The Importance of Onboarding in New Employee Engagement
Having a team that’s highly engaged is crucial to your business operating at the highest productivity levels. Despite employee engagement being of utmost importance, many organizations make little effort to engage employees from the time they get hired and throughout the onboarding process.
Underestimating the importance of onboarding in new employee engagement can result in a high turnover rate and employees that don’t give their best to the company. Initiating employee engagement from day one doesn’t have to be difficult though.
In this article, we’ll cover how effective employee onboarding can enhance employee engagement and retention and offer some top tips for creating an onboarding process that emphasizes engagement.
Why is Having Engaged Employees Important?
Focusing on new employee engagement during onboarding brings many benefits. Having employees that are highly engaged and motivated to work for the organization from day one can:
Reduce turnover rate.
Improve productivity throughout the new hire’s whole career.
Create a positive work environment.
What is Onboarding?
Onboarding is the process of integrating a new hire into the organization, getting them off to a good start and helping them thrive. It involves teaching them about company policies and culture and training them to perform their role and responsibilities.
The onboarding process generally takes place in the first weeks and months of a new employee starting. To keep engagement rates high, onboarding should ideally be a long process that lasts up to a year. It should never end after the first day, week, or even month.
Highly engaged employees are productive, satisfied, and less likely to quit, improving your retention rate.
How Does Onboarding Impact Employee Engagement?
Onboarding offers your new employee their first interaction with the organization, their new position, and their co-workers. If the experience is good, the new hire will feel like they fit in, are starting to build relationships with their team, and are contributing to the company’s success. These feelings translate into employee motivation and engagement. Engagement is of utmost importance because most new hires leave due to feeling like the culture isn’t a good fit, as opposed to not being able to handle their responsibilities.
Within the first few days, weeks, and months at a new job, employees want the following provided to them during onboarding to help with assimilation, satisfaction, and engagement:
Clear guidelines about what their roles and responsibilities are.
Goals to meet that use SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely.)
Effective training.
Friendly employees who help them and make them feel welcome.
Recognition for their contributions.
Management check-ins on how they’re doing.
If these, relatively basic things, aren’t provided, employees will not assimilate. In addition, if you don’t engage employees from day one or even before they begin, your retention rate will suffer. A large percentage of turnover happens in the first few weeks and months of new employees joining the company.
Therefore, you need to engage employees from the beginning, ideally before their first day, and aid retention with a strong onboarding strategy that focuses on training and engagement.
Underestimating the importance of onboarding in new employee engagement can result in unmotivated staff who quit quickly.
Ways to Drive Employee Engagement During Onboarding
Initiating new employee engagement in onboarding doesn’t have to be difficult. The following tips will make it easy to update your onboarding strategy to create a process that focuses on employee engagement and motivation.
Before the New Hire Begins
If they’ll be working in an office, invite the new employee for a tour of the office before their first day. This experience can calm nerves and allows for some initial introductions to the team. It also gives them a chance to make the journey to the office without the stress of it being their first day.
Invite the new hire to any events you have (whether in-person or virtual) before they start, like a staff lunch or happy hour.
Send a welcome email outlining what their first day or week will look like. If they are scheduled to be involved in meetings already, for example, joining a 9 AM Monday morning meeting or having an overview meeting with their department, send an invitation so they can add it to their calendar.
Set them up with workplace tech. If you’re happy to give the new hire access to their email address, project management software, workplace messaging platforms, and the like, this will help get them prepared for their first day and feel more comfortable when they begin.
Provide an employee handbook to allow them to get up to speed with company rules and culture.
Arrange everything they need to work from home if the position is remote.
Ensure everyone knows about the new hire’s first day! There’s no easier way to make a new employee feel like an outsider than their new co-workers not expecting them to be there. Before they start, tell everyone necessary (the whole team in a small business, or at a minimum, their department in a larger business) what their name is, when their first day is, and what their role is.
Inviting new hires to work events before their start date can kickstart relationship building and engagement.
On the New Hire’s First Day
No matter the employee’s level, first days are daunting, and a bad first day can negatively affect employee engagement. Therefore, ensure you do everything you can to make the new hire feel welcome and like they’re part of the team from day one.
Some things to do to boost new employee engagement during onboarding on their first day include:
Greet them as soon as they arrive (or log on for the day if working remotely) to instantly make them feel welcome.
If working in an office, show them to their desk or workspace and let them get set up, offering them any supplies they need (notebooks, stationary, etc.)
Introduce them to the rest of the team, especially to those in their department and any others they’ll work with closely.
Go over their schedule for the week and give them a run-down of tasks they’ll be working on.
