Onboarding is more than a buzzword for businesses. Delivering a high-quality experience for new employee orientation benefits the business and new starters. With as much as 62% of companies finding onboarding directly impacts time-to-productivity, the proper orientation plan could be essential helping your new hires hit the ground running. Why is orientation important? What should you include? How can you successfully implement an onboarding plan? Read on to learn more.
What is new hire orientation?
New hire orientation is the process of taking new employees and introducing them to the company, their responsibility, and their workplace expectations. When integrated into a new hire’s start in a business, orientation helps employees to get their bearings quickly. The result is faster starts, less time wastage and employees that feel supported from the beginning.
Orientation is a helping hand that provides all of the information and support new team members need in one handy place. As such, this process is vital for streamlining the transition time between starting and integrating into the company. The specifics of orientation may vary depending on the role, company culture and training requirements, but the principle of easing that transition stays the same.
Why is onboarding important?
Onboarding is an integral business function for a few reasons. Firstly, as a tool to reduce that learning curve for new employees. Onboarding provides businesses with a higher level of productivity in a shorter space of time. Secondly, from the perspective of new employees, a robust orientation process quickly familiarizes them with their new workplace. As a tool beneficial to both sides, onboarding is crucial in bringing on employees and retaining them for longer once the introductory stage is over. A happier, more supported team member is more likely to be productive and feel connected to their work.
The key purposes of an onboarding strategy
New employee orientation provides businesses with a means to welcome employees, enhance those first few weeks and shorten the time between initial training and working at total capacity. When planning your onboarding strategy, considering the critical purposes of your program is a solid place to start. Some of the essential goals of a new employee orientation strategy include:
Decreasing start-up costs
The cost of training and onboarding a new employee can be far higher without a standard system in place. By investing in the right technology and resources up-front, you aren’t forced to treat each new hire as an individual business cost. The more standardized your orientation, the less chance of unexpected training costs and fees arising from an unstructured start-up process.
Flattening the learning curve
A steep learning curve is standard in many roles. Particularly in positions that often hire graduates or less-experienced employees to train them up. Orientation contributes to flattening that challenging learning curve, providing the proper structure to help new team members learn uniformly. The flatter the curve, the faster those new employees get up to speed.
Reducing new employee nerves
Anxiety and first-day nerves are common for many employees. Providing a pre-prepared orientation can help to offset those early concerns that new hires may have during their first few days in a business. By providing a clear welcome and insight into company culture and business functions, the ‘new feeling’ many employees experience is less of a challenge to overcome.
Lowering employee turnover
Improving retention and lowering turnover are vital to keeping star employees within the company. Good retention starts at orientation. By providing new hires with the support, resources and insight necessary to do their jobs, you’ll find that those newcomers are more likely to stick around for longer. No orientation and lack of attention is a good recipe for an employee that ghosts your workplace within the first week.
Providing a smooth transition into work
The transition from starting at a company to taking on all your role responsibilities can be difficult for new hires. Orientation that focuses not just on company fit but also job-specific requirements helps to ease that process. Assisting employees to overcome that transition helps shorten the time acclimatizing to a new role, allowing them to reach their full potential sooner.
Setting realistic job expectations
Ensuring you’re realistic and honest about a job from the start is the key to long-term success. Orientation is the ideal time to provide context and insight into your company culture, standards and expectations. By clearly setting boundaries from day one, employees understand what is required of them without any confusion or complication.
Boosted productivity
Enhanced productivity is something every business strives to achieve. Starting early at onboarding is one way to accomplish this goal. A happy, supported employee is also a more productive employee. By providing the resources and care from the start, the long-term benefits of an effective workplace are more likely to follow.
Improved company culture
Employees with an excellent cultural fit that thrive in your working environment help to maintain a strong company culture. Orientation is the ideal place to show what’s important to your business and provide critical cues for behaviors and attitudes in the workplace. As an initial litmus test, orientation provides context into whether a new hire is the best fit for the job.
