10 Hidden Benefits of Perfecting Your Onboarding Process (Part 1)
When it comes to onboarding, most people think about training materials, introducing new hires to the rest of the department, or seemingly-endless paperwork. If this is the only thing you as an employer or you as an employee gain from onboarding, you're truly missing out!
Onboarding is not merely the act of teaching someone how to do their job. Yes, new team members need to learn your systems, processes, and their responsibilities but employers can learn a lot about the state of their company, team, and culture by leveraging the onboarding process to their advantage. Here are 5 hidden benefits of perfecting the onboarding process.
Improve your existing systems Before a new hire begins their onboarding experience at your company, take the opportunity to analyze the processes and responsibilities that your new team member will undertake. Ask questions like, "why do we do it this way?" and "is this the best or most efficient way to do this?" As you prepare the training materials for a new hire, make sure someone on your team evaluates them and suggests any improvements/tweaks to the system along the way.
Strengthen and expand your current team's skills, knowledge, and mastery of their department and beyond Onboarding is a team effort! By calling on your team to help with a new employee's onboarding experience, you are allowing the people in the trenches—who are closer to the day to day activities than you might be—make suggestions for improvements, work as a team, learn new skills, and develop individuals by allowing them to take on more of a leadership role.
Increase employee retention If you want your team to stay with you for the long haul and act as loyal partners as your company thrives, you'll want to create an environment in which they are comfortable and set up for success. Onboarding is one of the first impressions you make with a new employee. Wouldn't you rather start off with clear expectations and a clear line of communication that sets the pace and tone for an employee's tenure?
Humble yourself through a reality check Even if you're not the one performing every task at your company, review any training materials several weeks before a new hire begins. This allows you to stay up to date with the processes throughout your company. It can also give you a newfound appreciation for your team. Remember that people are paramount and what you ask of them can be overlooked. In other words, the higher up the org chart you are, the greater the risk of being out of touch with the day to day operations. Be humble and realize that what the people you work with do to make the company run efficiently is rarely easy.
Analyze the importance of specific roles Preparing onboarding materials gives you the opportunity to dive into the importance of a specific role, task, and department. Does it make sense to reallocate responsibilities? Have you been eager to move reporting tasks to a different team member? This is your opportunity to reevaluate the tasks associated with specific jobs. (It's best to do this during the recruitment phase but the curtains come off more so during the onboarding prep).
Stay tuned for part two of the 10 Hidden Benefits of Perfecting Your Onboarding Process. I hope these first five gave you a platform to ponder your current onboarding process.
Read part 2 here: https://www.streamlinedscaling.com/blog/10-hidden-benefits-to-perfecting-your-onboarding-process-part-2
Image by Clayton Cardinalli on Unsplash