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Onboarding Ideas for New Hires

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Onboarding Ideas for New Hires

Aside from skilled workers and great products, startups need another thing: a good onboarding process. Your new hires could be the engines that drive your company departments.

If you can streamline the onboarding process, you can accelerate the company’s growth. An easy onboarding process can make new hires productive sooner and free up other resources for other projects.

But what does an onboarding process look like? Take a look at these onboarding ideas for new hires.

Start With a Welcome Treat

One great onboarding idea for new hires is to give them a treat. It could be something as simple as donuts, cookies, or a gift card to a local café. This would give them an incentive to come to work and provide a way to make them feel appreciated and welcomed.

Additionally, giving them a treat will boost morale, which will positively affect their performance in the workplace. It can also show the new hires that their hard work and dedication are being noticed and appreciated.

Provide Virtual Tours

Onboarding ideas for new hires are extensive and effective. It provides new hires with educational resources such as a customer service portal with information about the company and the services it provides. And companies can create videos that introduce the company’s culture, expectations, and key people to new hires.

Having face-to-face introductions through virtual tours can help new hires feel welcomed and part of the team before they step into the office. This can be beneficial for employers in terms of lowering turnover and providing better new employee onboarding experiences for their new hires.

Create a Social Media Contest

Not only is it a fun way to engage newly hired employees from the get-go, but it can also provide a unique opportunity to learn more about the potential of the hire, their skill set, and their expertise while creating a sense of excitement for the role.

Depending on the target audience, it could include anything from content creation to engaging photos, hashtags, or even a game. This can be used in combination with an onboarding program to introduce new hires to the company’s culture, values, and mission.

Set Up a Buddy for Your New Hire

Setting up a buddy for your new hire is one of those ideas for creating a positive onboarding experience. It helps them feel more comfortable and accepted into the company and gives them someone to connect with when they have questions.

The buddy needs to be knowledgeable about the company, culture, and job so that they can help the new hire navigate systems and processes.

Consider Tapping With EOR Services

EOR services facilitate an effective onboarding process for new hires that provides them with all the necessary information and resources about their roles and the organizations. They also offer useful tools such as:

  • Software
  • Training Programs
  • Online Courses

The benefits of EOR services ensure new employees quickly understand company policies, learn tools, and acquire new skills.

Exploring Effective Onboarding Ideas for New Hires

Onboarding ideas for new hires can be challenging, but with the right ideas, it can be smooth and effective. It’s important to take the time to make sure they feel welcomed and get to know their team and the company culture. Provide structured training, detailed job descriptions, and regular check-ins to make sure the onboarding process is successful.

Take action now and start implementing these onboarding ideas for new hires!

For more interesting articles to read, visit our blog posts.

3 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Hiring Your First Employee

StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Hiring a First Employee|3 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Hiring Your First EmployeeHiring your first employee is a big step for a new business. Things are going well and the workload is increasing so you think that now is the right time to start bringing more people on board, but that isn’t always the case. If you start expanding the business and hiring people too early, you might end up in a difficult financial situation and it could be the end of the business entirely. You may also find that you hire the wrong person if you rush into things without really thinking about it properly first. If you want to avoid getting it wrong, you need to ask yourself these 3 questions before you hire your first employee.

Why Are You Hiring Them?

This is important and it seems like an obvious question but a lot of people don’t actually think about this before they start hiring people. If your answer to this question is simply that you’re making more money and the business is getting a bit bigger so it seems like the right thing to do, you probably aren’t making the right choice. You should be hiring employees to help in specific areas where you’re struggling. For example, if you’re struggling to handle the volume of sales that you’re seeing and you need a sales rep to take on some of that workload, that’s fine. Or maybe you aren’t very good at digital marketing and you think that the company would benefit from having somebody with more experience do it, that’s a great reason to hire somebody. Before you jump into anything, consider how hiring a new employee will actually improve the business in a specific way. If you can’t think of anything, it’s not the right time to start hiring.

