Essential Steps For a Smooth Onboarding Process

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The Importance of Streamlined Onboarding Process Steps

You may not be directly responsible for HR, but your words and ideas matter for planning superlative onboarding process steps. If you create a good program, the whole company will benefit from it and be proud of it.

Making a new employee’s journey clear and fast will be a win-win situation for you and your new people. 

It’s like getting a new football team ready to play; now that you’ve done all the training, no one likes to sit on the bench and watch the game. Similarly, your new hires can’t wait to enter the field and do their best to win.

Moving to the office world, we all enjoy having our equipment functioning properly (our laptop, our new email account, our wifi connection) so that we can jump right into our new role. Because of this, it’s vital to have an easy path to set all tools and processes from the very beginning.

If you try to remember your first days at a new office, you’ll probably recall an overwhelming experience of both excitement and confusion. You were waiting to do your part and feel useful. I was. 

Sometimes this process can take longer than expected and lead to initial feelings of frustration.

But, here is the good news, it doesn’t have to be like this!

team talking during onboarding process

Thoroughly Plan Out Onboarding

“My password doesn’t work”. “The Wifi isn’t connected”. Sound familiar? If you’ve never heard your new hires asked these questions (or similar), then your onboarding process is already off to an amazing start!

However, IT issues are always popping up during someone’s first day at work, and often that’s only just the beginning.

Do you want to shorten the list of enquires coming to your desk or email? If you, like many wise people before you, say “yes”, you’ll need to follow the below best practices in your onboarding process.

Here are the must-needed steps to build your best employee onboarding experience.  

Essential Steps of the Employee Onboarding Process

The last interview was successful. Great. Finally, the contract has been signed, and everyone received a copy. Now it’s time to embark on the second chapter of the process, and the new employee onboarding is starting in 3…2…1… Need some help?

The following instructions will save you tons of your time and make your new employee’s life easier.

Let’s see what you already have in your plan and what is missing:

  1. The starter kit
    Not exactly coloured flags and confetti (unless you want it to be), but the starter kit is basically as important as a first aid kit. All important documents, instructions, policies and relevant information about do’s and don’ts should be here. You don’t want to deal with cybersecurity issues, IT or behavioural problems because of an initial lack of communication.
  2. With open arms
    A welcoming email can easily be combined with the welcome kit as the very first step of the onboarding process. In your writing, be concise and add a few lines about the starting date and what’s in the ‘welcome on board’ kit. Don’t forget practical information like parking access or public transportation, dress code and lunch schedule. You decide what is most important here.
  3. Because sharing is caring
    Remember that this also a new beginning for the existing employees. So, your onboarding steps need to include some information about their future colleagues, like background and main responsibilities. The current employees are the ones who can make the new hire feel included since the very first day. It’s also a great chance for the team to show how people in your company collaborate and support each other.
  4. Paving the road for big dreams with IT
    Here we are, IT! The crucial (and sometimes dreaded) part of all the employee onboarding process steps. Spend extra time ensuring that your new employee’s equipment is ready to use from day one. Ask the IT manager or a colleague to double-check and see if you missed something important. Preparing a printed copy with basic instructions and the IT responsible’s contact details is also a terrific idea.
  5. Buddy up!
    This one is my favourite. Every time I had a buddy in a new workplace, I learned faster and with much more fun. Remember that it’s an empowering task that you can give to your current employees. You should identify someone who can play the role of the wise man/woman, someone who enjoys helping the onboarding training with a genuine and positive attitude. This step represents an amazing opportunity for both employees; in other words, a great example of peer-to-peer knowledge sharing.
Onboarding process steps infographic

Employee Engagement Beyond The ‘New Job Honeymoon’

Like the moon, we humans have different phases. Falling in love, for instance, is a phase where lights are brighter. Everything shines marvellously. But, in less than a year, we have to accept that the butterflies in our stomach have settled.

Likewise, the excitement we have when starting a new job can have a significant drop after the starting phase. This is one of the reasons, among many others, that effective employee onboarding processes always revolve around engagement.

Helping your employees to keep their engagement high will do wonders in terms of satisfaction and proactivity.

Remember that this is strongly connected with your company’s diversity and inclusion achievement too.