Initiate relationship building by setting up more in-depth meetings with team members they'll work with the most. Building team bonds is a major element of employee engagement, and a great way to start building these relationships is by having “getting to know you” meetings between current staff and the new hire.
These could be virtual, in an office meeting room, or even at a nearby coffee shop to offer a relaxed atmosphere. By getting to know each other (both a bit about each person’s jobs and personal interests), the new hire should instantly feel more comfortable in their environment.
Check in at the end of the day to see how their first day went, answer any questions they may have, and cover what they’ll do tomorrow.
Covering the new hire’s schedule for the week and introducing them to co-workers is an easy way to initiate engagement.
During the New Hire’s First Week
A new hire will generally assess how much they like a new job after the first day, at the end of the first week, and lastly at the end of the first month. A bad first day could be overlooked, but often if an employee has a bad first week, they’ll either quit or work through the month and then do a final assessment of their future at the company.
Therefore, continuing to promote new employee engagement during onboarding in their first week is crucial! A great first week will do a lot in increasing the new hire’s satisfaction, engagement, and commitment to stay with the company.
Some things to do during the first week of onboarding to increase new hire engagement include:
Check in at the start and end of each day to see how things are going. Obtaining daily feedback about the onboarding and training process allows you to instantly fix any issues, make changes to the process, and answer questions to make the employee feel listened to and comfortable.
Include them in as many relevant team meetings as possible to get them collaborating and bonding with the team.
Discuss expectations and what their goals are for the next month. You may also outline projected goals for the next quarter and even the next six months to a year.
After a day or two of training and doing more basic tasks, be sure to assign them more in-depth projects and meaningful work. Doing this is especially crucial for higher-level employees to ensure they feel like they’re being challenged and given work that matches their skill level in their new role.
Schedule a few team-building events, such as a team lunch, happy hour, or team-building activity.
During the New Hire’s First Month
Within the first month, it’s important to request feedback from the new hire as much as possible and have an end-of-week check-in each week throughout the month.
As mentioned, most new team members will have decided at the end of their first month if they want to remain at the company. Conducting an end-of-month review could be too late, and the employee may have decided to leave. By checking in each week, you can remedy any issues or concerns they have, making it more likely they’ll want to remain at the organization past the one-month mark.
Another must-do to continue promoting new employee engagement during onboarding through the first month is giving the employee tasks that challenge them and rewarding them when they meet goals.
Somewhere around the six-month to the one-year mark, begin the transition from onboarding to employee experience, retention, and satisfaction strategies. These strategies will ensure that high levels of employee engagement and satisfaction remain throughout the rest of their time with the organization and can help them grow within their role.
Set up weekly reviews in the first month to see how things are going and if the new hire is motivated and engaged.
Onboarding and Employee Engagement General Guidelines and Templates
As onboarding will most likely be down to different employees, depending on the department and role the new hire has, a template can help ensure all team members that are training follow the guidelines that contribute to high levels of engagement.
An onboarding and employee engagement template can include:
How long onboarding will last, and an outline of what should be done at each stage. For example, what to cover on the first day, first week, and each month going forward for up to a year.
What the new hire needs to be informed about regarding the organization’s culture, missions, and values.
The types of goals that need to be set for new hires.
What role HR will play/how the HR department must collaborate with the employees doing the onboarding during the new hire’s training period.
How feedback will be collected and improvements made.
The 4 C’s of Onboarding
An outline for onboarding from the SHRM Foundation suggests that covering the “4 C’s of Onboarding” can ensure that your onboarding process is successful and leads to employee engagement and satisfaction. Along with the standard template above, keep these elements in mind while onboarding staff.
The 4C’s to cover are:
Compliance
Explaining standard company rules and policies and filling out paperwork. This process will be similar for all employees, no matter their role. It should be done by the HR department if you have one or someone in a management position if you do not.
Clarification
Ensuring that the new hire understands their role and responsibilities. This covers what they’ll be responsible for in the week and months ahead and what their goals and targets are.
Culture
Covering the organization’s culture, mission, and values. When doing this, the new hire should get a better idea of what environment they’re working in. how they fit in, and what they’re working towards.
Connection
Developing relationships with those they’re working with. This should somewhat happen naturally, but implementing team bonding activities is a great idea to boost relationship building, especially if the new hire is working remotely.
Are your new hires working from home? Be sure to also read these eight top tips for remote onboarding.
In Conclusion
The importance of employee engagement during onboarding can’t be underestimated. Luckily, there are many opportunities throughout the onboarding process to generate high levels of employee engagement and motivation. By following the onboarding advice discussed in this article, your new hires should fit into the team quickly and become satisfied and productive members of the organization.