Probably the most important thing you can do once you hire someone is to make that person feel welcome.

Even the most introverted need to know that they belong somewhere.

To look at this another way, if every day when you went to work you felt excluded, that you were on your own, and that no one cared about you, eventually your hopes would be dashed and your morale would suffer.

This makes onboarding activities extremely important.

 

What is onboarding?

 

Onboarding constitutes all of the activities that you engage in with your new employees to help them become familiar with your organization, products and services, and customers.

It’s what you do to “bring them into the family”.

When you think about it like that, it’s easy to see how you could mess this up.

 

Let’s consider an example from the “real” world which is outside of organisational matters.

What should happen when you adopt a child?

That boy or girl becomes a member of your family.

That person receives the same love, affection, tenderness, care and discipline as everyone else.

You don’t say to your natural born children, “We’ll eat in the dining room, but the adopted child has to eat in the basement”.

This is a heart-rending example, but it makes the point that when you onboard new employees, that you are doing all that is necessary to bring them into the organisational family.

 

What are the pitfalls?

 

So what are the pitfalls?

There are at least five.

We’ve seen one already. It’s treating new people differently from those who have been around for awhile.

Now there’s a caveat here that you need to think about.

It’s this: You have to apply the rules and regulations equally to everyone, but that doesn’t mean that you treat everyone the same.

You have to use some judgement.

For example, let’s say that there are people in your organisation whose jobs could be done from home as easily as they are in the office.

And let’s say that there are some whose work is always outside.

Are you going to stop those who want to work from home people simply because there are those who work outside who would also like to work from home?

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Nevertheless, there are organisations that are like this.

We can take this a step further.

Not everyone will want to be onboarded in the same way as their peers.

Take the Government, for instance.

(Everyone likes to pick on the Government.)

The public sector has a reputation for generating paperwork to such an extent that you could be forgiven for thinking that they had their own private forest from which to make paper.

The Government likes forms, and forms about forms.

They also like to make copies and copies of copies.

And “on paper” it may look like you’ve ticked all the boxes and have a comprehensive onboarding programme, but at the end of the day, your new employees may be no more integrated into their new jobs than someone who doesn’t even work there.

 

What’s the right way to do it?

It’s to provide your new hires with an individual sponsor - someone who knows the ropes, can help them to get settled and who can answer questions.

That personal touch can make all the difference.

 

Dropping the ball

 

“Dropping the ball” is another pitfall of onboarding.

Here’s what happens.

You reach the end of the hiring process, and then notify the successful candidate that he / she has the job.

The job is due to start in a month.

That’s because that person has to hand in his / her notice.

For 30 days, the successful candidate doesn’t hear anything from you.

From where you’re sitting, you have a new person starting.

From where they’re sitting, they’re wondering if you’ve forgotten about them.

Maybe they email you to see how things are going.

They get an out-of-the-office-I’m-on-holiday reply.

How do you think that makes them feel?

Neglected?

Abandoned?

Maybe they have second thoughts about handing in their notice, or maybe they decide to take a different job while you’re lying on the beach.

You have to stay in touch with people, even before they’re due to start.

You could invite them to have lunch with you and their team.

You could send them a packet of material so they could get started on some of the forms: applying for a security clearance, for example, or getting an ID, or being fitted for a company uniform, it that applies, or a visit so you can show them around.

You must do everything you can to make that person feel like he / she belongs as soon as you decide to hire.

If you simply wait until the day that person is due to arrive, with no communication in-between, then you may be the one who’s left feeling ignored or abandoned.

 

Ignoring the people you have

 

This is more common than you may think.

Here’s how it works.

In an effort to get highly qualified staff, an incentive bonus is offered to potential employees.

If they’re hired, then they getting the hiring bonus.

But what about the highly qualified people you already have?

You’d better not ignore them.

Why?

Because they might leave you to get a hiring bonus from one of your competitors.

So if you plan to pay a bonus to the new people, then you’d better give the people you want to keep a comparable bonus as well.

Otherwise, you’re daring them to leave.

 

Failing to prepare new hires to succeed

 

The fourth pitfall is failing to prepare new hires to succeed.

Let’s think about this from a positive perspective.

 

What would you do if you had prepared them succeed?

You’d make sure that they had a proper workspace.

Their computer and other technology would be up to date, and it would work.

Their work area would be clean and tidy.

There wouldn’t be mountains of stuff on their desks or in their workspace.

You know what happens.

You clean up an area and before you know it, it becomes a space to store things that don’t really have a place of their own.

You don’t want your new people to get the feeling that you’re having to squeeze them in; that there really isn’t room for them.

You also want to feed them new information at a rate that they can handle.

It’s an orientation, not a briefing.

The goal is for them to become as productive as quickly as possible; not so you can tick a box that says you told somebody a bunch of stuff.

And make sure that the supervisor is the one that does all this or at least what is possible.

 

HR departments and safety officers and who knows who else often have their own orientations; but where possible, the supervisor should stay with or at least check in with the person frequently to make sure that the onboard process is going as smoothly as possible.

 

Failing to set reasonable expectations

 

It’s been said that everyone is incompetent for the first six months.

Depending on the job, it could be longer or shorter than that.

Generally, it takes about six months for a new hire to get settled into a new job

You must give these people room to fail.

They must be able to make mistakes without being afraid for their futures.

That’s how people grow.

You weren’t perfect the first day you arrived, no matter what you think.

It takes time to “acclimatise” in a new organisation.

It also takes time to learn the routine.

So there are five onboarding pitfalls to watch out for.

All of them can be avoided with careful planning.

The key to all of this is to take a personal interest in your people, whether they’ve been there for a year or a day.

Relationships make a huge difference to the success of the onboarding process, and they have lasting benefits for as long as anyone works for you.

 

 

If you would like to know more about starting new employees off on the best possible path to success – please email via this link