Can You Actually Pay Them?

A lot of people have a good month and then decide that they’re financially stable enough to pay an employee. Then they hire somebody and the following month sales dip again and they’re struggling to find the money. It’s best to wait until you’re seeing stable growth over a period of a few months before you decide to hire somebody, and try to put some money aside to cover their salary for a while.

You don’t just need to think about whether you can afford to pay them, you need to think about the actual process of paying them. In other words, do you have a payroll system in place? You’ll need some software to handle that for you and choosing the best payroll software for your business isn’t something that you can just do overnight. If you don’t understand how to deal with payroll yourself, that’s a big problem as well and you’ll need to hire somebody to do that first. If you rush into it and find that you can’t actually pay your employees, you’re going to have a big problem on your hands.

Do You Have A Clear Hiring Process?

Hiring an employee is a lot harder than you might realize. You’re going to get a lot of applications and you need to know how to narrow it down to a few candidates for interview and then choose the perfect person. If your process isn’t good, your first employee won’t be the right fit for the position and you’ll be wasting money. So, before you do anything, you need to sort your hiring process out and make sure that you know how to pick the right candidate.

If you can’t confidently answer all of these questions, it might be best to hold off for a while before hiring your first employee.

Is Your Onboarding Process Up To Scratch?

StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Onboarding Process|Is Your Onboarding Process Up To Scratch?The happiness of your staff is important, and making sure that they feel settled, happy and valued from day one is a must for your business.

The onboarding process for new starters is something that can affect your turnover and many other elements – get it right, and employees will say great things about your business. Get it wrong, however, and you’ll not only affect that particular employee’s experience, but it could also lead to negative word of mouth what will deter future candidates from applying to your company.

Is your onboarding process up to scratch? Perhaps it’s time to reconsider ready for your next new starter.

Why the onboarding process matters

While most people have suffered from a poor onboarding process at some point in their career, it isn’t something that has to happen. A study on the state of the American workplace revealed that 70% of workers did not feel engaged at work, a statistic that should cause concern for most business. When employees feel disengaged, they’re likely to feel undervalued and unsatisfied with their roles, and more likely to accept a position elsewhere. Feeling engaged from the outset is important for new starters, and will help to make sure that they start their new role feeling confident that they know their place and are receiving effective management.

Onboarding begins before the first day

While an employee doesn’t technically work for you until their first day, there are some things you can do to help make the process easier in advance of their start date. An invitation to a welcome lunch is a great way to ease a new starter in and allows them to get to know some key people before they start work. You can also provide them with some literature that will help them get to understand the company a bit better and help them feel more prepared for their first day. It’s quite rare for companies to carry out any early onboarding, so your business can get ahead of the curve by making a part of your process going forward.

Making that first day a success

Effective onboarding will make sure your new employee is left wowed rather than worried. You can make a new starter’s first day a success by making sure they’ve got a prepared itinerary that includes a tour, meet and greets, and a nice social event like a team breakfast or lunch, you’ll already be getting their day off to a great start. Speak to your current employees about things that would’ve made their first say better and try to implement their comments as much as you can.

Help them settle in

There’s nothing worse than being sat in a new office with nothing to do. New employees left to their own devices can feel nervous and disheartened – they’re there to work after all! Giving your new starter some tasks to get on with can help them start to settle and get to grips with their new role. Put together an onboarding checklist that includes some small, manageable tasks to help keep your new recruit busy while also getting a feel of the office. This can help them prepare for their role and ensures they get the opportunity to ask questions along the way.

Touch base regularly

The first few days and weeks of a new job can be a lot to take in for a new starter. While they might be showing a smile on the outside, things might not be so rosy on the inside. It’s important that you meet with your new employee regularly to find out how they’re getting on and how things can be improved. Many businesses are using onboarding surveys as a way to get authentic feedback about the onboarding process and can help improve things going forward. New employees will form their impressions of an employer quickly, so you’ll want to do everything you can to make that first impression a great one.

