Onboarding a new employee seems like a simple enough thing, but the modern workforce expects more than a cold and templatized onboarding process. The onboarding itself is often a key element to a new employee’s success in their early days with a company. Employees want to know that they were hired with the intention of being welcomed into a new company, and that takes a certain degree of personalization. To make sure your new employees are onboarded the right way takes an investment in the people you hire and the processes you hire them through.
Too many employers lean heavily into the realm of written onboarding documentation. This quickly leads to information overload, lack of retention, and overall a feeling of overwhelm in new hires. But it’s easy enough to make a shift to a more visual onboarding experience. Here are just a few ways a more personalized onboarding process will do the heavy lifting for you.
The Importance of the Onboarding Process
Most new employees in your organization will go through some form of an onboarding process. Onboarding is their first foray into the day to day life of an employee in your organization. It is also one of the most important opportunities to make an impression on the new hires and transform them into loyal employees with the potential to make a great positive impact on the business. While the onboarding process is often tasked with the responsibility to finalize any dangling procedural requirements, its primary purpose is to be motivational. From a new hire’s perspective, it should be rich in relevant information that they would find useful, and delivered in a format that is easy to consume and easy to retain. Visual content such as videos and infographics or even hands-on demonstrations make a big difference. From an organizational perspective, all of those formats are also able to be reliable, repeatable, and even flexible when need be.
Flexibility and Personalization
Everyone learns slightly differently. The goal of the onboarding process is not to enforce uniformity in the learning styles but instead to deliver a great first impression and provide other relevant information. You will have the most success in grabbing and retaining the attention of a large audience if the onboarding process incorporates flexibility. This could mean having multiple different delivery mediums, such as in-person sessions, online information, onboarding videos, and group sessions versus a more personalized session. Different people will find different parts of the content more appealing to them. It is essential that the delivery mechanism is tailored towards that and lets employees go at their own pace. But bringing that element of visual communication into your onboarding process will help your new hires better understand and retain the information you are providing them.
Preparing Your New Hires
For your new employees to have what they need to hit the ground running, you need to give them the tools and information that will help them accomplish your goals. The onboarding process provides a great opportunity to present relevant information to new employees and train them to be the most productive members of the organization. Make sure that they are actively connected with mentors or colleagues who will show them the ropes in their early days. Help them get the most out of the resources available to them. And be clear in your expectations of their day to day work. These things will help them understand what they need to do and how they need to do it to be successful in a new job.
ESGI Can Help with Your Onboarding Process
Ask us how we can help you with installing an effective and engaging onboarding process. Reach out to the ESGI team today.
