Some may say that finding the perfect hire for your business is the most important part of the entire process. However, this accolade belongs to ensuring that the new hire successfully goes on to build relationships with team members.
You may be wondering how they do this. The answer? Completing the onboarding process and understanding what the company truly stands for.
Getting off on the right foot with employees is a great way of guaranteeing a seamless onboarding process within your small business. Not only does it help to reduce the rate of employee turnover but it also sets them up for success on just about every occasion.
If your employees are not fully trained or don’t understand the visions, values, or goals of the company, there’s a huge chance you aren’t providing the best overall customer experience.
You can use certain types of human resource onboarding software to help your new employee have a seamless transition to work life. Yet there are a couple of other things you can do to speed along this process.
Here are the 5 best practices for your small business onboarding process.
1. Prepare Yourself For New Employees
Preparing things in advance is a crucial step in the success of the onboarding process before the employee takes a single step inside the property. Simply put, everything they need to begin their first day (or week) should be waiting for them as they arrive!
You should then consider introducing the employee to the rest of the team. This includes everyone in all of the departments within the business – down to the very last individual. Making time to introduce the new team member allows the employee to feel welcome to the team.
The more comfortable they are with their colleagues, the better their productivity levels will be!
Your small business onboarding process must also feature relevant documentation for the new team member to browse through. To begin with, they must have a copy of the employee handbook on hand. This document should include the following information:
- General HR policies
- Sick days
- Dress code
- Time off
- A welcome note
- Letter of employment
- Computer log-in details (if necessary)
Give them an official guide and schedule for their first week in the company that outlines any training they must do and highlights your expectations of them during this introductory period.
2. Create A Comprehensive Training Program
Another brilliant practice to incorporate into your business onboarding process is to create a comprehensive training program for new employees.
This should outline every single bit of information that an employee must know to efficiently and effectively complete their job duties. It will also highlight the main responsibilities.
It can be extremely frustrating for employees to be spending their first few days of work filling out paperwork and undertaking training programs. But this will give them all of the essential tools they need to carry out the job properly.
Training should be autonomous. In layman’s terms, this type of training should be recorded to free up staff and allow them to shift their focus to more important tasks within the business like resolving customer queries or complaints.
A great way to show newer employees the ropes is to allow them to shadow other more experienced individuals working within the business.
You could even set aside a team of more experienced employees to help with the training and development of new hires. These individuals can carry out the job more thoroughly and will ensure that the new team members are fully trained.
3. Clarify Company Culture, Vision, and Values
Helping your employee to understand the vision and culture of your company from the very first day is a critical step. Always take your time with any core business explanations as this will enable the employee to fully grasp why each of the values is so important to the business.
Clarifying company culture, vision, and values will also do wonders for a more positive business environment. By focusing on this part of your workforce, you may find it easier to create a stronger sense of community within the company culture.
Make sure to have transparency with your communication. The clearer you are, the more productive the employee is likely to be. Plus, it will be good for the new hire to feel comfortable enough to ask questions and seek clarification.
In addition to feeling more comfortable with other employees, this will also help new hires to fully grasp exactly what the business stands for.
Specifically, it will help the new hires learn about how your small business is operating to achieve set goals. They can then adopt these behaviors and incorporate them into their approach to working.
4. Make Sure They Follow The Rules
Depending on the industry you are working in, your small business might be closely regulated by your local government.
If this applies to your business then you need to ensure your new employees fully understand the legalities, regulations, and rules that govern your business and the specific industry that you are currently operating.
Unfortunately, if your employees do not comply with set rules and regulations, there is a huge chance that you will have to pay hefty fines or maybe even be shut down altogether!
Reading over and clarifying the rules and regulations of the industry your business is in could make the biggest difference of all. Fortunately, there are ways to clarify this and ensure that all employees going through the onboarding process are clued up.
During this process, provide specific compliance instructions so they know what to do and say in certain situations to comply with state and federal laws.
You can also make sure to offer regular training opportunities to employees to ensure their knowledge stays up to date. Refresher training is crucial to new and old employees alike and will constantly keep them aware of any new regulations.
5. Have A Practice Run
To evaluate the effectiveness of the training, you could set up a situation where the recruit can practice all of their newly acquired skills.
Encourage the managers and heads of departments to make phone calls and have meetings with new employees. It will help the new hires to feel more comfortable within the business and might even get them into the swing of things quicker and more efficiently.
You can begin by conducting a mock internal call with another member of staff to help the new employee to understand and then clarify everything they have learned during this process.
These tests might include procedures for simple everyday tasks or even for customer interaction. If the new hire is successful during this part of the onboarding process then it shows you have correctly done your job. If they aren’t, it will highlight areas for improvement and things that must be worked on for a second time.
Make sure to ask for feedback from new employees to check whether anything needs to be taken away, added, or re-clarified so their training and development program is as seamless and detailed as possible. You can explain things in more detail if necessary.
Summary
In its simplest form, the success of your small business depends on the effectiveness of your employees.
It may take some time to successfully build a thorough onboarding process for your company. However, the right type of training will likely prove to be an excellent tool for guaranteeing long-term employee retention!
Remember: building personal connections with team members is a core part of team building!
