Let’s face it, onboarding and training new employees is a pain for everyone. At the end of the day, both the company and employee would like the new hire to be able to get to work sooner. However, an employees success at the company often relies on their level of confidence and competency that only a proper onboarding experience can provide. The list of employee onboarding best practices below will help you get the best of both worlds:

Utilize Micro Learning

According to Stephen Baer, Head of Creative Strategy and Innovation at The Training Arcade, micro-learning is a unique training technique that companies can implement in order to help employees retain what they have learned. This is important, according to a concept known as Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve, which describes the way people tend to forget what they have learned after 30 days when no effort is made to retain the new information.

Also read: Why Microlearning Should Become Part of Your Training Program

Microlearning serves as a solution to this problem, as it relies on a series of small learning modules designed to offer employees a more effective way to retain information.

Help New Employees Feel Connected to the Company

In a recent article for Inc. Magazine, James Sudakow, author of ‘Picking the Low-Hanging Fruit … and Other Stupid Stuff We Say in the Corporate World,’ writes about the importance of helping new employees feel connected to the company during their onboarding program. Sudakow notes that one of the primary reasons employees decide to leave a company within the first year of being hired is due to a misalignment of expectations.

However, this can be prevented by ensuring that the employee feels a strong connection with the company from the beginning. This means linking the onboarding process with the company’s values and implementing ways in which new employees can build relationships within the company.

Give New Employees Space and Time to Acclimate

Generally speaking, most new employee onboarding experiences are overwhelming, both for the new employee and the company. Negative onboarding experiences can leave a lasting negative impression of the company in the eye of the new employee. Not too mention, providing the new employee a boring day of filling out paperwork and reviewing the employee handbook can lead to information overload. Instead, it’s best to spread out information over time. Some possible ideas include the following:

  • Give new employees their training materials and employee handbook before their first day, so they can spend some time looking them over and getting comfortable with their job expectations before they arrive.
  • Allow new employees time to get comfortable in their new workspace.
  • Space the onboarding experience out over time.
  • Get creative and gamify the onboarding experience to make it less boring.
  • Provide the new employee with a mentor, coach, or go-to person who they can feel comfortable approaching with questions.

Go Digital to Make Onboarding Efficient

A recent article published by the Human Capital Institute notes that a good onboarding process should get new employees engaged with their work as quickly as possible. In 2018, achieving this means relying on digital tools which make the onboarding process more efficient.

Also read: 5 (Unexpected) Things You Need To Include In Your Employee Handbook

Today there are various tools in existence which help place important information in an easily accessible digital location that all employees can reference, while other digital tools provide easy ways to craft tutorials and onboarding lessons. Still, some digital tools offer ways to make paperwork signing a breeze.

Conclusion

A successful new hire onboarding process leads to better employee retention and performance. Therefore, it’s important to spend some time thinking about your existing onboarding process to ensure that it is as good as possible. We hope these innovative best practices are helpful in assisting you with designing an up-to-date and highly successful new hire onboarding process.

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