Why Effective Onboarding Is More Important Than Ever

Meighan Newhouse

Forbes Councils Member

1 Employees need to be immersed in your culture from day one.

How do you immerse employees into your culture? A great way is to share with them the company’s vision, mission and core values. When an employee understands the purpose behind the company (vision), how the company plans to fulfill that purpose (mission), and the guiding set of beliefs and behaviors that will help the company achieve its purpose (core values), the employee can align with their own beliefs and behaviors and see how they not only align with the values, but contribute to the company’s overall purpose.

2 Employees need to understand how to be successful in their new role and how success is measured.

From day one, employees should know what a successful employee at your organization does. Find model employees to mentor and speak with the new team members to show them what success looks like at your company. Set short term goals for your new hires to meet; review them, and offer real, applicable feedback on what they did and did not do well in meeting those goals.

Empower new employees with the ability to think independently and offer the best way to make decisions autonomously at your company. This will not only engage your employees from the start, but also contribute to a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.

3 Employees need to be checked in on regularly.

This can and should go well beyond the first year. When an employee first starts, their direct manager should meet with them within the first few days, and with a weekly one-on-one meeting every week after that. Ideally, the new employee will meet with their boss’s boss and everyone else up and down the succession line on some sort of regular cadence (these are sometimes called “skip-levels”).

As mentioned earlier, setting up some sort of buddy or mentor program helps new employees get to know other people in their department or across the company. This helps with culture immersion as well.

Creating a culture of happy, engaged, and inspired employees starts with their onboarding experience. Be sure to plan for a yearlong strategy to immerse your newest team members in your culture.