Whether your company is still fully remote, in-person, or a hybrid, your onboarding and new hire welcome strategies need to evolve.
The onboarding process impacts employee engagement, retention, and time-to-productivity for your new hire.
Onboarding new hires establishes a few things going forward: company culture, processes and procedures, corporate values and ethos, workforce compliance, and the cultivation of teamwork and leadership.
Below we’ll look at some great ways to make a new hire feel welcome.
Great ways to make a new hire feel welcome
Although the ways in which we onboard new hires might be different as we embrace remote and hybrid work environments, the basic onboarding goals are the same. You want new hires to feel welcome in their role, and you want to give them plenty of opportunities to ask questions, seek guidance, and receive instruction as needed.
Below we’ll look at the various steps of onboarding and what each step looks like in remote vs in-person work environments.
Prepare for the new hire
When preparing for a new hire when in person, you might be thinking about their cubicle, office, or physical workspace. You might think about what kind of hardware is accessible to them and what other technologies they will need on that first week. For remote workers, however, you don’t have the benefit of preparing their workspace before they’re arrival. What you can do, however, is set up their digital resources. If they need a company digital account or email, you can be sure to have that. And they probably need to be integrated into your applications and other digital networks, which you can do ahead of time.
Get them and the company excited
Gaining a new team member is an exciting time for any organization, and you can utilize the onboarding process to generate excitement and rally your team around a fund welcoming party. Whether you’re in-person or remote, you can organize a fun event to bring in the new hire and introduce them to the rest of your team.
Structure and schedule the onboarding process
Whether you’re in-person or remote, you should have a structured onboarding process with a schedule to back it up. This means creating a shared and detailed calendar that outlines the onboarding process on a week-by-week or month-by-month basis.
Encourage new hires to settle into workspace
This is definitely more difficult to do remotely than in person, but if your new hire is remote, you can still support them in creating an optimal at-home work environment that will lead to increased productivity and engagement. If they are in office, then give them several tours of the office and encourage them to personalize their officer space.
Introduce the new hire to the team
If you’re in person, there are several fun ways to introduce a new hire. You can host a fun in-house event, organize a company dinner, or schedule a fun out-of-office event. If your new hire is remote, you can still host a fun remote gathering. At minimum, you should make space for introductions at team meetings through video chat, but you can also do a Friday remote happy hour before your team clocks out.
Mentorships, free-flowing communication networks
Onboarding is one of the most critical times for establishing leadership and mentors. Your new hires will be looking to your team leaders to guide them through their orientation process, and this means lots of one-on-one time with your new hire and plenty of space for them to ask questions. Your new hire, whether remote or not, should be receiving a lot of managerial attention in the first few weeks on the job.
Hit the ground running with a task
Sometimes the best way to get familiar with a job is to jump head first on a task. Of course, this should be a doable task and within their capabilities as a new hire. Whether remote or in person, this is a great way to help your new hire get their feet wet and build a sense of confidence and self-efficacy that will allow them to grow moving forward.
Expectation setting
Having a meeting about expectations, whether in person or over video chat, is extremely important in the onboarding process. The expectations for what your new hire should be responsible for early on in their job cycle needs to be clearly communicated and aligned with your new hire’s capabilities. Throughout the first month, you want to check in with your new hire to see how they’re progressing in meeting their deadlines. A good way to do this is having 60 day reviews and 90 day reviews. This is the best opportunity for them to connect with your leaders and ask the questions they will surely accrue in the early stages of employment.
How Crosschq can help
Crosschq is designed to streamline and simplify your recruiting cycle by providing the best pre-hire candidate assessment and reference check solution on the market.
With Crosschq, you can take the guesswork out of hiring and create a seamless onboarding experience by recruiting the right candidates with the right qualifications.
Request a demo today to see how Crosschq can increase your quality of hires and make difficult onboarding a thing of the past.