A How-To Guide for Onboarding: Part I
Onboarding. It is your company’s first impression for any new hire when they walk in (or log in, for our remote hires). Proper onboarding benefits you and your practice, reducing employee turnover, lowering hiring expenses and improving the quality of your staff.
At imatters, we developed a step-by-step guide to help your practice with the onboarding process to ensure you don’t lose out on the benefits.
Step 1: Onboarding Needs a Strong Foundation
Before you can expect to onboard a hire, your company needs an overall plan, a vision. This plan will determine the end goal and develop a timeline and the general implementation of the process.
Your plan should address the following question: “What does an ideal hire look like?” The answer to this question lies in your vision for this specific position. You can expect two applications from the onboarding plan: the new hire will be passionate about your company’s values and fully prepared to complete their duties and responsibilities.
Develop a team.
After you decide what results you’re trying to achieve from the plan, create a team of senior and high-level individuals to help further develop your vision. Ask your team to share information, materials or documents to a share file or platform to build on.
Step 2: Time to Organize, Organize, Organize
After step one, you should have a big mess of documents and information. First, delete or remove any duplicate or redundant information. Then, organize your clutter into distinct categories.
What everyone should know.
This category includes basic, general information such as chain of command, dress code, employee handbook, parking rules and PTO.
Departmental information.
This information should be pretty easy to divide. For example, a front desk employee should be skilled in proper phone etiquette and cash handling, whereas your technician should be versed in checking visual acuities.
How long should it take?
Organize your materials from basic skills to advanced skills. This process will eventually help you for Step 4. Next, consult with a few of your team members and map out the time it should take for new hires to learn these skills.
Step 3: Resources
Once you decide on all the information a new hire should absorb, you need to determine just how exactly they should learn it.
A go-to resource.
If you are a larger practice, developing a learning management system, or LMS, is one of the best ways for your hire to learn. You can create classes from this system for your hire to take.
If you are a smaller business or entity, books, manuals and 1-to-1 training can also help teach your new hire the skills and concepts necessary to succeed.
Minimal resources? Don’t worry! Youtube has plenty of how-to training videos. However, be sure to vet these materials before showing them to your hires.
Learn more about onboarding new employees in Part II.
imatters is your trusted hiring solution. Do you need more immediate assistance on onboarding and hiring? Schedule a consultation today and learn more about what imatters can do for you.