You have just found a perfect candidate for a job opening in your company; congratulations! However, wait to cry victory too quickly; even if your recruitment campaign is almost over, you still have to set up onboarding to make your employee feel at home. According to the Harvard Business Review, 22% of companies still need to formalize their recruitment process.
In other words, some recruiters need to pay more attention to the integration of their recruits when it is just as important as the recruitment itself. Today, we reveal the detailed and super simple steps to make your integration procedure a success!
What Is HR Onboarding?
Definition
We don’t teach you anything, and onboarding means integration into English. This is the support of a recruit within a company, from the moment he is hired until the total takeover of his job in a sustainable and cooperative approach—a period of integration in short.
Why Is Onboarding Important?
Onboarding is an integral part of the recruitment process and targets the general well-being of employees. A new employee who arrives in a new company will perform better if he is well received in the latter. According to a study by Robert Half, one in two employees is ready to quit within the first month.
For 29.9% of them, a lousy reception is one of the main reasons that would push them to leave. The loss of a new employee is a failure for any recruiter, given the costs used upstream during recruitment. This is why more and more companies are going all out on onboarding. In short, onboarding allows you:
- ensure that employees understand the values of the company,
- that they interfere more quickly in the life and functioning of a team,
- that they feel recognized and valued,
- to create a commitment,
- reduce the turnover rate,
- to guarantee better collaboration over the long term,
- to ensure greater efficiency and save time,
- improve the employer brand and corporate culture,
- optimize talent management.
Good onboarding is the logical continuation and extension of a successful candidate experience. Keep going if you have relied on a recruitment tool or ATS to optimize your recruitment process and streamline the candidate journey! For example, a platform like Between not only optimizes and automates recruitment but also goes further until the hiring of the candidate, being able to even interface with your HRIS to manage talents and ensure the continuation of the employee life cycle.
As for Greenhouse, this solution includes structuring your onboarding process with a personalized onboarding experience to encourage new talent to surpass themselves and perform in your company. You automate administrative actions and improve your onboarding process with insightful reports and metrics.
How To Facilitate The Integration Of A New Employee In 7 Key Steps
Step 1: Prepare The Employee’s Workstation Upstream
The critical word before starting anything is “preparation”. Everyone should be given a chance when their new employee joins the company. According to Brilliant Ink, 43% of employees said the first day seemed disorganized and confusing. So don’t give a bad image from the start!
Talk to the manager or department attached to your new employee to determine his precise role, with a list of his functions, tasks, and the total! The more your new employee has detailed information, the quicker he will get into the process. Be careful not to confuse quantity and quality. Too much information on the first day could overwhelm the employee.
Step 2: Interview Managers
As we mentioned earlier, managers are the most qualified to plan the arrival of a new employee because they will be the ones to whom it will be necessary to refer throughout the life of the company. It is natural (and preferable) that it be the manager who organizes the excellent integration of the employee.
Step 3: Choose A Mentor
Increasingly present in companies, the mentor is the person to whom the employee must refer in case of questions. He accompanies the newcomer on his first day by explaining all the basics to him, introducing the people of the service and the work tools and helping him adapt to his new work environment. In short, the mentor is a guide who must have communication skills, listening skills and a certain patience, in particular, to respond to the problems encountered by the employee.
It is not often easy to address your n+1 in case of questions because the employee puts pressure on himself and does not dare to take the initiative. The mentor is a work colleague from the same department, which makes communication much more accessible! At Appvizer, we assign a godfather or godmother to each recruit.
Step 4: Visit The Company And The Various Departments
That’s it, and it’s the big day! Your teams are ready to welcome your new work colleague. On the program, warm greetings and a big smile, but not only! The work environment, especially the place, is a significant factor in the well-being of employees. If your premises are large, favor a visit of one-hour maximum for more effective assimilation of information.
The rest can be seen the next day or a little later in the week. Remember to explain all your rules of life during this visit, such as the operation of the coffee machine, the recycling of your waste, the location of the fridge, etc. Note: clean and tidy premises will make a good impression
Step 5: Organize A Lunch With The Teams
When your employee is at his workstation and has sufficiently acclimatized to his environment, it’s time for a much more fun event: the company lunch! During these meetings, the people within your company exchange and create links so that real team cohesion is put in place.
It is also an opportunity to meet work colleagues from other departments, and why not ask them questions to have a global vision and understand the issues? Similarly, if things have not been discussed with the manager beforehand, now is the time to do it more informally, something to put newcomers at ease.
