.
Oh, wait, that silence still exists for your company’s new hires?
That cooling off period, between the offer acceptance and the first day, is a dangerous gap where candidates can be poached and new hire jitters can bloom. Great employees are constantly courted, and it’s critical for your organization to manage the gap between talent acquisition and talent management. Remember this: the only company not actively recruiting your hard-won new hires is yours.
50% of employees who get a job offer get a counteroffer from their current employer.
Eliminate the cooling off period with these three tips:
1. Make new employees feel welcome before their first day
Send an email welcoming them to their new team right after they accept the offer. Include things like their colleagues’ contact details, what to expect on the first day, and information about the company culture. This important preboarding step helps them feel like a valued part of the team before they even start.
The key is to establish an automated process, so employees feel welcomed without any manual intervention. Without automating it, the process is likely to be forgotten, making it unsustainable and impossible to scale.
2. Send some swag
Branded gear is a great way to make new employees start to feel like part of the team. Sending it before they start makes them feel especially valued, like how they felt during the recruiting process when they were being actively courted by the organization.
This thoughtful step helps plant the seed for long term employee retention and engagement.
3. Reflect your culture
You can’t reprogram new employees. If you send them boring pdf’s for onboarding, cold emails, and slowly reply to their questions, they will do the same from the moment they start.
Engage new employees with a guided onboarding process that seamlessly welcomes them to the organization as easily as ordering a package from Amazon. Include a mobile-first interface that guides them through new hire paperwork and provides information about the company.
Help your new hires successfully transition from excellent candidates to excellent employees with modern onboarding.
