"Take care of your employees, and they will take care of your business," said Richard Branson, the famous Virgin CEO.
You have invested a lot of time and energy in finding your new recruit.
Now, it's essential to prove to them that they made the right choice.
And it starts on their first day of onboarding.
Today is the big day when your long-awaited new recruit begins their journey with your company.
"69% of employees are more likely to stay with the company for 3 years after a successful onboarding experience."
You are probably wondering what crucial information to convey and in what format.
Is it the right time to explain the new strategic vision of your company? How will you help them navigate through an organizational chart with ten departments and an international context?
To answer these questions, let's try to put ourselves in the new recruit's shoes for a moment.
The first day is a day of discovering the company and, of course, the role they will be taking on for the next few months. Expectations are more about understanding this new world they are entering.
We want to:
- Learn about the company's history
- Understand its vision and the direction it wants to take
- Embrace the values that drive its teams
- Adapt to a new corporate culture
- Draw inspiration from its founders' story
"Companies with an onboarding process retain employees twice as well as those without one."
So, we've compiled all these elements into a checklist to ensure that nothing is overlooked.
✅ Prepare the starter pack for your new recruit
Successful onboarding of a new employee requires preparation.
For a new employee, knowing their place from day one helps establish their bearings and makes them feel integrated.
Moreover, if this is accompanied by a welcome pack (PC, agenda, goodies, personalized messages) branded with your company's identity, the employee will greatly appreciate this effort, which demonstrates their employer's consideration and care.
Through this pack, you can also reinforce the company's key messages in the employee's memory (the company's vision, what sets it apart, etc.).
A useful tip for helping the new recruit identify the right contact from their first days is to provide key personnel's business cards with a message explaining how these individuals can assist.
For example, the business card of the security manager with a note saying, "My name is Jade, call me in case of any danger!"
✅ Share the company's history, values, and vision
The first day is the ideal time for a new employee to immerse themselves in the company's history, purpose, mission, and values.
By ensuring that the new recruit understands these elements, you plant the seed for maintaining the mindset required to succeed in the new role.
Reiterating the company's mission and values to the new recruit helps reassure them about their choice and allows them to resonate with messages that will form a common foundation between new and existing hires.
✅ Position the employee in the organizational chart and define their role in the overall organization
From day one, your new hires need to know the organizational chart and, more importantly, their position in the overall organization.
Identifying themselves within the company's organization builds confidence and motivation for the employee.
✅ Present the company's new resolutions to ensure alignment
Companies, like individuals, frequently change perspectives, especially in today's context, where circumstances require great agility.
Be aware that your new resolutions and recent strategic decisions are not known to all your employees, let alone new recruits.
Therefore, taking time to share these new resolutions is a must-do.
This ensures immediate adoption and alignment by the new recruit. They can become a conduit for conveying key messages to other employees.
✅ Onboard the new recruit on the key tools used within the company
During their first days in the company, the employee needs to master the tools necessary for various administrative tasks and to gain a detailed understanding of the various social benefits offered by the company. It's their first step toward autonomy.
Therefore, concluding an onboarding day with a presentation of the tools used by everyone, such as the HR portal, expense management, etc., is highly beneficial for the employee. It assures them that they can easily find information on their own, fostering their sense of autonomy.
✅ Harness the potential of tools and digital resources
To simplify your task, use suitable tools for onboarding.
These tools can help you:
- Convey messages more effectively (faster, with greater accuracy, and to a broader audience)
- Engage the employee more and encourage them to react, ask questions, and share their opinions.
- Evaluate if the new recruit has understood the messages correctly
- Emphasize a youthful, innovative company mindset that leverages digital capabilities. This will contribute to your employees' digital and agile mindset development.
Here are some tool ideas to enhance your onboarding day:
Gamified digital onboarding journey:
- In this fun and innovative experience, the employee finds all the essential information in the form of a gamified digital journey. During this digital experience, they will engage in an entertaining and engaging story in which they must solve challenges related to the company (vision, history, culture, key people, etc.). Thanks to this, you can:
- Digitize and automate part of the onboarding process for time savings
- Empower the employee to become an active participant from day one
- Energize onboarding days and journeys
- Strengthen your employer brand
- Set yourself apart from the competition
Access to a shared drive:
Centralize essential information in a shared folder and provide access during the onboarding day. This folder should contain key documents that a new hire needs to know, such as the organizational chart, contact list, benefits guide, list of key tools, etc.
Trello for onboarding:
An original idea is to organize all onboarding steps in a Kanban board, like the Trello tool. Here's a template you can adapt for your own company: 👉🏽 https://trello.com/b/qr3AcASr/new-hire-onboarding