Employees Onboarding 101: What is right? đ¤
Gabriel Bujold
15 replies
As makers, we often talk about how to onboard customers. It's an important step, but I'm curious about how you guys are managing this aspect of your work? If you don't take care of your employees, they won't stay, but first, you have to make sure they're willing to do the work.
-How do you manage the onboarding on the first week, month, year?
-Do you have a knowledge base to make sure they understand your product loud & clear?
-What is a typical onboarding timeframe for you?
Replies
Theresa Wernsdorfer@theresa_wernsdorfer1
Hi Gabriel, I am not a Founder but I experienced some great onboarding through different companies.
Important take aways:
- Have clear expectations set of what to know in the first week, month, quarter ect. This helps your new employee know where to focus their energy but also give you an easy way to track progress. This does include values, mission ect. of the company.
- Have a knowledge base that is up-to-date. I personally have been working with Confluence for this a lot and think it can be a great one stop shop if you need additional input or just want to verify things. If you use Slack, this can be a way too, I do think it can get quite messy and hard to look through if you need information quick
- Give them a mentor - someone on the same role or closely related to the role they can ask any questions that might come up during the process.
- Check-In: In order to evaluate how well the onboarding is going you need to make sure you have regular check-in, this can be daily in the beginning and weekly later on but it is crucial to keep a pulse on what is going on.
Hope this already helps.
Cheers!
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Hey Gabriel, I'm not a founder but I can tell you what I've liked about onboardings I've had:
- Within the first few days (if not the first day), I've been introduced to the company's values, and to the company's mission. It really helps in making you feel part of the team and engaging you.
- Your product needs a knowledge base anyway, if only for your customers but getting a tour of the product early on is good, because it ties your job to an actual product, that solves issues
- Have regular informal meetings with your employee to make sure everything's going okay; don't micromanage, let them adapt to the environment, but keep an eye on where they're going
- Set KPIs early on, if possible together, it'll give them a clear direction, and goals to accomplish. Without a lot of data, it'll have to be arbitrary; but it's okay, you can adjust it as you go
As you said, it's not just about taking care of employees so they don't leave, it's about setting them up for success so they want to do the job :)
Hope this helps a bit!
@forster_perelsztejn1 Thanks for your feedback Forster! This is helping me get in the right direction :)
Onboarding is super important. We've doubled the size of our team last year, and we found that what helps our new hire the most was to put together a detailed company handbook that helps them navigate their first week (we've made it public here if you're interested: https://www.notion.so/monito/Mon...)
In addition to that, we're preparing a personalized onboarding document for every new hire.
@pascal_briod Really interesting! I will be sure to dig into that. We are a fully-remote company so, providing a solid onboarding is especially crucial for us. Thanks!
I'm so glad you asked this question, because @alexandra_sunderland (Engineering Manager at Fellow.app) wrote a great article about this â¤ď¸
https://fellow.app/blog/2020/onb...
Here are her tips:
1 Create a checklist with goals for the first week
2 Introduce them to the team
3 Set up your first 1-on-1 ASAP
4 Give them the unwritten info theyâd only be getting from in-person interactions
5 Set them up with a buddy
6 Help out with their home office setup
7 Ask new employees for feedback about the onboarding process
@alexandra_sunderland @manuelabarcenas Great answer! Thanks both of you for the valuable feedback :) I'm ready to get started now. đ "Take a big sip of coffee & roll up my sleeves"
Hey @bujold19. Great question. As a founder and the founder of an employee onboarding company - I can't say enough about how important it is. The way I think about onboarding is exactly how you would imagine your favourite airline check-in experience to be - delightful, surprising, informative, reassuring and helpful.
- Start your onboarding as soon as you've extended your offer. This is very important as it shows the new hire that you are the company that cares even before they start. It also ensures that you stay top of mind, in case they are still looking for jobs
- Introduce them to their buddy or manager before Day 1. This helps break the ice and when they actually join the company they feel like they are part of the crew. It also makes your team take more ownership of the onboarding process as opposed to it being one persons job
- Get the paperwork out of the way and ensure that they have to do the none of the paperwork twice. Onboarding tools like ours Tydy help them complete the paperwork digitially and make sure all that data is prefilled in the PDFs, and other systems of record so no one from your team has to focus on data entry.
- To make sure they are delighted, focus on sharing content that is delightful to them - like sharing the benefits as a quick bite-sized infographics or Instagram stories so even the most boring content is interesting (we do this on Tydy)
There's definitely a lot more you can do - but this is a good start.
These are all badass suggestions, one thing I like to add. I put someone in charge of a new hire, like a first 2-3 week helper who allows them to adjust and provides support and guidance through the whole process.
It takes work off your shoulders as a founder and allows new hires to feel more comfortable
@bujold19 Hi Gabriel, great topic!
And youâre absolutely right. Onboarding new hires is key to setting up your team for success.
When I had the opportunity to design the onboarding process for my team, I made sure it's as enticing, educational, productive, and inspiring as possible.
Hereâs the welcome kit I share to new hires. It sets principles, how we work, and a detailed agenda for the first weeks.
Hope it helps!
5 Employee onboarding tips and tricks (https://blog.announcebot.in/empl...) - This article will help you welcome your new hires in a way that sets them up for success from day one.
Hello Gabriel, hope to find you well. Please take a look at boostio.ai. I am happy to make a call and show you a demo and more details. Feedback is also welcome. Trying to build something useful here.