Effective Onboarding: Best Practices for Welcoming New Employees (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Hi everybody, my name is Marie. I'm a Customer Success Manager here at Actimo. In this video, we want to provide you with some best practices for creating onboarding processes for your new employees. But before we go into the details, I just want to briefly state why you should even make onboarding processes. First of all, it's about making your new employees feel welcome on the first day of their new job. Then it's about building a company culture where everybody feels part of the group. And lastly, it's about getting your employees up to speed and shorten the time for them to perform. What we have experienced is that onboarding processes can take many shapes and forms and there is no one-size-fits-all. So what we will be focusing on is just some best practice examples and a flow that you can set up and that you can put all of your own processes and all of your own tasks into. For the pre-boarding phase, which would be the phase from a person is hired until they have their first day, we recommend you focus on these three key points. First of all, send your new employee a welcome message and build on the excitement that they are hired. Let them know that you are really excited to see them in a few weeks. Secondly, think about introducing the team before the new employee's first day. Often when you start a new job, it involves meeting a lot of new people. So even before they start, you could maybe shoot a video message where everybody in the team introduces themselves. And then there will be some faces that you recognize on your first day. A third point that we want you to consider is equipping your new employees with some practical information before the first day. And maybe assigning them a buddy that can help them get around and get to know the new place. Also think about providing them with a schedule so they know when to meet, who will greet them, what is going to happen on their first days at the new job. We're now at the point where your new employee's first day has finally arrived. This also means that we are moving from the pre-boarding phase into the actual onboarding phase. First up is planning a nice first day for your new employee. This would entail meeting all the new colleagues, maybe have their buddy show them around the company, giving them a tour. Let them know where to get coffee, where to get the computer fixed if it's broken. All of the inner workings of your new workplace. Step two in your onboarding program would be to help your employee set everything up. Get them their computer and the phone and everything else they need to do their job. Also think about starting some initial training of the employees at this point in time. Where they learn all the overall processes, everything they need to know before you move on to the more in-depth training. The in-depth training might be the most important step in your entire onboarding process. Because this is where your new employee learns everything they need to know in order to be successful in their specific roles. When it comes to in-depth training, think about making it as blended learning. So that not everything they need to learn happens in a classroom and not everything happens online. Think about mixing it up a bit and maybe add in some gamified training as well. So this was our take on what an onboarding flow could look like. In summary, here are some key points worth remembering. First of all, split up your training so you don't throw everything at the new employee at once. But you divide it into snackable pieces. Then, pre-board is key. Make sure you start communicating to your employees even before they have the first day. Continuous one-on-ones is not something that we have talked about here. But it's really important that you have regular check-ins with new employees. And finally, assign a co-boarding buddy. Because this is an easy way to make someone feel comfortable at their new job. Thanks for watching. I hope you found it interesting and useful for your onboarding flow.