Step 1: Audit your existing onboarding program

Most organizations onboard new hires, in one way or another. Whether your existing set-up is an informal series of welcome rituals or a more complex set of checklists and processes, it’s important to get to grips with what’s currently in place before you can move forward.

A great way to develop an overview of your live onboarding practices is to map your existing assets to an onboarding checklist. This way you can see what you have, and what you might be missing as part of a standard onboarding program.

We’re looking for things like:

Established new hire rituals like welcome drinks or first-day office tours

Checklists for HR or Managers on how to manage the new hire processes

Formalised meetings, training or learning platforms dedicated to new joiners

Pre-start emails that are regularly sent to new hires in preparation for their arrival

Equipment lists set up to cater for a new hires employment needs (laptop, key card etc)

Once you’ve brought together all of your existing onboarding elements, it’s time to sort them into three different categories; Keep, Upgrade and Delete. Keep anything that is already working, Upgrade anything that has potential but isn’t performing as best it can, and Delete anything that’s holding you back.

Step 2: Map your new onboarding program

Once you’ve put all of your existing onboarding plans under the microscope and made some tough decisions, you’re ready to start mapping your new onboarding program.

The best way to tackle this is to align different new hire activities to onboarding milestones across the new hire timeline.

There are seven key new hire milestone moments that span the entire new hire lifecycle from preboarding (before your new hire lands on day 1) to basic productivity (around the three-month mark) to full integration (12 months).

Here are some examples of the types of activities you should be looking to deliver at the different milestone moments:

Before they start (preboarding)

Here you want to provide content and activities that ease your new hires' fears and prepare them emotionally (and legally) to join your organization:

Share an office plan beforehand - extra points for a 3D video!

Prepare their email and IT access

Send an “ambassador pack” with their business cards and some other goodies

Day 1

The first day is all about making a killer first impression. You want to wow your newest recruit with a truly special day that balances experience and information:

Leave a welcome note/sign/balloon and company swag at their desk

Assign a buddy for the day to show them around the office

Provide a cheat-sheet of contact information for all their team members

Week 1

Your recruit’s first week needs to prioritize the human connection. Time with their colleagues and manager/s is a must to help them find their footing in these early days on the job:

Set up an informal goal-setting meeting with your new hires manager

Hold an icebreaker team-building session with your new hire's team

Celebrate your newbies first week with a celebratory morning tea

Month 1

A new hire’s first month is a great time to be checking in on your new hire to ensure they’re continuing to have a good experience with your organization. It’s also the time when you want to start challenging your new hire a little more:

Hold an informal, two-way performance review

Invite new hires to work for a day or two from another office location to help them start building up their wider company network

Month 3

By month three, your new hire isn’t feeling all that new any longer, but there’s still a lot to do to get them ramped up and ready for a long, fruitful career with your organization:

Schedule a comprehensive review of the achievements and milestones from the last 3 months

Collect feedback on your new hire’s onboarding experience for future improvements.

Month 6

Half a year in and your new hire is close to an organizational expert. But don’t stop yet, there are still a few more moments for you to make the very most out of their onboarding experience:

Set up a senior management conversation where your new hire has the opportunity to speak with the CEO, bringing their ideas to the table outside of any usual hierarchy

1 Year

You’ve made it! The 1-year mark is when you can finally look back and consider your not-so-new-hire, fully integrated. Just a couple of housekeeping activities to wrap up:

Look over performance milestones past and future and set new records

If your superstar employee has already been promoted, it’s time to crossboard them for even greater success!

As you map your proposed onboarding activities across the new hire timeline, remember to consider the 6 C’s of onboarding from earlier. Each activity you plan should align with at least one of those pillars to ensure you’re delivering a journey that delivers results.

Step 3: Get buy-in from onboarding stakeholders

As with any major process overhaul, getting buy-in from organizational stakeholders is key to the success of your project. Onboarding is no exception to this rule, so it’s time we looped in the relevant people.

There are 3 main groups of onboarding stakeholders you’ll need to seek support from to get your new hire program over the line.

Managers

So much of the day-to-day delivery of the onboarding process falls to managers. And aside from the new hires, they are the ones with the most to gain from a successful program. Getting your managers onside early, understanding their needs and developing an onboarding program that solves key problems and saves them time will make your MVP in their book for years to come.

Recent Hires

Recent hires are your window into what is working and what is lacking. Having recent, first-hand knowledge of your existing practices, they are an excellent source of ideas and feedback that can help you develop an onboarding program that gives new hires what they actually want.

Senior Management

Your Senior Management team are likely the gatekeepers of the budget & resources needed to make your onboarding program plans come true. Communicating with them early about the scope and direction of your project will give them the confidence they need to support your project.

Step 4: Choose your digital onboarding tool

With support from your onboarding stakeholders in the bag and resources and budget secured, it’s time to choose a digital onboarding tool that best suits your needs.

Choosing the right tool can make or break your onboarding program. First of all, you need to decide if you need a fully-fledged purpose-built solution, or if a more general tool will suffice.

If your organization has fewer than 50 employees, and you’re not planning on hiring more than a handful of newbies in the next 12 months, a bespoke digital onboarding tool is likely more than you need right now. A better fit may be using other tools, like Slack, to create a semi-automated onboarding workflow that eases some of the burdens for HR and managers.

If you’re a bigger organization that’s hiring regularly, a purpose-built tool is a no-brainer. If this is you, there are a few things you want to be on the lookout for in a digital onboarding platform:

Integration

A tool that integrates with your existing HR tools is always going to make for a more seamless experience for both HR and new hires alike.

Reporting

The ability to report on the success of your onboarding journey is crucial, how else will you know if your investment is paying off?

Customization

A personalized, branded experience will feel more unique to a new hire and make them feel more connected to your organization.

Self-service

New hires need to be able to access your onboarding program when they want, where they want and how they want. That means cloud-based, mobile-friendly and easy to use.

In-app Content Creation

You don’t want to have to use another tool to create surveys, infographics and articles for new hires. Choosing a tool that has these functionalities built-in will make life for HR a lot easier.

Task & email automation

The ability to automate tasks and email prompts for both managers and new hires will go a long way in streaming your onboarding platform, ensuring things don’t slip through the cracks.

If you find a tool that ticks all of these boxes, then you’re well on your way to launching your brand-new onboarding journey!

Step 5: Time to implement your onboarding journey

This step is a little more up in the air, depending on what tool you have chosen to deliver your onboarding journey.

If you are part of a smaller organization using something like Slack to coordinate your onboarding, we’d recommend taking a few weeks to set up your different onboarding elements, testing them with two or three colleagues of differing tech abilities. This way you can ensure your new set-up works for all people.

If you’re working with a purpose-built tool, you’ll likely have a dedicated customer success team helping you with your every onboarding move.

At TalentBridgeAi, our team works closely with you to ensure your onboarding journey is structured, seamless, and fully integrated into your organization’s existing HR setup. You can rely on our extensive industry experience to transform your paper processes into a digital masterstroke that will delight new hires and impress managers.