Ever wondered how your business could better deal with onboarding newly recruited members of staff?
Wonder no longer as the following five pieces of advice will make sure your new employee remains motivated, you have less mundane paperwork to do, and your HR department runs into fewer problems.
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Streamline the onboarding process
Onboarding processes can be unnecessarily complicated, leading to frustrated new staff members. With streamlined onboarding processes, this does not have to be an issue. Companies using advanced HR software can spend as much as 50% less time on the onboarding process, and the system can even retain employee data privately so that if a staff member leaves and is hired again at a later date, the process is even quicker.
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Stay true to job advertisement promises
The opening months of employment are all about building trust between you and your new recruit. This means staying true to the promises made on a job advertisement – if you stated the employee would be able to start immediately then make it so.
This also goes into the job role and responsibilities. Refrain from adding additional duties to a job role that weren’t stated in the job description, unless agreed with between yourself and the employee.
In almost all American states it is legal to update a job description, so long as the employee can’t claim it is discriminatory or punitive, but that does not mean that you should start altering them at will.
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Offer a welcome meeting
No freshly hired staff member wants to walk into work on the first morning and not know what they are doing or who anybody is. Always offer a welcome meeting where they are introduced to you, their colleagues and other teams. This will show them the friendly faces that make up their team and also give them contacts they are not directly reporting to or working with – useful for them seeking advice or making complaints without fear of upsetting a close colleague.
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Go easy on the first week
It’s all well and good saying you think employees should be dropped in at the deep end, but what you gain in instant productivity you may lose in job satisfaction and employee retention rate. It is a fact that 33% of new employees quit in their first 90 days on a job, so taking special care of them in their opening quarter is essential.
Don’t over-strain anybody in their first week, allow them to take a little longer at lunch and do your best to make them feel welcome, or else you may be advertising the same job again very soon.
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Don’t overpromise
Recruiting employees is a balancing act. While it is important to make good on your initial promises and to not overbear staff in their opening weeks, it is also important to not overpromise anything either.
Only offer the pay, benefits and support that you actually can give them, rather than stating you can offer them more and then hope that they don’t notice when you fall through on your promise. Honesty is always the best policy.
The hiring process as well as any initial training that might be required for a new employees can be very expensive and take up a lot of company time. You want to ensure that once you have found the right person for the job and the team that you don’t lose them due to poor experiences over the first few months.