Employee onboarding is a series of events that are organized for new joiners to get used to the culture, working style, and processes of the new workplace. Before the COVID-19 crisis, employee onboarding used to be an offline event lasting for the first 90 days with the first few days focused on orientation. The onboarding process in today’s times is entirely virtual, yet has an essence of human touch. A good employee onboarding program should have three major characteristics. It should be:
#1. Extensive
#2. Smooth
#3. New Joiner Friendly
It starts from the moment the offer is released. Before the candidate even accepts the offer, there should be a connection that should be established between the recruiter and the new joiner. While basic hygiene should be maintained in the form of requisite document collection and background verification in the background, however, ample efforts should be made to keep the candidate warm. This can be done in the form of sending frequent newsletters and calling the candidates. Right after the candidate has accepted the offer, this kind of interaction should continue during the waiting period.
On day zero, all the important things which are essential for the new joiner to start performing on day one should be arranged and kept handy. These things include employee ID cards, laptops, chargers, etc. The orientation program can be conducted within the first week of joining. A good orientation program has all the key leaders coming in and talking about how different teams operate and collaborate to grow the business. It also gives the new joiners an idea about the working culture and processes within the organization.
During this period, the new joiner should also get acquainted with his/her buddy and team members. Post orientation, there should be 30-60-90 days checkpoints that should be kept in place for the new joiner. The checkpoints should contain questions about their experience within the team, their work responsibilities so far, etc. The employee onboarding program ends within the first 30 to 90 days of joining. At any given point in time, a proper checklist should be maintained and proper feedback mechanisms should be put in place to analyze the entire process.
A lot of the employee expectations are set during this phase, which is why this process is very important, both, from HR and the employee’s perspective.
After the candidate has accepted the offer, weekly newsletters should be sent to the candidate. Apart from that, weekly touchpoints with the recruiter/hiring manager/team member should be set to ensure that the candidate gets to know more about the culture of the organization and feels welcomed, even before joining. Like I explained earlier, day zero should be all about keeping the essential employee checklist in mind and keeping stuff ready to be used by the employee on the first day of joining.
Then day one to day ten can be all about employee orientation. Post orientation, there should be mandatory compliance training, knowledge sharing sessions around policies, etc. On the 30th day, there should be a touchpoint with the HR Business Partner/HR SPOC within the organization. There should be further meetings with cross-functional team members etc. On the 60th day, there should be another checkpoint with the HR SPOC. But now, the employee should have been assimilated within the organization. The employee should now be speaking about the work he/she would be doing within the organization.
The onboarding should still continue for the employee. He/she should now be completing all the onboarding training etc. and submitting any pending documents. On the 90th day, there should be a last checkpoint with the HR SPOC. During these 90 days, the employee should be interacting with his/her buddy on a fortnightly or monthly basis. The buddy should ensure that he/she is setting up the new joiner for success within these 90 days.
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Author / Educator – Deepti K S
Deepti is a Human Capital Consultant with Deloitte who works on change management and digital enablement projects.
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