You’re Remote Onboarding Now: Make Them Want To Stay Using Orientation (Part 5)
ONBOARDING
Yesterday we talked about my past confusion about the difference between Onboarding and Orientation. We described the difference via a couple of definitions and a pie chart:
Onboarding is the process of building engagement from the first contact until the employee becomes established within the organization. This includes - integrating the new employee with the company and its culture and getting them the tools and information needed to become a productive member of the team.
Orientation is a stage of onboarding where new employees are welcomed into the organization, and learn about it and their job responsibilities.
The goal of onboarding is to make the person feel that they want to work in your organization. The goal of orientation is to integrate the new employees into the organization as quickly as possible.
Orientation - First Days of Employment and Ongoing: Make Them Want to Stay!
New staff arrive fresh and excited about embarking on their new adventure. How you prepare for, and then manage the critical early days and hours sets the tone for their experience with your organization.
Some of these are clearly their first days and some are ongoing. Orientation leads seamlessly into ongoing Coaching, Guidance and Support:
Prepare for their arrival by telling other staff, freeing their work space (including computer) from the previous person’s files, etc, having the supplies they’ll need, making a schedule for the first week.
Give them an introduction to the organization. Use scavenger hunts, bingo cards and other ways to get them to learn about the organization in a more fun way than lectures or reading.
Introduce them to co-workers, vendors, supervisors, and other people they’ll be working with.
Provide training on job duties. Some of this will be you and some should be done by a coworker (it doubles as a retention benefit to that coworker by giving them the opportunity to help other people learn).
Review all policies and practices. The employee handbook is a great recruitment and training tool, as long as it’s current and relevant. Use the employee handbook, work process manuals/SOPs, training manuals, and policy and procedure manuals for written reinforcement and as a resource manual.
Provide an overview of benefits and services. Have them read pieces of it and then talk with them to give examples that get them excited about the really great things about working in your organization!
Discuss career/life goals and needs and how the organization can help meet them. Find out early what motivates them so that you can provide positive reinforcement that’s meaningful to them.
Discuss your expectations and those of the organization. Most often when employees leave sooner than you wanted them to, they say things like “I just didn’t understand what was expected of me.”
Provide a tour of all facilities where they’ll be working, which includes vendors and customers, if their job causes them to be in other locations.
Include them in the organization’s activities immediately. It’s those things like employee baseball games, birthday parties and baby showers that make an employee really feel a part of the group and welcome.
Onboarding done remotely or in-person is a whole system process – and it takes everyone in your organization to make it work! Hmmm, maybe it needs to be a line in each job description?
Click here to read the full article written for Association Leadership