Ever wondered why some brilliant new employees with excellent resumes simply fail to convert that potential into performance, in spite of being paid quite well. As a recruiter, it would be quite surprising that candidates with great credentials turn out to be poor performers or even indifferent and uncommitted workers. This is one perspective you should consider challenging.
When you look at things from a candidate’s perspective, you would see that the fault may well be hidden in the onboarding process.
Because one of the worst experiences for a new employee is being made to feel unwelcome or just having to deal with plain ambiguity when they have just joined.
Read on to discover the top tips to ensure that you make your new hires feel welcome and glad that they joined your organization.
Provide clarity of who you are as an organization
This step is not about bragging about your organization and corporate achievements. Rather, it is ensuring that your company website and online presence, details about the company’s culture and people, and even the way you present yourself to the candidate are perfectly synchronized with the organization’s mission and values. The impression that the employee forms based on this is irreversible and will stay with them, no matter what else happens in the future.
Needless to say, a poor impression will be etched in their memories forever.
Set the tone from the very beginning about what you expect from the employees
Ever so often, recruiters tend to be too nice – especially to candidates who are considered great catches – and forget the value of setting clear expectations from day one. And day one here does not mean the first day at work, but rather the first interaction between the candidate and the recruiters. If they know what you are expecting in terms of discipline, ethics, and all matters concerning their employment, they will be grateful to you in the long run.
Pro tip: Be very upfront and direct about company policies that have a major impact on the employee’s work life.But be careful not to be over assertive or intimidating as that may drive a great candidate away as well.
Convey your excitement to have them on board in your offer letter
An offer letter is not just about admin paperwork or legalities and terms of contract. It is an official document representing your organization’s willingness and desire to employ a real person and work with them for the foreseeable future. So make sure that you pen down a few lines letting the new employee know how excited you are to have them on board. It feels like a genuine gesture of goodwill and will contribute to building trust.
Show the employees their way around the office spaces
This would not apply to remote hiring of course. However, this is supercritical for employees who would be working from the office. Show them their workstation, the pantry, parking lot, cabins of management and support personnel, recreation room, and yes, even the way to the lavatory. You wouldn’t want an employee wasting time trying to find where to get a cup of coffee, do you?
Give a sense of the typical day at work
This one is more down the line of the reporting manager, but your role as the recruiter is to give the new employee’s manager proper support. One good way to ensure this is to let the new hire just settle in on day one, go through the induction and observe her colleagues at work. This will give her a sense of the kind of day she would be spending at the office mostly and calm the nerves as well.
Ensure proper enablement and training, especially in remote hiring
If an employee does not have the set of tools to work properly, such as a computer, email account, access to the various work resources and software, and maybe even a phone – then he is not going to be doing any work until all of it is enabled. And idle remote employees lose that initial excitement and motivation pretty quickly if they are not enabled and engaged properly.
Pro tip: Talking to remote onboarding, just ensure that there is enough communication flowing between the manager or recruiter, and the new employee. New remote hires who are left without timely engagement are not likely to be clear about what work needs to be done, and they will be off to a bad start. And getting off to a bad start is often the kind of damage that cannot be repaired easily. There is the small issue of rework cost, and then there is the ever lurking risk of early attrition.
Communicate the new employees’ roles and responsibilities and future prospects
Induction is not just paperwork, but it’s also about presenting the roadmap to the new hire. The new employee is quite eagerly looking forward to working with your organization and giving her best. So it is the ideal time to communicate her roles and responsibilities, and explain what she stands to gain in the future by doing a good job with good work ethics over a period of time.
Make the new employees welcome during the first two weeks
This again falls more within the sphere of the reporting manager’s control. However, as recruiters, it is important that you provide ample support and even training to reporting managers to make sure that all new employees are made to feel at home. It could be as simple as greeting them with a genuine smile, or as complex as training the new employees on six sigma concepts. But it needs to be done with the right intention: making the new employee productive and loyal.
Provide opportunities to build key relationships
Once the new employee has started working, he will feel the need to know his surroundings better. Encourage building key work relationships with the coworkers, reporting manager, and the support staff. If it means having some fun team-building activities, organize and conduct them. Don’t limit yourself as you are the talent acquisition expert. For instance, if a new employee is seemingly likely to bond better with his supervisor over a few games of ping pong, encourage it, and enjoy watching the game!
Get an early feedback on how the new hires are finding the experience
Once the initial few weeks pass, you need to do a dipstick survey of sorts to check how the new employee is finding the experience of working with your organization. If you have followed the tips above, the chances are high that you will not need to do anything beyond a simple discussion collecting feedback at this stage. But if there is discontent in the new hire, you should consider reviewing whether you have missed anything and chances are that you have.
Use a robust employee onboarding software
In the course of executing a successful employee onboarding process, one critical aspect is to not rely completely on human memory and manual paperwork. Sure, there is no substitute for the judgment of an astute recruiter, but relying on a good employee onboarding software like RippleHire will complement your efforts really well.
Happy employee onboarding!