What to include in employee orientation
Creating an effective employee orientation program requires planning and preparation. As the first impression new hires have of your company, delivering comprehensive, practical and suitable onboarding is a top priority. Ensuring all elements are covered, from introductions to job-specific tasks, is the ideal way to make a positive impact. Some of the key areas to consider when implementing employee orientation include:
Role-specific onboarding
Role-specific onboarding covers anything a new hire needs to do their job successfully. For example, providing introductory training on the applications and tools utilized to conduct their responsibilities. This tailored element of onboarding is typically carried out by a manager or experienced professional within a particular department. For example, a new payroll employee may receive onboarding from the CFO to help them understand the requirements of their role.
Technical onboarding
Technical onboarding covers the technological aspects of the new employee’s job. For example, providing a company laptop, login information, and the keycode or keycard to enter the building. Ensuring your employees have everything they need to do their job successfully can help to streamline the onboarding process. Providing documentation and access to tutorials or eLearning platforms is ideal for extending this orientation area to benefit new hires.
Company culture onboarding
Company culture onboarding is everything that isn’t directly related to an employee’s position. For example, providing a handbook of company policies and rules or offering information about the well-being resources. Anything related to employee happiness and satisfaction is an essential addition to orientation. Not only does it improve satisfaction, but it ensures your legal and ethical requirements are met as an employer. Culture helps provide the biggest ‘welcome’, encouraging employees to feel part of the team as early as possible.
How to implement successful employee orientation
Once you’ve decided to create an employee orientation program, the next step is putting those concepts into action. Without proper implementation, it’s easy for onboarding to fall apart at the seams. You can ensure you hit every note by carefully planning and designing your program. Here are some of the steps you could take for successful onboarding implementation:
1. Think about what’s important to orientation
Listing or defining what’s the most crucial outcome of orientation is a strong starting point. Consider why orientation is important to employees and the benefits a company can get from onboarding. By creating a list of what’s essential, you can define what you’d like to include in orientation programs to achieve the best results. For example, your primary goal could be reducing time and resource wastage with new employees. Implementing practical training sessions as part of orientation can reduce waste and get employees on track faster.
2. Decide how to make a strong first impression
An excellent first impression is integral to ‘sell’ your business to new employees. While the interview process allows employees to showcase their skills and abilities, orientation goes both ways. Orientation is the first opportunity to integrate employees and display the benefits of their new employer. For example, you could design your orientation to include some key advantages of their new role. Whether that’s access to a gym, friendly company culture or the ability to work remotely on certain days of the week.
3. Bring key leadership on-board
Ensuring all members of your leadership team are on board with orientation is key for success. The most effective onboarding methods involve the entirety of the company, with leadership playing an important role. For example, including time within an onboarding program to meet with senior management or providing a personalized letter helps new hires feel involved. Ensuring your focus on culture and workplace attitude fits in with leadership behavior helps to create unification across the business. Providing an excellent first impression to employees.
4. Focus on the why, when, where and how
Starting at the bottom of the staircase with the basics is ideal for onboarding new hires quickly. Covering the why, when, where and how of a position before moving onto more complex topics is essential to achieving this goal. Expecting a new hire to step straight into core responsibilities without understanding the very basics of their role is more likely to lead to delays and confusion. Start simple, don’t overwhelm, and provide all the support needed to make that transition smooth.
5. Create relevant documentation
Supporting documents and resources are essential for orientation. Beyond employee handbooks and general documents, specific onboarding resources hold plenty of value. For example, creating a dedicated website or platform that new hires can refer to helps automate onboarding without losing that personal touch. Regardless of the pace, introductions to a new company can be overwhelming. Providing supporting documentation allows new hires to process information at their own pace, with information to refer back to.
