Onboarding process is a defining moment in how well a new colleague starts their journey in your organisation. Onboarding can be time-consuming and a bit hectic, especially if hiring is happening at a fast pace. Not having an efficient process may also quickly cripple people’s schedules.
In my experience, the following practices can bring structure to the onboarding process and give new employees a refreshing, thorough, and professional welcome to their new position.
1️⃣ Step one: define roles
To set a good foundation, let’s first define roles. This will ensure that each step has an owner who can help with any questions from the new employee.
To get started, think of who’s typically involved during the first working days of a new employee. It could be the office manager, someone from HR, and a team lead or manager.
Some companies offer an onboarding mentorship program, pairing new joiners with an “onboarding buddy” – a colleague in their direct team or elsewhere within the organisation. It is a great initiative, and it’s important to get this process right too. Stay tuned to learn more about it in one of my upcoming posts.
2️⃣ Step two: make a checklist
It is convenient to have all onboarding activities in a single list, where each item has a responsible role attached. Make a checklist with all tasks and assign a role to each of them, for example:
Done Activity Responsible --------------------------------------------------------- [] Send employment contract HR officer [] Prepare the desk Office manager [] Provide access to Jira Tech lead [] Set up VPN SysOps engineer
(this table looks best on a bigger screen)
You could also split the list into two blocks: tasks to do before an employee starts (preparation) and everything starting from day one (active onboarding). The advantage of having the Preparation section is that the tasks can be performed in bulk and whenever they best fit into the schedules of people responsible for them.
Here’s how the example above changes:
Done Activity Responsible --------------------------------------------------------- = Preparation [] Send employment contract HR officer [] Prepare the desk Office manager = Day 1 [] Provide access to Jira Tech lead = Day 2 [] Set up VPN SysOps engineer = Week 1 [] First sprint planning Scrum master
(this table looks best on a bigger screen)
3️⃣ Step three: make it a template
The resulting checklist can be used as a template to be copied over and customised — for every new employee based on team, position, and onboarding goals. This is why it is essential to store the template in an editable format so that changes can be quickly adopted anytime.
An additional advantage of a template is that it can be used by another department without them having to start from scratch.
4️⃣ Step four: ask for feedback (important ⚠️)
After a week or two, ask your new colleague for some feedback regarding their onboarding experience. Use this insight for modifications and improvements to the checklist as well as your overall onboarding process. This way, your onboarding process will keep improving itself at a relatively low cost.
✅ Summary
These simple, easy-to-implement steps will improve the structure and efficiency of the onboarding process. Don’t be afraid to create, experiment, and test new ways to set up your process. The goal of complete efficiency and seamless onboarding across all segments of your organisation is achievable.
P.S. Did you know that more than 20% of companies have no onboarding in their software teams at all? Check out the insights of the 2020 Developer survey by StackOverflow, the website many developers visit daily, here: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey
If you are considering hiring a recruiter for your team, check out this post to learn how to make this cooperation more productive: Make your recruiter work for you
