Onboarding Today: What’s In, What’s Out, What’s Next!

Onboarding vs Orientation

• Onboarding is not the same thing as orientation.
• Orientation is a part of onboarding. Orientation is a one-time event, typically on a new employee’s first day of work, whereas onboarding is a longer process. 
• Onboarding is “the process of welcoming and integrating new employees into your company and their new role.” 
  • A successful employee onboarding is a continuous process that starts the day that a candidate accepts the job offer, before their first day of work.
  • If onboarding is not done well, a candidate may decide to quit before even showing up to work. They could call and say that they’ve accepted another offer or they’re staying at their current company. 

Corporate Culture and the Onboarding Process

• The human touch is what drives a successful onboarding that makes your employees feel welcomed. 
• Each company has their own specific culture, so there’s no one-size-fits all.
• Every Friday, PerkBox has their new employees push a beer trolley around the office and serve beers to their coworkers. This has been extremely effective for them, and it’s been a great way for employees to meet their new team members. It puts a smile on everybody’s face. This tradition, of course, won’t work for every company. 

Onboarding and HR

• Onboarding is not just HR’s responsibility. Ideally, onboarding is a shared responsibility among the HR, IT, and finance departments, as well as a new employee’s manager and team members, and even the CEO.
• Onboarding is everyone’s job. That being said, it can be helpful to have an HR employee act as an onboarding coordinator. 
• For most companies, the onboarding process is much shorter than it needs to be. Too many companies just focus on a single orientation day, and do no real onboarding. 
• But even companies that do onboarding don’t spend enough time on it, with about two-thirds of hiring managers and HR professionals spending less than one month on onboarding. 
  • About 25% of companies’ onboarding process is just one day. 
  • Another 26% have less than one week of onboarding.
  • 21% take place over the course of a month. 
• Research shows that onboarding should last for a whole year, but only 2% of companies do that. One company that has a long onboarding process is L’Oreal, whose process lasts two years. 
• After having a problem with high employee turnover, they switched to a two-year-long onboarding process, and it has worked wonders for them.

Onboarding Today vs Onboarding in the Past

• A lot has changed with onboarding in the past few years.   
• Onboarding used to just be showing new employees where their desk is and how to use the phone.
• But there’s been a lot of research and change recently, and companies are focusing on onboarding much more than they used to.
• Onboarding should be carefully planned and structured. It can’t be improvised. 
• More and more companies are using technology to help with their onboarding process. 

Today’s Onboarding Process

• Onboarding starts the moment that a candidate accepts the job. A company has to keep them interested and engaged before they even show up to work the first day. 
• The new hire shows up for their first day, which is their orientation day. 
• During their first week, the new hire will need support in their transition into this company. 
• During their first month, a company should help the new employee build relationships, learn about the company, and develop the skills they need to succeed at their new job. 
• The next few months are when a new employee becomes acclimated to the company culture.
• After the first six months, a new employee should be pretty settled into their day-to-day tasks. These first six months are critical, so it’s important to check in with them. 

The Ultimate Onboarding Checklist

• Ms. Zojčeska wrote a blog article for TalentLyft titled, The Ultimate Onboarding Checklist, which serves as a handy way of keeping your onboarding process organized. 
• She created this checklist to help organize her company’s own onboarding process. She uses it to keep herself on track and to remind her not to skip any important steps. 

Examples of Onboarding Best Practices

• Etsy is a great example of high quality onboarding practices. They call it their “bootcamp”, and it’s for any new employees that are hired to lead teams (managers, C-suite level employees, etc.).The goal is to help their new leaders learn about their teams before they even start managing them. 
• Bazaarvoice includes a scavenger hunt in their onboarding process that gets their new hires exposed to all areas of the company and meets their new coworkers. It’s fun, exciting, engaging, and informal. 

Trends In Onboarding

• Digitization and automation: more companies have switched to digital and online onboarding. This has been an especially important trend during COVID.
• Preboarding: starting onboarding as soon as the candidate accepts the job offer. This is important because so many candidates are in high demand, so there’s always a constant risk of candidates accepting offers at other companies. 
• Personalization: taking an employee’s expertise, interests, and preferences into account during their onboarding. This is about making a new hire feel like a full human being. 
• Socialization: building connections between a new hire and current employees. This fosters employee happiness and keeps employees at your company. 

Remote Onboarding  

• Pretty much anything that can be done in-person can be done remotely and online. 
• Remote onboarding may include sending a laptop and other necessary equipment to a new employee, since they can’t come into the office. 
• It can also include check ins and meetings via video calls or Slack channels. 
• Instead of having an in-person welcome meeting with coffee, a company can send a personalized welcome coffee package to their new hire to use while online with the rest of their company. 

Top 7 Onboarding Tools  

• Top 7 Onboarding Tools is another blog article that Ms. Zojčeska wrote for TalentLyft.
• When writing the article, she divided the tools into a few different types. 
• The first type is a checklist. It has the most simple and straightforward onboarding tools. The checklist that she wrote is available for download on TalentLyft’s website for free. 
• Another tool is an onboarding Trello board. Trello has a great interactive onboarding template with everything you need in one place, and it’s free!
• Then there specialized onboarding tools, which are meant to improve the onboarding process. These typically are not free, however.
• You also have integrated tools, which are comprehensive tools that offer all-in-one solutions for your onboarding and hiring processes. TalentLyft is one of these types of softwares.
• Then there are employee 24/7 onboarding chatbots. These help onboard your new employees in a conversational manner. 
• TalentLyft specializes in developing and marketing the kinds of onboarding tools that Ms. Zojčeska wrote about in this article.

TalentLyft  

• TalentLyft is a recruitment software company that makes recruitment easier, faster, and more fun. 
• TalentLyft is the world’s most complete talent acquisition software. 
• They offer everything that employers need to find, attract, recruit, hire, and onboard great candidates. 
• They are currently working on a new onboarding module. 
• Anyone can try it out for free on their website by signing up for a free trial.   
• TalentLyft is located in Croatia, but they work internationally. They have customers in over 30 countries all over the world. 
• They thrive on helping companies with all kinds of HR problems. 

Anja Zojčeska Backstory

• Studied Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution at the Center for Peace Studies, Zagreb.
• Studied Women’s Studies at the Center for Women’s Studies, Zagreb. 
• Master in Sociology with emphasis on scholarly research from the University of Zagreb/Sveuciliste u Zagrebu. 
• She completed four years of training in Gestalt Psychotherapy at the IGW (Institut for Gestalt therapy Wuerzburg). 
• In 2014, Ms. Zojčeska started working as a Public Relations and Social Media Assistant for Grizli komunikacije, a public relations and communications company in Croatia.
• Since then, she’s also worked in communications, content marketing, and human resources for other Croatian companies and a California company. 
• She currently serves as the Human Resources and Employee Happiness Manager and the Head of Marketing for TalentLyft, an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and Recruitment Marketing platform in Croatia.

Contact

• Anja Zojčeska on LinkedIn
• Top 7 Employee Onboarding Tools
• The Ultimate Onboarding Checklist

Visit TalentLyft’s website and try their free trial.Also check on TalentLyft’s blog.