Top tips to Onboarding your new hire

The investment of time and money in recruiting new employees can be expensive and in a competitive marketplace for talent, it is key for employers to take a proactive approach to onboarding to avoid losing their newest hire.

​Here are my top three tips to Onboarding:

1) Communicate, communicate, communicate! Not just from their first day, but from when the offer of employment is accepted. Think about sharing some interesting updates about the business or the team. Do you have an employee event coming up… why not invite them? Or why not invite them to have lunch with the team before they start?

​2) Don’t ignore the basics. Think about their first day experience. What’s the best day of the week for them to start, sometimes Mondays are a bit hectic, so would a Tuesday be better? Have you got all their equipment clean, ready and working e.g. laptop, phone etc? IT accounts opened? Do they have somewhere to sit? Think about assigning someone as their buddy that they can ask questions about the company e.g. who’s who, where the stationery is etc.
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3) Think beyond day one. The objective of a successful Onboarding is to ensure your newest employees are engaged with the business and fully effective within their role. This doesn’t happen on day one. Think about any training that might be needed, did you identify any development needs through the recruitment process? Has their manager checked in with them, explained expectations, asked for and offered feedback?

Onboarding does not need to be complex, sometimes its the simplest things that have the biggest impact.