"Well begun is half done."
So said Aristotle, and while he was talking Ancient Greek politics, the same wisdom applies to bringing new team members into a modern workplace.
As an employer, it's critical that you arm any new hire with the information, guidance and support they need to succeed from the very start.
When you offer new team members a high quality employee onboarding experience, it sets everyone up for success. But a half-hearted or just plain bad onboarding strategy can leave a new worker flailing, and put them behind the ball from day one.
The good news: there are well-established best practices that can help your organisation to develop a truly effective employee onboarding process.
In this guide we'll review those best practices, while clarifying the importance of onboarding, the challenges you might face, and the strategies and technologies that can enhance your approach.
The importance of an effective onboarding process
Why is onboarding important? Because it ensures the employee fits in and works hard from day dot.
An effective onboarding process gives a new hire the knowledge, tools and support they need to succeed. The process will methodically work through everything the team member needs to know about your organisation. It will outline what the hire can expect in terms of company culture, it will ensure a smooth introduction to the day-to-day realities of the role, and it will outline any relevant organisational expectations.
The ultimate goal of onboarding is to help a new employee integrate with the team and become a productive member of it. The best way for a new hire to feel valued is to begin generating value themselves. You need to provide the supportive team environment that assists them with this effort.
Onboarding is the warm welcome that every new hire deserves. And the value of this process is made clear in the numbers. According to a recent Gallup study:
Companies with effective onboarding report 70% higher productivity among new hires.
Employees with a positive onboarding experience are 30x more likely to have a strong connection to their workplace.
New hires work better sooner, and are more likely to stay long term, when they enjoy a high quality employee onboarding experience.
Common challenges in onboarding new employees in NZ
Successfully onboarding new employees is no mean feat - if it was easy, everyone would be doing it - but by understanding the challenges you're likely to face, you'll be far better placed to deal with them. A few of the most common include:
Limited resources in small businesses
Small businesses in New Zealand tend to operate with tight budgets and lean teams, which can lead to rushed or informal onboarding. Without a well-established onboarding plan, or dedicated HR personnel to deliver it, new hires may be left without proper training or support.
Lack of structured onboarding programs
In both small and medium-sized enterprises, onboarding is often ad hoc and not guided by a consistent process. This inconsistency can lead to confusion, with a new hire unsure of what they need to be doing, or even who they can seek answers from.
Unclear expectations and role definitions
When job roles aren’t clearly defined from the beginning, new workers are more likely to feel overwhelmed or unsure of where they fit in. Clear responsibilities, task lists and performance indicators are critical for the worker to feel at home and start contributing sooner.
Insufficient training or mentoring
When you give a new employee work without also telling them how to do it, you make them feel unsupported and overwhelmed, and you lower the quality of their output from the get-go. And when mentoring is informal or non-existent, staff are left to figure things out on their own, creating unnecessary early stress and increasing the risk of mistakes.
Lack of cultural integration
Cultural onboarding is an often overlooked but very important process, especially in diverse or remote teams. If new employees don't receive a strong introduction to workplace norms, communication styles or team dynamics, they can struggle to build relationships and fit in.
Delays in access to tools and systems
A common practical issue is a delay in setting up system logins, email accounts, laptops and swipe cards. Not only does this waste valuable time and impact productivity, it also creates a poor first impression, hinting that you aren't fully prepared for the new hire.
Poor feedback loops in the first weeks
Without regular check-ins during the first few weeks, a new employee can feel unsupported or unaware of how they’re tracking. When early issues and concerns go unaddressed, it can lead to disengagement and even early turnover.
Best strategies for engaging onboarding
The good news: all of the issues listed above are easily solved by investing in your onboarding processes.
Let's take a look at a few of the most engaging onboarding strategies, and how you might go about implementing them.
Pre-onboarding communication and preparation
The onboarding process doesn’t begin on day one - it starts as soon as a job offer is accepted. Acceptance should trigger a welcome email that outlines what the new employee can expect from the process, including resources like an employee handbook or an intro video. On the employer side, you should begin setting up tools and logins in readiness for the new hire's first day.
Structured orientation programs
A carefully crafted and clearly documented orientation process ensures that every new employee enjoys the same foundation when starting their new job. Orientation might include an introduction to company culture, values, tools and policies, a guided tour and team meet-and-greet.
Assigning mentors or buddies
By assigning the new hire a mentor or office buddy, they'll never wonder who to direct their (many) questions to. From workflow and process-related questions to where to find the coffee, the new employee will always know who to ask. And this point of contact can also form the conduit to team inclusion, ensuring the worker doesn't feel isolated.
