How to Onboard a New Team Member

The process of bringing a new staff member onto your team can be complicated. You want to avoid overwhelming the person, but you also don’t want him or her to miss any important details and end up getting lost.

People have been debating the best onboarding procedures for years. You want to be systematic about it, and you also want to make the new person feels welcome. LinkedIn will give you some suggestions, but you also want to be comprehensive in your onboarding procedure, so you should do comprehensive research beforehand.  Here are a few things to keep in mind.

Create a checklist

In order for both you and your new employee to have a smooth onboarding experience, there are several things you should keep in mind. To keep track of the whole process, it might be a good idea to create a corporate video to introduce to your new employee on the first day. You can get the rest of your staff involved, and it will also be a good way for the newbie to “get to know” the other staff members before he or she even gets started.

For this, you’ll need a couple of things: You can look for Bandicam webcam recorder to film your video. This will also be useful to you when you have Zoom meetings in the future and create a permanent virtual presence. You want to start with quality so that you give the appearance of being a serious company.

It would also be to your advantage to get a Movavi screen recorder. Screen recorders are very useful for being able to go back and review videos, check out parts of them that you might need to go over again, etc.

Once you’ve got your technical equipment together and created your welcome video, you can focus on the in-person part of onboarding. Here is a checklist that you can use to keep everything in mind:

1.   Start early

Once you’ve signed the contract with your new hire, it will be time to start familiarizing him or her with the company. Even before your new employee comes in on day one, it would be a good idea to send out some company information so that your new hire can start to become familiarized with company culture and procedures.

Then, on the official first day, things should go more smoothly and your new employee will already feel more at ease.

2.   Get the whole team involved

It happens all too often that new employees get brought onto a staff, shown around the building, and then basically left hanging. To really make your new hire feel part of the team, introduce him or her to each of the other staff members. Even ones in different departments. New employees tend to feel nervous and improper at first regardless of the training they receive, so you want to minimize this as much as possible.

It’s also important to prepare the rest of the staff for the new team member. Particularly if the position being filled is a new one, you’ll want to be sure each staff member understands how they will work together and what each person’s responsibilities are. You don’t want people accidentally stepping on each other’s toes and causing strife because of poor understanding of the rules. Plan Zoom meetings if some of the staff members are out of the office. That way, you’ll be able to bring everyone together in one place.

You might even plan a special lunch or happy hour to celebrate your new hire. It will be beneficial for everyone, and it will help to build team spirit.

3.   Remember to provide proper training

This might sound obvious, but even standardized HR tips often neglect to emphasize the importance of training. Giving lectures on the company vision is important, of course, but you also want to make sure your new employees understand the software you use, your reporting procedures, even how the building works. And after you’ve shown your new hire how to do something, have him or her try it in front of you. People can say they understand something – even repeat what they’ve been told in words – but the proof of the pudding is in the eating when it comes to actual performance.

Triangulating your methods is a critical element as well. Keeping people stimulated in different ways helps to ensure that they are alert and on the ball.

Remember, you have likely been in your office for a long time. Probably long enough that many aspects of the job have simply become routine for you. You might not remember what it was like at the beginning when you forgot the door code and had to call security downstairs.

It’s up to you to make sure your new hires don’t have to face these kinds of issues. It would be a good idea to get solid onboarding software to incorporate any aspect of the job that you think is important for employees to remember. Existing staff can benefit from this too!

4.   Give proper feedback

As you go through the onboarding procedure, remember to provide feedback and give your new hire the chance to ask questions. This is also an often neglected part of the experience.

You shouldn’t be afraid to correct your new hires when you think something is off. You can do this in a way that is constructive and doesn’t intimidate them from trying. Write your feedback down so that they can review it later. Moreover, scheduling regular check-ins during the first month or so of employment is a good idea. You might think that yes, sure I’ll be available to help if necessary. But you’d be amazed at how easily this can fall through the cracks. A meeting here, a business trip there…

And be sure to allow them sufficient time to ask questions themselves as they will surely have some. You might even learn something yourself!

5. Set a 90-day goal (or goals)

While it is natural that your new hire will be overwhelmed at the beginning, and bound to make some mistakes, think about making some goals within a 90-day period for him or her to shoot for. This is a good amount of time for a new person to settle in, get a feel for the job, and make first significant steps towards progress. It could be a sales goal, securing a potential client meeting, or whatever is relevant to your business.

Setting and attaining a goal can be a great way to give your new hire a sense of satisfaction and get the momentum going for long-term success. And you will be proud as a mentor as well.

Keep everything organized

You should keep in mind that onboarding is not a one-off. Keep everything archived, whether it be an iMovie video you’ve created with your staff or the training manual that you used with the new hire. The next person to get a job at your office will benefit from these things as well.

And keep in mind that everything is a work in process. That manual that you used should be flexible (would you have wanted one that told you how to use the typewriter?) and you should go back to it on a regular basis. It’s also a good idea to continue looking at HR trends elsewhere to see what might be beneficial to your team.