Step 6: Provide Access To Training
The arrival in a company is often synonymous with an uninterrupted flow of information: company operation, the services, the methods of communication, and the tools used… (help). To reassure him, organize training sessions once or twice a week to explain a particular mission step by step with a supporting example.
These training courses are essential for his career and his experience within the company. Skills management, including training, promotes efficient work, skills development and autonomy afterwards, so don’t hesitate! You can do them with new co-workers or people from another department to build team cohesion.
Step 7: Take Stock Regularly
At the end of the first week, meet with your collaborator to take stock until the end of his trial period. Has he acclimated to his position? Did he encounter any difficulties? Which ones? Ask him about the progress of his onboarding to be able to improve the next ones.
Daily mini-meetings are also recommended within the same department, such as the famous scrum ceremonies for the commitment and satisfaction of employees who can follow the progress of operational objectives. It’s what Appetizer employees use every day, and guess what? We’re delighted.
[Telecommuting Focus] How To Manage Remote Onboarding?
If you are a company that has adopted a hybrid, face-to-face and distance working mode, or if part of your workforce is in another region or abroad, the question of how to welcome your employees outside your business premises also arises! As in face-to-face, remote integration must offer your new employees everything they need to accomplish their missions: training, familiarization with tools and processes, administrative formalities, etc. This is essential for the working relationship to be built on sound foundations.
Here are several tips for successfully onboarding your remote employees:
Communicate Regularly
When onboarding online, do your best to prevent the person from feeling isolated or helpless. Support taking up the position by videoconference or chat: be available to explain and detect problems before they become serious. Remember to convey good practices on the right to disconnect.
Prepare The Fools
Send a document summarizing the tools and software used and information on the IT team’s connection links, passwords and contacts. Plan the technical equipment delivered to your recruit, ideally already configured.
Convey The Corporate Culture
How to disseminate the company’s missions, values and vision to newcomers? Internal communication will be your ally (corporate social network, messaging, shared files, etc.), and why not virtual team building? The assignment of a sponsor or mentor and the production of a welcome pack will also facilitate the assimilation of the organization’s new cultural and social codes.
Manage The Administration Upstream
Take care of administrative tasks before the arrival of your collaborator. In recruitment abroad, administrative formalities can be more complex to respect: compliance, labor law, local specificities, etc. But do not panic! To hire international talent, a global HR solutions platform will be your best ally. Here are two tools to take a closer look at today:
- With Remote, you hire and integrate your talents anywhere in the world, respecting local regulations and specificities and offering your employees a fluid and transparent experience at all stages of onboarding;
- With Workmotion, you benefit from a fast and efficient onboarding process in full compliance with local legislation, significantly reducing administrative costs.
And to go further, discover the best tips for successfully onboarding and managing your teams remotely, even multicultural ones, in our white paper to download for free!
Example Of A Successful Onboarding Process
Preparation Of The Action Plan
- send a congratulatory email to the recruit and ask him for information relating to his recruitment,
- bring together the managers of the team and the department in question to define the objectives of the onboarding,
- describe the role and place of stakeholders in the integration process,
- provide a training plan to support the new employee’s skills development (you can complete it if necessary once the employee is installed in the company),
- choose a mentor and define their objectives (a voluntary person with a sense of pedagogy),
- appoint a person responsible for the administrative documents relating to the recruitment of the new employee (human resources department).
Preparing The Working Environment
- arrange the workstation (desk, supplies, computer, telephone),
- prepare the identifiers of the various digital tools and peripheral elements such as a business card, a badge, a company car, etc.,
- communicate the working hours of the first day, the different means of lunch, the dress code,
- Please email all employees to warn them of the imminent arrival of the recruit.
First Day
- offer a welcome pack, goodies if you have them (pencil, USB key, etc.), or a company welcome booklet,
- visit the premises,
- present the workstation to the newcomer,
- explain how the computer and digital tools work (present only the essentials at the start),
- make a presentation of the different people within the department (the other departments may be visited later in the week),
- organize a meeting with the manager and the mentor.
And After?
- organize company lunches and after work to get to know each other,
- take a photo to update professional social networks or the company’s website,
- make weekly reports to monitor the progress of objectives and define new ones,
- ask for feedback on the company’s onboarding process.
In Summary
Onboarding is an integral part of the recruitment process for newcomers to a company. It helps to make them feel like they belong in the company and to increase their performance. Why leave a company in which we are well-received? Planning this stage of recruitment well will allow you considerable savings in addition to promoting team cohesion!
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