Regular check-ins and feedback sessions
Your onboarding checklist should include frequent touchpoints with the new worker. Daily for the first week, reducing in frequency as time goes on. Initially these might take the form of formal, structured meetings that ensure all the necessary resources and information is being conveyed, but as time goes on they might become more casual - a quick chat on a Friday afternoon to review the week just gone. Both employer and employee must go into these meetings open to giving and receiving feedback.
Leveraging technology in onboarding
Modern onboarding software and digital tools can transform the experience for both employers and new hires. Platforms designed specifically for onboarding make it easy to track the progress of a new hire, collect the necessary documentation, and deliver training modules at the exact right moments.
Onboarding remote employees can present a particularly sticky problem, but technology can help here too. You can deliver virtual onboarding through video calls, digital welcome packs and collaboration tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams.
On the admin side of the equation, digital tools can help you go paperless and automate much of the payroll, contract and documentation work, freeing your team from low value busywork, and letting them focus on higher value, more human tasks.
Measuring the success of onboarding programs
How do you know whether your new, comprehensive, streamlined onboarding system is driving employee engagement and retention?
To understand whether your onboarding program is effective, it’s important to track key performance indicators (KPIs). These might include:
Completion rates for onboarding tasks or training modules
Early performance metrics
New employee retention/turnover data
Monitoring these KPIs can help you to identify areas where new hires may be getting stuck or disengaging from the process. If a certain training module takes longer to complete, or if a large portion of new hires quit in the first week, you can find out the 'why' behind these issues and work to fix them.
Employee feedback is equally valuable. Surveys and informal interviews can offer insight into how new hires feel about the onboarding experience. You can encourage honesty by making surveys anonymous, although this can make it difficult to dig into the responses with follow-up questions.
By combining quantitative data like onboarding completion and employee retention rates with qualitative data from surveys and interviews, you can gain a surprisingly clear idea of the effectiveness of your onboarding efforts, and how they might be improved.
Action plan for HR managers
Ready to create an onboarding process that creates excellent employees? Here's how.
Step-by-step guide for HR managers
Define your objectives: Clarify what successful onboarding looks like to you. It could be represented by worker productivity, retention rates, cultural alignment or any other relevant indicator.
Map the onboarding journey: Outline the key stages of the onboarding process (e.g. preparation, first day, first week, 30/60/90 days), the aims of each stage, and how you plan to achieve those objectives.
Develop content and resources: Create welcome packs, training guides, company handbooks, video introductions and tech setup instructions.
Assign responsibilities: Identify who handles each stage - managers, mentors, the HR or IT departments - and provide them with the necessary training and support.
Implement onboarding tools: Use an onboarding checklist or software to keep the process consistent and to track new hires as they move through it.
Communicate clearly and regularly: Set expectations with new hires and managers in terms of onboarding timelines, and ensure that feedback is gathered at regular intervals (e.g. after day one, week one, month one) to identify knowledge or potential procedural improvements.
Essential onboarding checklist
Establishing best practices for employee onboarding is only half the battle - you then need to actually use them. An easy-to-follow checklist can help.
While the specifics of your onboarding process will depend on the role you're hiring for, the size of your business, and the specifics of your internal operations, the following checklist can serve as inspiration for your own:
Send welcome email and pre-onboarding materials
Set up IT access and equipment
Provide company handbook and policies
Introduce new hire to team and assign a buddy/mentor
Schedule orientation and training sessions
Outline role expectations and performance goals
Set up check-ins and feedback sessions (day one, week one, 30/60/90 days)
Tips for continuous onboarding improvement
In truth, simply following through with your onboarding process isn't quite enough - you should also aim to continually improve your procedures. Some tips for doing so effectively include:
Standardise but personalise: Keep training consistent for each new employee, but allow room to personalise that education to better cater to different roles, personalities and learning styles.
Monitor key metrics: Track training module completion, new hire productivity levels, worker satisfaction and employee turnover to understand the efficacy of your onboarding process.
Create feedback loops: Conduct onboarding surveys at key moments and adjust the process based on the feedback you receive.
Keep it current: Adapt materials to reflect changes to the business, culture, technology or organisational structure.
Employee onboarding best practices: the key to retention
New hires need support to survive and thrive within your organisation. A well-established and constantly enhanced onboarding process provides exactly that, and in the process it helps you to retain the talent that you worked so hard to secure.
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Ready to train, reward and retain your best workers? Get started today.
