Onboarding: how to get every new starter off to a flying start
You’ve just hired talented, committed people into your team. As a manager or HR lead, you now need to keep them — and help them settle in and perform. The key is building an effective onboarding process . A better employee experience is essential for a smooth start in the role, and it’s what makes people want to stay.
What exactly is onboarding?
Across every sector, competition is getting tougher. Hiring is more complex and turnover keeps climbing. For any company looking to hold on to its best talent, a successful onboarding journey is essential: it creates team spirit, builds bonds and helps people work better together.
A warmer welcome for your new recruits
Onboarding refers to theintegration of new starters into the company. The induction period is strategic when it comes to keeping your best hires. Which is why companies have every reason to design a stronger welcome and build loyalty among new employees. One option is a digital escape box bringing new and existing employees together. During these first moments, the company has to live up to its image. It also gives new joiners a far better sense of what working together will look like.
Recent studies into why new employees resign show that a poor welcome is often the trigger. Companies therefore have a clear interest in putting an effective onboarding process in place. It reduces turnover and the costs of hiring again. After all, a failed hire is a significant expense for the company, as is the process of replacing an employee. And a successful integration can only really be assessed after three to six months in the role.
Preparing the workspace to drive engagement
An engaged employee is a more productive employee. Beyond the impression your welcome makes on your employer brand, you also need to win the new starter over through their working environment. That makes preparing the workspace— the desk above all — equally crucial. A successful onboarding process includes providing the tools and equipment the new employee needs: desk, chair, computer and so on.
Supporting new recruits through their first steps in the company is vital. Before they even walk in on day one, their working tools should be ready and up and running. That first day is pivotal in the integration of a new hire. Good onboarding saves the company the time it would lose if a strong performer left — a loss of output, and ultimately of profit. What’s more, a new employee who is quickly operational will be far more effective. Walking into a workspace that’s set up and ready to go, they’ll be all the more motivated to get stuck in, because they’ll feel valued.
Successful onboarding: the key points to remember
In today’s competitive market, a permanent contract no longer guarantees stability. A new employee who isn’t properly integrated often leaves within the first month. Turnover is extremely costly for a company, and onboarding is the best way to integrate new employees and keep them for the long term.
Preparing employee integration properly
Integrating an employee well not only boosts their engagement with the company, it also strengthens their loyalty. Onboarding is your chance to build that engagement and confirm they made the right decision in joining you. Here are a few keys to a successful integration that will also bring your teams closer together:
- Start with a welcome email containing all the documents they’ll need for their first day,
- Plan a friendly moment to introduce the company and the whole team when they arrive — over lunch, for example,
- Assign a mentor or buddy to each new recruit so they can get to grips with the work and the environment more easily, for a smoother transition into the organisation,
- Put a training programme in place so they adapt quickly to the role and become familiar with their new company,
- Build a healthy, lasting working relationship by favouring face-to-face conversations, so you can spot any issues early and act on them quickly.
Successful onboarding means carefully planning the employee’s first few days. That said, your approach should stay flexible, since the aim is to give your new colleague the best possible conditions. A genuinely human adventure, the induction programme should adapt to events as they unfold. That’s how a new employee can express their full potential and make the company culture their own.
Employer brand at the heart of your onboarding strategy
Onboarding has to go well beyond introducing the company and the teams. Everyone in the organisation should play a part in helping a new employee settle into their new environment. Each member of staff has an important role in welcoming new joiners. That collective involvement reflects the company’s values and mission. It’s an excellent way to strengthen your employer brand, with new and long-standing employees alike.
During the induction period, new starters are more receptive to understanding what your organisation stands for. It’s the ideal moment to bring them on board — and to avoid disappointing them. They will inevitably compare reality with everything they were told at interview. Hence the importance of a well-run onboarding process, designed toinspire every stakeholder to understand and deliver their own contribution, covering the full set of standards that keep the company running well.
Onboarding new employees with Arcane Experience
As you’ll have gathered, successful onboarding showcases your company culture and helps you avoid the costs of excessive turnover. A structured welcome process and a buddy scheme both make integration easier. As a designer of game-based experiences that build team cohesion, Arcane Experience is your ally in offering every new joiner a unique experience. We offer a range of solutions to bring teams together and help new employees settle in: gamification, team building, serious games. Arcane will find the right format for your business challenge.