If you’re looking to recruit the highest quality staff for your business, you need to nail your onboarding process. By engaging employees from the moment they set foot in your door, you stand a better chance of establishing company loyalty and making your staff feel welcomed and valued. New starters can breathe fresh life into your business, but that will soon disappear if you don’t give them the welcome they deserve. Work on your onboarding process and help boost the reputation of your business as a top employer.

The First Things You Must Do When Hiring Anyone

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Hiring |The First Things You Must Do When Hiring AnyoneFor most people in business, the whole prospect of hiring and firing is one of the most daunting aspects of running a business at all. If you find that you are worrying about this a little in your own business, then you will probably want to try and do whatever you can to make it a little easier, and that will generally mean coming to terms with what you are going to have to do about it. In particular, it’s useful to know what you are going to have to do when you are hiring someone, so that you can make sure that you do it in a way which is fair to all, useful for the business, legal and above board, and ultimately in a way which provides the best outcome for all. Clearly, that is something that might be very difficult to make sure of for many people, and it’s going to be a struggle.

However, in this post, we will aim to make this a little easier, primarily by focusing on some of the very first things that you should do when you are hiring absolutely anyone at all. As long as you are aware of these things, and you take them on board, you should find that you are going to be able to make much more of whoever you do hire, which is essential.

Check Their Right To Work

First of all, you need to concern yourself with some of the legal proceedings that you can’t ignore. One of the most important is checking that the person you are hiring actually has the legal right to work in the country in which you are operating. It is your legal duty to check that, and if you fail to then you could get in a lot of trouble indeed, especially if it turns out that they are not able to work there after all. It also helps to protect against any inherent or institutional racism, as you are going to need to make these checks on everyone, not just those you happen to know came to the country from abroad.

The issue and practical concern of how to check their right to work is actually very simple. In the case of those from abroad, you will need to check their visa allows work, and you’ll have to take a copy of it. For everyone else, simply take a copy of their ID – passport, driving licence, or official ID card. Get all this down, and you are going to be in a much better situation with the law.

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Hiring |The First Things You Must Do When Hiring AnyoneDraw Up A Contract

Of course, you are going to have to make sure that you and your new employee have an official agreement about what you should get from them, and what they can expect from you in return. This is the whole point of contracts, and you will need to make sure that you are working on drawing one up early on so that they can sign it when you take them on board. The contract should involve everything that is necessary to know about the position, and includes a description of basic tasks and responsibilities. It should also outline starting pay, and what chances there are for that increasing. You should also have a section there on the terms of dismissal, so that they know them from the very start and there can be no arguments about it later on. Many people find it troublesome drawing up contracts, but with Agiloft contract management software and a decent HR team in charge of the process, it should be considerably simpler indeed.

Training

In many cases, you will find that there is a need for training. If that is the case for your business and its employees, then this is something you are going to need to arrange straight away, before you actually have them sit at their desk and start working. It is useful and necessary for many reasons, but of course one of the main ones is that it is a reliable way of ensuring that they are going to do the work right. It will also help them to feel much more ready for the work, and mean that they can ease in more successfully, which is definitely something to think about too.

As long as you get all this right, you should find that you are going to be able to hire people much more successful indeed.

9 Ways Your Employees Can Hurt Your Business

StrategyDriven Risk Management Article |Hiring Employees| 9 Ways Your Employees Can Hurt Your BusinessYou’d like to think that everyone you invited into your organization would help your company to do nothing but grow, but alas, what we think and what we get aren’t always in sync. When it comes to your employees, there’s always a chance that they will do something that ends up harming your business. You can limit the chances of this happening by hiring correctly, but there isn’t a foolproof method of hiring excellent employees. It’s always a risk. But just how can your staff cause harm? We take a look at nine ways how below.

