New hires: welcome, orientation and reporting

New hires require a good welcome and orientation program, as well as reporting related to their onboarding and performance.

A well-structured welcome process that makes new employees feel valued plays an important role in the success of the hiring process.

What we have just discussed may sound abstract, so we thought that writing an article explaining how to welcome new hires and how to orient them may be useful to you.

In addition, we will explain how to keep in touch with new hires in the first few weeks.

How to welcome new hires?

The first thing you should pay attention to when it comes to new hires is the welcome message.

Its importance lies in the fact that its nature will set the initial tone of the relationship between the new employee and the company.

Thus, a good welcome message serves several purposes, all of them positive for your project:

• It nurtures the feeling of belonging since the employee feels valued and accepted, motivating, in turn, their commitment.
• It helps the new employee to understand the organizational culture and to align with the company’s values.
• Promotes talent retention since the person hired receives a good initial impression that will reinforce his or her long-term projection in the organization.

Key elements of a successful welcome message

Now that you understand the great relevance of a good welcome message for new hires, we want to share with you some key points to create it:

• The message should be personal and be headed by a greeting that welcomes the person such as “It is a great joy to have you on our team”. It should be enthusiastic and pick up on some of the exchanges from the job interview to personalize it and show that attention has been paid to the exchanges.
• Show yourself approachable and offer your support and collaboration for whatever they may need. Remember that people coming to your company may feel disoriented or intimidated.
• Include an introduction to the team they will be joining, talk about their goals and accomplishments, and explain to the new employee how their skills will be strategic to the success of the department.
• Establish a fluid communication policy based on feedback, in which you make it clear that employees’ opinions, suggestions and recommendations are valued.

New hires orientation: relevant points you need to understand

There are a number of issues you need to consider when orienting new hires, starting with being present when they arrive, whether in person or online.

Welcome Meeting

You must organize a welcome meeting on the first day. Use the occasion to talk about the values you share, and invite the people who will be working with the new employee to participate so that they begin to feel part of the team.

Sharing time

If you want to break the ice of the first day, you can go out to lunch with the new employee, or even, depending on the philosophy and dynamics of the project, do more creative activities such as going for a bike ride.

Availability

When we talk about orientation, availability is implicit. Make your new hires feel safe and secure by offering opportunities for exchange, especially during the first few weeks.

You should keep in mind that being close to your new employees will help you get to know and understand them better.

Quality and personalized information

The transmission of structured and quality information will prevent the person from getting off on the wrong foot and feeling lost.

This is a job that you should do before welcoming them so that they have all the information they need from the very first moment in a sort of personalized employee handbook.

From protocols, best practices, organization charts, communication channels, complete and very detailed explanations of their functions, issues related to their responsibilities to optimize their productivity, tools they will have at their disposal, etc.

It may be interesting to include in this manual a schedule of planned activities.

Accompaniment

A good strategy to encourage the integration of new hires is to pair them with experienced members of staff who will act as mentors and lifeguards in case they need good advice.

Onboarding checklist for new hires

We have already told you how important it is to properly welcome and orient new hires.

So that you don’t forget anything, set up an onboarding checklist in which you collect all the necessary steps to welcome new hires. It will allow you to plan the tasks and organize the activities with time and involving the people who must participate in them.

Keep in mind that one of the premises that you must maintain when creating it is the personalization, for it works around 4 basic axes to offer a good experience, beyond, of course, to treat the pertinent administrative questions:

1. Connect the new employee with his or her boss and colleagues so that he or she feels part of the team and welcomed.
2. Address relevant information about short- and long-term job expectations to reinforce commitment.
3. Work on transmitting the company culture to successfully adapt to the philosophy of your project.
4. Prepare their workplace with the necessary tools to make them feel comfortable.

You should also consider that although the structuring of the welcome process is important, it should also be flexible and leave the possibility of incorporating unplanned tasks that arise according to the employee experience of each person.

All the keys that we have been sharing with you can be included in your onboarding plan, a welcome program that is the last step of recruitment and the first of an enriching relationship between employee and company.

New hires reporting

Another important issue is to implement the necessary metrics to track the performance of new hires. (there are several strategies, such as performance appraisal, which have many advantages when it comes to making a clear and conclusive analysis). The objective is to verify whether they are achieving the planned objectives within the established deadlines. These objectives must be realistic, relevant, achievable and measurable.

Its purpose is to check whether they are achieving the planned objectives within the set deadlines. The starting point here is that these objectives must be realistic, relevant, achievable and measurable.

This type of reporting will help the employee to better understand his job and to detect if he needs any specific training or tool to improve his conditions and performance.

We advise you to complete these metrics with periodic reviews with your boss or manager through meetings that allow you to exchange views on the evolution of work, as well as meetings with your mentor to monitor their integration into the company.

In this context, the performance appraisal should include a feedback mechanism through which new employees can express their opinion and participate in the improvement of processes.

As you have seen throughout this article, the power of effective job onboarding is undeniable. In the same sense, having quality evaluation processes that respect the privacy and rights of your employees is another tool that will foster solid and constructive relationships with them.

At Smowltech we have developed innovative online monitoring tools that will help you improve your teams’ satisfaction and trust: our proctoring plans.

We invite you to discover them first hand by easily requesting a free demo.