Creating a great team for your small business starts with onboarding.
By Nadiia Sheveleva
Let’s imagine the following scenario. You have been looking for a new team member over several months. Finally, the real professional ran straight into your arms. With a signed contract in hands, you start thinking how to make a great impression of your company and speed up the onboarding process. Lucky for you, we are sharing the best tips on how to welcome new hires and help them become a part of your team.
1. Reach out to new employees before their first working day
Contact newcomers shortly after they accepted your offer. Keeping silence is an all-too-common mistake. Future employees want to find out what to expect from the new job and what you expect from them. Call or send an email a few days before they start. Don’t forget to mention the schedule, dress code and other important details. That way, new hires will meet their first day ready to work, all guns blazing.
2. Inform old-timers about future team members
Tell your team the necessary info about their new colleagues. How can it help prospective and current workers? On the one hand, new employees won’t need to repeatedly introduce themselves to hundreds of colleagues within one day. On the other hand, several facts about work experience, education and skills of newcomers will push teammates to kick-start a conversation with them.
3. Have new employees start work on a Monday
Monday mornings feel like a slap in the face for some people. (Anyone? No? Only me?) Nevertheless, it’s a perfect day to show up at work for the first time. Starting on Monday, future team members will have a full week to adapt to the new workplace and little by little integrate into your company culture.
4. Introduce newcomers to the rest of the team
You shouldn’t count on new employees to get the lay of the land themselves. Help them get acquainted with team members, sharing the main information about each employee. Shed light on who is responsible for what and to whom they can apply for help (or pair each new hire with an onboarding mentor).
5. Unlock the internal communication
If your employees use a team messenger (like Slack or Chanty), provide newcomers with an access from the get-go. First, new hires will have an opportunity to see how their colleagues communicate with each other in a more informal way. Second, the access to team daily drivers for communication and collaboration will help new employees feel like they are already a part of your company.
6. Encourage your new hires to ask lots of questions
When you start a new job, you’ll inevitably have a ton of questions. New place, new work, new rules: “Why?”, “What for?”, “Where?” and “How?” are all around. Let your new hires know that you are ready to answer any of them. The more questions employees ask from day one, the bigger picture they get, and more productive their work will be in the future.
7. Provide lots of feedback on early assignments
It goes without saying feedback is necessary to all of your employees. Yet, go the extra mile with newcomers. What tasks are they handling? What challenges do new workers face? Constructive feedback can help to define problems and solve them timely, improving future work performance.
In a word, if you want to onboard employees seamlessly, follow these tips and take care of newcomers on your team. Remember, it’s better to spend your time improving the working conditions for a new hire who can do a lot of good to the company than to keep the doors open for all possible candidates. Got other best practices that worked for you? Shoot a comment and let us know!
Nadiia Sheveleva is a part of the marketing team at Chanty – a simple AI-powered business messenger and a single notification center. This powerful and free Slack alternative is aimed to increase team productivity and improve communication at work. When Nadiia isn’t busy writing, she learns French, reads books and enjoys knitting. You can follow Nadiia on Twitter.
Onboarding stock photo by Ivelin Radkov/Shutterstock
