We talk a lot about the importance of an efficient hiring process, but what happens after you have made your decision? It’s estimated that new employees actually cost you money for around 3 months before they start contributing to the business in a way that generates revenue. This is because you have to get them set up and train them before they can start meeting all of the requirements of their job and actually boosting your business.
This is why your onboarding process is so vital and you should invest the same amount of resources that you do in your hiring process. The faster you can get your new employee working at full capacity, the more profitable your business will be, so you can’t afford to take any chances. If you haven’t looked at your onboarding process for a while, you should consider implementing these simple changes to boost efficiency.
Send Out Your Employee Handbook With The Offer
Your employee handbook is a valuable asset for a new employee. It contains all of the information they need about the business, including all of the rules and guidelines about conduct, the business processes they need to familiarize themselves with, and general information about the company culture. Everybody goes through an adjustment period when they start a new job but the employee handbook can help to make things easier because they already know what to expect. If you don’t already have one, you can use this employee handbook template to create one. Send your handbook as an attachment when you send them the formal offer email and invite them to read it before they arrive for their first day. They’re not going to remember everything right away and you will still need to go through things again but the onboarding process will be a lot faster if they have the chance to familiarize themselves with some things before they start.
Test Their Knowledge And Skills
So many companies dive straight into training and work through a set training program with new hires. But if they already know half of the stuff you are showing them, you’re wasting time and, more importantly, costing yourself money. That’s why you should always start by testing their skills. Look back over your notes from interviews so you can see what their strongest areas are and then give them tests on the different areas of the job and the skills that are required. Once you have a clear idea of what they already know and where the skills gaps are, you can focus on those areas and avoid wasting time with things they already know.
Create A Customized Training Plan
You might think that you’re saving time by creating a standardized training plan for all new employees, but it actually results in a lot of wasted time and it’s less efficient. Testing their knowledge and deciding what you do and don’t need to cover is a great start when creating a customized plan and it helps save a lot of time. But you should also consider things like the age of the employee and how they like to work. If you’re onboarding millennials, for example, you should take a different approach to what you would when onboarding older people. Relationship building is particularly important when onboarding millennials and they often prefer to be self-sufficient and learn as they go, rather than having somebody to tell them everything. It’s a good idea to ask your new hire what kind of training they would prefer so you can create a plan that is more efficient.
Assign A Mentor And Use Job Shadowing
They say the best way to learn to swim is to jump in at the deep end. That concept applies to workplace training, which is why mentors and job shadowing are so effective. If you sit somebody down in a room and give them a Powerpoint presentation about how to use the computer systems and how to follow business processes, they will take some of it in but by the time they actually get to grips with it, they will have forgotten a lot of it. It’s far more effective if you teach them the fundamentals and then get them to shadow somebody so they can see the theory put into practice. Real-world examples are a better teaching method and the new employee can ask questions of their mentor. This is also a good way to help them build relationships with the team right away, which is an important part of onboarding.