6. Utilize tools and technology to enhance onboarding
The right technology enhances onboarding without losing the culture and feel of the company. For example, SharePoint and Microsoft Teams enable onboarding as supporting methods for delivering information and guidelines. The interactive nature of Teams, in particular, allows for live training, task assignment and recording of introductions without losing that person-centered approach. Using the right tools at the right time can help to break up in-person onboarding, providing welcome breaks throughout the first few days and weeks.
7. Organize orientation for the biggest impact
Organizing orientation in a practical way that makes the most sense for your company and new hires is vital to making the most significant impact. For instance, you could create a timeline of what you’d like employees to learn and how each area of onboarding flows into the next. Making orientation feel as natural and organic as possible is valuable in improving knowledge retention. For example, starting with the basics of workplace guidelines and culture before moving on to basic job expectations provides the secure groundwork for additional onboarding.
8. Tailor the process to the employee
While a general onboarding program with proper structure is valuable, a certain amount of flexibility is also applicable. For example, an entry-level employee’s onboarding process may differ from that of a senior manager. Adjusting the expectations and specifications of training to suit different roles can provide a viable solution. A recent graduate may need extra support in adjusting to workplace norms and understanding the fundamentals of a business environment. Meanwhile, an experienced professional can benefit from extra emphasis on the dynamics and hierarchy of your specific workplace from the start.
9. Adapt orientation to suit remote or hybrid employees
Alongside employee hierarchy, it’s crucial that onboarding is universal across many different employment scenarios. For example, fully remote workers can easily feel disengaged from an organization if they don’t receive the same level of care. Adapting your orientation methods utilizing the right technology can help to level this playing field. By bringing key learning points to a digital medium, such as Teams, it’s possible to deliver the same degree of attention. Live online orientation, recorded meetings, and even collaboration software can all serve as ways to integrate remote or hybrid employees successfully.
10. Continually seek feedback from new starters
Improving and adapting your new employee orientation program over time is the ideal way to refine your processes. Seeking advice from new starters is one way to gain that insight. Providing debriefs following orientation, surveys or rating options can provide valuable insight into areas for improvement. As employee needs and attitudes change, orientation programs should also adapt to meet those changes. Being flexible in any business process is integral for long-term success.
11. Introduce mentorship
Mentor or buddy schemes are the ideal addition to existing orientation programs. Pairing new hires with experienced professionals helps employees learn one-on-one beyond conventional onboarding materials. A mentorship that covers the first few months provides opportunities to grow for employees who learn best in this method. Even better, new employees who form working relationships quickly are more likely to have high satisfaction, leading to longer retention.
12. Reinforce orientation topics regularly
While orientation covers the first few weeks of employment specifically, the topics you cover should reflect the reality of the business. For example, the onboarding information about a company’s culture should align across orientation and the reality of the job. Ensuring guidelines and processes are up-to-date and followed is essential. Orientation may be the first step in satisfaction and retention, but what employees experience after matters just as much for long-term resource planning.
Tools to enhance orientation
How can you enhance orientation and give an equal experience to remote and in-office workers? Using the right tools and technology is a good place to start. Some of the types of software you could use to enhance orientation include:
SharePoint
SharePoint makes sharing different files and resources easy, an integral component to successfully delivering orientation to new hires. Leveraging SharePoint is helpful to get employees up to speed from one central location. Think documentation, handbooks, recorded training materials and infographics, all available in one handy place.
Microsoft Teams
Videoconferencing is the modern standard for many onboarding processes – and for a good reason. With many employees working remotely or in hybrid schedules, leveraging Teams provides personal attention without needing in-person training. Live training, introductory team meetings, task allocations and recorded onboarding sessions enhance the orientation experience. With many new hires comfortable with taking onboarding digital, this method meets current expectations nicely.
Both solutions provide the option to include links to content and engaging opportunities to convey company messages. This technology’s flexibility to adapt to individual roles and goals is an added bonus.
Have plans to introduce a new employee orientation program? Ramsey Consulting Services can help. Our team of trained specialists have the knowledge and skills to deliver the results you’re looking for. Get in touch with us to discuss your needs today.