If you successfully spark your employees’ passion with exceptional onboarding content, they will always look forward to giving you feedback and achieving their goals.

If we picture onboarding as primary school learning, we clearly understand the importance of strong foundations to establish a bright future and empower people.

A solid preparation ensures proactivity and creativity – missing the basics tools or knowledge at work may lead to disappointment and productivity loss.

Provide The Best Compass To Your Remote Employees

What does this mean? I am referring to the challenges of working from home. If you want to create a collaborative workflow, even when working from home, you need to share a common structure and solid foundations.

Your employees are outside the office and, therefore they need to navigate safely and rely on perfect and clear guidance. Offering them precise onboarding process steps will definitely help.

Think about it.

Imagine that you are working from home with other people from different locations.

If you organise and coordinate your work thoroughly, you will still be able to meet deadlines and collaborate productively with all your colleagues without being in the same room. As you know, this won’t happen magically by itself. 

Remember to put yourself in a new employee’s shoes!

If your employees can follow the right onboarding process steps, they will be closer to achieve great results within the first period. 

Knowing that the employee’s success is also the company’s success makes it easy to understand why onboarding plays such an important role in all the organisations’ growth.

You need an exceptional structure from the beginning to make sure you don’t miss important steps.  

Collaboration Starts Early. So, Don’t Be Late

No matter what your role is in the company and where you are, you need to work together with your colleagues as a team. This requires transparent communication based on aligned expectations and performance appraisal goals. Besides, having a shared work culture is pivotal.

What is the best way to establish it?

This is when adequate employee onboarding comes in handy. A clear structure and an easy online onboarding process allow people to collaborate without any doubts about procedures or important information like the company’s policies and culture.

This should be at the top of your agenda.

Last but certainly not least, a virtual onboarding process will also help you have quick follow-ups, especially during the first weeks. You’ll probably appreciate having a smooth process with flowing knowledge and continuous checkpoints rather than an endless emails thread.

Naturally, you can easily onboard with eloomi.

What Is The Secret to an Exceptional Onboarding Process?

Being instructive and keeping it simple is the key.

Similarly, to make a delicious cake, you need an easily understandable cookbook, not a complex manual full of old-fashioned recipes. We all need the right guidance to avoid extra-salty disasters or weird experiments and make the best dessert for our guests.

First, you need to learn the basic steps and get acquainted with the most important tools.

Next comes creating and growing which is based on your onboarding, your talent and your intuition.

This is how the onboarding process can be seen, as the greatest cookbook with all the secrets and vital information you need for achieving goals and managing projects.

Now, the real question is how to make it simple and fast?

All great HR leaders know that an online platform with microlearning and easy-to-use performance management tools are the best solutions.

Three Simple Ways To Make The First Week At Work Effective And Truly Inspiring

Well done, you reached the final paragraph. This means you value this topic as highly as we do. Since the onboarding process steps represent such an important part of the company’s success, it’s smart to take the most fast and effective ones.

We want to share three ways to ensure you’ll have everything you need to get started.

That’s cool!

  1. Make sure to have a great onboarding checklist
    To create a great step-by-step onboarding guide, look for onboarding checklists that will simplify your life and offer a stress-free experience to your new hire.
  2. Establish an effective feedback culture
    One of the best suggestions is certainly this one. Be sure to establish a relationship based on mutual feedback. Having an online platform can be extra helpful to assure that reports and feedbacks aren’t a single action taken at the end of the year.

    This will help to avoid any potential roadblocks in your employees’ development. You will be grateful for this, I can promise you that. Want to know more about feedback culture? Read here.

  3. Provide a continuous learning plan
    Learning is the best way to maintain your employees’ motivation every single day. Do you remember the honeymoon phase? A customised and effective learning plan will keep your team active and always excited to move forward with new ideas while seeking self-improvement.

    With eloomi, you can easily design and deliver your own learning content. For example, you can add deadlines, notifications or required tests at the end of a module.

    Keep it simple and give it some variety so that your employees can develop new soft skills and expand their knowledge from different perspectives.

So, here is what makes onboarding exciting.

You can let your new employees have fun and be constantly stimulated during the process. Yes, it is that simple! Having productive and engaged employees is the key to success in all great companies. Get the ball rolling from the very first week! This is how an onboarding process should be. Inspiring, simple and effective.