4 Ways to Perfect Your New Employee Onboarding Process

While transitioning a new hire from job candidate to employee, having the right employee onboarding process can mean the difference between a short-term and a long-term employee. Yet, with the many available approaches to employee onboarding, which process will create invested employees while building upon company brand and values?

There are four vital components that any successful employee onboarding process should achieve with new hires. These components include:

●     Building on company culture

●     Goal setting

●     Following up

●     Training and development

Company Culture

Creating an effective and positive company culture that drives employee work performance may sound easy enough, but in reality, there’s a lot more to it. The Harvard Business Review reported six motives that affect company culture and employee performance, yet, only three of those motives (play, purpose, and potential) increase employee motivation and boost performance.

How you hone in on these three aspects to improve company culture and boost employee onboarding and performance is by ‘reshaping’ employee motives from the start. By doing this, employee motivation is able to better align with the ‘play, purpose, and potential’ motives, thus increasing overall employee performance. This also gives employees a reason to value the work they do and invest in your company.

Goal Setting

Goal setting tools, such as PiiQ Cornerstone, have been a staple for performance management, and are also a great way to transform a new hire into an invested employee as well. Having a goal in motion with employee and employer collaboration to establish reasonable, yet challenging goals means the difference between a motivated employee and one who’s less confident.

Goals should be clear, concise, and challenging, yet, within reach. The key to goal setting is to determine employee strengths and weaknesses and align these goals accordingly. Motivating employees through goal setting can boost performance, build confidence, and lead to give employees the incentive to put trust and faith into your company.

Follow Up

Following up with new employees helps build trust, confidence, and addresses any questions or concerns they may have. Time spent during employee check-ins should also include progress made toward goals and any barriers that have risen along the way. It’s also a way to remove barriers and help employees grow to achieve further success. Although we all get busy, these one-on-one sessions are vital to ensuring your employees stay motivated and on top of their work.

Training and development

Training and developing new and existing employees are big businesses. In 2014, U.S. employers spent $61.8 billion on training and related expenses. While some businesses saw a decrease in their training budgets, others saw an increase averaging between 6% and 15%. Yet, the effectiveness of these training and development programs are still concerning.

When changes are imminent for training and development programs, finding ways to better engage employees can improve your overall ROI. Keith Ferrazzi, CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight, reports ‘7 ways to improve employee development programs.’ The key takeaway is knowing and understanding the trends in your training and development programs and aligning those with goals, individual learning styles, and employee-employer collaboration.

When you onboard for success, the result is a less stressed and more confident, efficient, and invested employee. However, let’s not forget the role that job clarity also plays in the employee onboarding process. An employee who has a clear understanding of his/her role boosts job performance and attitude.

The Society for Human Resources Management also recommends ensuring social integration as a key component of the employee onboarding process to improve job turnover and commitment. After all, a committed employee is also an invested one. An onboarding process that integrates all of these factors produces an employee that embraces company values and brand for the long-haul.

Beth Casey is a researcher and a regular contributor to TrustRadius where she shares her knowledge on the latest business trends and B2B news and technologies.