Designing Employee Onboarding Programs

Onboarding sometimes known as organizational entry which is a process that an organization use to socialize and bring a new employee into the culture and work life of an organization. Orientation can be a part of onboarding but it is not the same thing. Onboarding programs are lengthy process which helps in integrating employees into new organization. It is more like a strategic approach then a conventional orientation.

Employee onboarding program

There are some best practices for designing onboarding programs which shares a series of strategies and guidelines for designing employee onboarding programs:

a) Align the messaging:

Design any program which determines the onboarding goals first. Make an impression you want to leave with new hires about the culture and work environment. Make sure that your messages conveyed to them is consistent throughout and that is aligned with your goals.

b) Plan the first day:

New employees want to do something meaningful from the first day of their job. They also want to feel comfortable. They need a place to work where they can able to identify their roles and responsibilities. A positive first day with some interesting work can leave a lasting impression.

c) Ensure a meeting with manager in the first week:

It is benefit for new employees to meet personally with their manager during the first week of employment. Due to this the new employees also participates in higher quality meetings and spent more time collaborating with their teams than those who did not have the manager meeting within the first week.

d) Use gamification to engage employees:

Gamifying the onboarding process helps to engage and motivate new employees and provide a more thorough experience. They even try to incorporate digital and physical leaderboards, challenges and bonus prizes. The initial results shows that the approached was well received and had a positive impact on customer satisfaction.

e) Focus on social relationship:

An organization should design a onboarding program which is fun and participative rather than boring and top-down. The new hires should be brought together on their first day to let them work together in small groups and identify what they need to know.These social connections make the experience relevant and fun and probably improve retention.

f) Provide mentors to new hires:

Mentors should be assigned to the new hires to help them with ease in their role and work culture. Simultaneously, the new employee becomes more knowledgeable about the organization and thus they were more invested in the values of the organization than those without a mentor.

g) Gather Feedback:

An organization should provide multiple ways for the new hires to give feedback. It should also help to find out ways for improvement of onboarding program by using online surveys and discussions with participants. Gather retention and job satisfaction data to see if the improvements are having an effect.