Poor Productivity

The act of being present in the office isn’t going to do all that much for your business. It’s what happens when you’re there that counts. Now, you’ll know yourself that there are days when you’re a little more sluggish than normal, and thus get less work done. And your employees will be the same. However, it’s a different story when you have an employee who consistently underperforms. If they’re only working for, say, a couple of hours a day, yet they’re getting paid for 7.5, then that’s a huge waste of funds. There are ways you can boost your employee’s productivity, however — paying them well, giving them interesting work, and all-around making sure they’re engaged with the company.

Bad Atmosphere

Everyone can point to a working bad working environment in their past. The troubling thing about offices is that one person can have such a huge effect. All it takes is one employee to cause trouble and create a bad atmosphere, which will lead to an unhappy and unproductive workforce. Of course, there are days when people are off and not in the cheeriest of moods, but if it’s happening consistently, then it’s an issue that should be addressed. Making sure you have employees who are pleasant is something you can incorporate into your hiring process. Ask about their past work, why they left, and, just at the moment, see how well you can get along with them. It’ll save a lot of trouble later on if you’re reasonably sure they’re friendly souls before inviting them to join the team.

Data Issues

Your employees don’t have to be lazy or rude, or otherwise malicious, to have a negative effect on your company. Sometimes, they can do so without even realizing what they’re doing. Take your data, for instance. Cybercrime involving data is a growing problem for small to medium size businesses, and many of the attacks are a result of employee negligence. A staff member can inadvertently leak sensitive information, or make it easy for outsiders to access the company’s information. One way to combat this threat is to incorporate an identity governance platform into your business. It’ll help ensure that employees only have access to the information and data that they need access to. There’s little need for all workers to have access to all information!

Internal Crime

However, while we should talk about the very real threat of cybercrime, it’s also important to keep in mind that most crime that takes place against a company happens internally. That means that an employee you hire — and pay — to work ends up defrauding your business in some way. One of the best tools against this is to conduct a criminal background check before you offer someone a position within your company. For your present employees, it’s about bridging the gap between trust and monitoring their behavior to ensure they’re not harming your business.

Harming Reputation

Your employees aren’t just there to do a single job for your business. They’re also ambassadors for your brand, and this means they have a lot of potential to boost and harm your brand, especially if they’re customer facing. There are employees who have won a company a lifetime customer because of their polite and helpful nature. On the other hand, there have been employees who have caused a customer to turn their back and never return. If you’re hiring for a position that deals with customers, make sure you’re paying extra attention to their temperament.

Lack of Teamwork

There’s been a shift in the working practices over the past couple of decades, and especially so in the last few years. It used to be that people would more or less work on their own; if everyone did their job well at an individual level, then the whole company would prosper. Now, the emphasis is more on collaboration and teamwork. As such, it’s important that all employees at least have some capacity to work with their fellow colleagues. Group effort only works if everyone’s on board. If there’s one employee making it difficult, they’ll be the weak link in the armor.

Contradictory Actions

There’s another reason why you need to look beyond the skills section on a resume, too: an employee has the capacity to undermine your branding. A company’s branding should be watertight, which means all staff members have to, if not reflect those values, then at least agree with them. An employee who’s at odds with your company mission and branding can undo some of your good work, especially if they’re dealing with the public.

More Work

Employees don’t manage themselves. Depending on the size of your business, you’ll either have an HR team, a third-party company looking after your staff, or you’ll be doing it yourself. Problem employees will require more handling than regular employees, which will ultimately mean that you (or whoever handles employee issues) has to spend more time, energy, and money on keeping them on board, all of which could be better used elsewhere.

Intentional Sabotage

It’s generally a good thing that the internet has given everyone a voice. You’ll see the positive side of this when it comes to your glowing customer reviews. But there’s another side to the internet, too: it gives ex-employees the platform to badmouth your company. There are ways to get these negative comments taken down, but it’s best to simply stay on good terms when they leave.