Employee onboarding can be one of the more stressful parts of an employee’s career. The new hire is being introduced to an unfamiliar environment and facing new expectations. To make the transition smooth and effective, make your employee onboarding process as positive an experience as possible for all employees involved.

Here are five steps you can take to make new employees feel welcome that will also give your new hires a good first impression of your company.

Have An Employee Onboarding Plan Prepared

Before your new hires first day, spend some time making their designated workspace ready to go. Prepare a schedule for each day of the first week that includes who they will be meeting with and what they be doing. Planned onboarding processes go smoother and are much more efficient than a last minute, haphazard onboarding meeting

Start The Employee Onboarding Process With A ‘Press Conference’

As soon as practical, and the sooner the better, provide the new hire a company overview and share an outline of all the projects on which your company is working. Most importantly, tell the new hire how their job is connected to these activities. Let them know how the department they will work in contributes to the project. If their team contributed to the project, then let the team or team manager tell them about their accomplishments. The idea is to let the employee see the big picture as well as shine a spotlight on the job they will be doing.

Arrange To Meet The Owner Of The Company

This would seem to be a given, but the larger a company grows, the harder it is for an employee to meet the founders, owners, or members of the C-suite. However, meeting the leadership team gives the employee an opportunity to experience the culture, learn about the mission, and the gain insight into overall goals of the company directly from top management.

Give Them Something Meaningful To Do

People want to work, and they want their work to be useful. When a new person arrives, give them work to do as soon as possible. This will give them the chance to work alongside their peers and begin to learn the workflow. Doing work is the best way for a new hire to learn about the operations of your business, and it builds employee engagement.

Use On-the-job Training

People learn best by doing. If possible, when it comes time to teach the new employee a skill, try to do it through OTJ opportunities. Nobody wants to join a company and then sit in a classroom or a conference for a week or two. They want to work, they want to assimilate, and they want to be part of the team. Use your experienced team members to teach people what they need to learn.

Equal Parts works with many companies throughout Southern California with the development and implementation of an effective employee onboarding processes. If you are in need of a more effective onboarding plan, we encourage you to contact us.