3 Simple Tips for An Engaging Onboarding Process
Talent recruitment and employee retention are crucial for companies and organizations to continue to grow and flourish in the long-term. From the hiring and onboarding process to your IT talent’s first day, week, month on the job, and beyond, you must provide an environment for them to thrive.
Turnover rates in the IT industry are around 20% and 38.6% of all employees that quit do so in their first year of employment. Employee turnover is an underrated drain in a company’s finances, and it’s always in your best interests to retain talent.
The onboarding process is one of the foundations of hiring success. This transition phase goes by quickly, but it’s a crucial phase that serves as your employee’s introduction to your company. An effective onboarding process can put your new employees on the path to long-term success.
Why Is The Onboarding Process Important?
Employee onboarding is the process that welcomes new employees into your organization and immerses them into your company culture. This is a phase of introduction for all parties involved—your new employee gets to know you, and you get to know them.
Onboarding processes take various forms depending on the company. HR departments have detailed onboarding checklists to help make sure that all requirements are being met. Some prefer staid meetings, while others use games as ice-breakers.
The onboarding process is a crucial first step in building relationships between new hires, colleagues, and superiors. The sooner your new hires are comfortable, the more productive and confident they’ll be.
Onboarding programs fail if new employees feel unintegrated and disinterested in your company. A disengaged person may not meet your standards and is much more likely to leave within the year.
Here are three simple tips to make your onboarding process much more engaging:
1. Offer Support
Your entire onboarding process should hinge on support and friendliness. You want to make people feel like they belong almost immediately, so they can feel comfortable in their place and feel able to contribute to your success.
Some support systems you can implement:
Onboarding partner – Assign an employee to work closely with a new hire for the first 3 to 4 weeks. It will be easier for them to ask questions and relay concerns to a colleague instead of a supervisor.
Information access – Every new employee should have their own copy of company rules, procedures, and best practices that they can look over on their own time.
Opportunity to socialize – Something simple like a Slack channel purely for their department will go a long way in socially integrating new employees.
2. Leverage Technology
Your new IT hire thrives in the digital world. One of the best practices in IT staffing is to create an online onboarding portal. This is a good choice if you want them to feel comfortable quickly, especially if your company is on a remote set-up. This portal should contain employee handbooks, training manuals, tutorials, and FAQs for new hires. Make this portal as engaging and intuitive as possible to encourage new hires to look through all the information you’ve provided.
3. Team Effort
The onboarding process isn’t limited to your HR department and your new hire’s direct supervisor. You can build a successful and engaging onboarding program by integrating ideas and opinions from all your departments, especially from your staff members that are also relatively new. Solicit their opinions and troubleshoot your onboarding checklist to accommodate practical suggestions from the top down.
Conclusion
Welcoming new employees into your company is a delicate process. You need to put your best foot forward and create an onboarding process that’s informative, professional, and engaging. Thorough planning and implementing ideas from your staff will help you keep employees for the long haul.
Are you looking for IT staffing solutions for your company? At Technical Paradigm, we’re more than just an IT staffing agency. We take a strategic approach to your workforce needs. Our recruiting experts have a systematic and comprehensive search process designed to match candidates with our clients’ exact needs. Contact us today!