Employee Onboarding- Recommendations for SMEs to Thrive
Employee onboarding is an essential step of successful hiring for businesses regardless of size. Contrary to common belief, small companies also need to take onboarding seriously to ensure they incorporate best practices that support future growth. If overlooked, the hazards associated with high employee turnover, costs, and lost productivity can impact profitability in dangerous ways- an area small businesses already have low risk appetite for.
Investing in employees and showing them how much they are valued at your organization should be a staple part of your company’s culture. These are human resources that needed to have their talent nurtured and recognized, versus being considered just another name or face in your organizational hierarchy.
So how can small businesses ensure that their new joiners don’t fall victim to the traps of impersonal onboarding that leads to drastically high turnover rates? These are 3 great recommendations to get started with:
1) Have a dedicated leader to manage onboarding:
Introducing a new employee to your culture is not something that can be practically achieved without a game plan or strategy in place. Having an assigned staff member
Your new hires should be immediately connected with your onboarding expert to help gain clarity regarding their responsibilities, in addition to building healthy workplace relationships. Using lunches, group huddles or even casual coffee sessions to introduce the new hire to their future team mates or reporting managers is very effective at breaking the ice, and helping fresh joiners feel at ease.
2) Have their workspace ready for instant productivity:
With all the momentum and high energy that fresh hires bring to the organization, there’s nothing that shatters the enthusiasm faster than a workspace that has yet to be set up. An area commonly overlooked, providing your staff with the environment to instantly tap into their productivity is key to ensuring a great start to a fulfilling career.
To confirm that your new joiners have all the right authorizations, resources and logins ready to help them kick off their job on the right note, an onboarding software such as afterhire is a great solution to have on your side. Aligning all departments’ personnel ranging from IT, finance to HR, approvals can be seamlessly requested and obtained to avoid the hassle of redundant emails and reminders. Companies can also standardize their checklists and have a streamlined workflow in place that prioritizes instant access of new employees to all the resources they need to become their team’s superstars.
3) Incorporate regular performance reviews into your onboarding strategy:
Growing your business and adding employees means more talent to manage and oversee. Your employees need to be directed to confirm the right performance goals are being met. Whether you choose to conduct biweekly, monthly, or quarterly reviews- that’s your call to make based on the speed at which results can be achieved at your organization.
The objective here is to maintain an environment that places high worth on each employee knowing their responsibilities, and the workload they must execute for their team to succeed. Considering the salaries being paid to mismanaged employees unaware of their exact duties, it’s crucial to consistently share feedback that can help your staff become better at their jobs. Communication is every small businesses best friend!
Conclusion:
Employee onboarding is not as complicated as it may be assumed to be. Building a framework that spearheads new joiners’ ease of transition, talent engagement, team bonding, and open channels of communication supporting their professional growth is a goal that’s easy to attain with the right tools and technology. Whether you choose an onboarding software, or use a dedicated resource, to get the job done- make the best first impression that makes your talent want to stay loyal for life.
