(Not So) Fun fact: According to a Gallup survey, nearly 88 % of businesses struggle to onboard new employees.
Whereas, companies with good onboarding processes, enhance new hire retention by 82% and productivity by 70 %.
In other words, a strong onboarding process leads to retaining employees in the long run.
When it comes to hiring new employees, providing an inclusive onboarding experience is a crucial component. The figures are concerning, particularly for businesses that have not invested in onboarding and training.
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Where We Typically Go Wrong…
An inclusive workplace is one in which employees are involved with their work and their team, and where everyone in the room feels comfortable expressing themselves and is not hesitant to speak out about challenging subjects.
Sadly, despite popular belief, not many workplaces are like this.
There are three main reasons why companies fail to onboard new employees:
1. Overburdening employees
We get it. You’re thrilled to have new hires and are working hard to get them up to speed as quickly as possible. Most onboarding programs, on the other hand, strive to offer too much knowledge in too little time. Onboarding is focused primarily on processes and forms, rather than the employee experience to make employees feel valued as part of the organization.
2. Communication exhaustion
Your new employee is trying to process all of the written and verbal communication. But, it becomes too much to consume so much in such a short amount of time. There’s a lot to learn and share, and it’s so simple to click and transmit documents digitally, that all departments bombard the newcomer with yet more information.
3.Inconsistent Implementation
Some employees may be working in the office, while others may be working from home. For instance, an employee in a small sales office onboarded by the HR business partner will most likely have a totally different experience than an employee at corporate headquarters onboarded by professionals from each HR division. Furthermore, remote employees may be less informed about essential policies and interventions, which may have an impact on long-term retention and short-term productivity.
So, how does a fast-growing software development company (like ProofHub) that simultaneously wants to maximize revenue, approach onboarding?
How to create an inclusive onboarding experience?
From the administrative level to the team and individual levels, there are various strategies to make your onboarding process inclusive. Here are a few ideas for making employees feel like they belong at your organization from the start.
Here are some ways for making your new hires feel welcome from day one:
#1. Reflect On The Current Onboarding Process
As a company grows, so must its onboarding process!
There must be procedures set to ensure things like what to include in welcome emails before a new team member joins your company, or when to allow a new team member access to the resources they need.
Giving a new recruit a ton of reading material and a few hours to learn about their new company or the equipment they’ll be utilizing isn’t enough! Include enjoyable onboarding activities that allow new hires to showcase their knowledge of new processes, software, and other topics.
💡Tip: Conduct a survey of current employees.
You must first understand the most common onboarding pain points before you can address them, so let the people speak!
The calendar we use here helps us examine how meetings are spaced out with ample time between them to allow us to explore, begin projects, and, most importantly, breathe.
See all events, tasks, and milestones across all projects in bird’s eye view without having to jump through projects. Sign up & Start your free trial today!
#2. Inform new hires that inclusiveness is important
By highlighting inclusion and diversity during the onboarding process, new hires can easily feel included. By demonstrating your organization’s dedication to inclusion, such as through a Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) onboarding session, you may communicate to new hires how valuable your organization finds their unique qualities.
“An inclusive onboarding experience is similar to adding a player to your musical chairs game: You can’t add a new player without pausing the music and adding a chair. Slow down, make modifications, and include your new hire if you want to create a meaningful experience.”Additionally, we advise sharing any resources you may have that detail how to contribute to making your workplace more inclusive. on how you can become involved in making your workplace more inclusive, including information on the resources accessible to all employees, resources for minorities, and resources for supporters.
#3. Plan get-to-know-you meetings
Not all hires are extroverts!
Employees who received little to no one-on-one time with their manager were more likely to be disengaged, according to a Microsoft Workplace Analytics study.
I’m sure that’s not what you want.
When you’re working with a large number of new people at once, it can be difficult to adjust to a new position and culture—especially when you’re trying to meet your new coworkers remotely!
It’s where a one-on-one meeting allows you to get to know the colleagues you’ll be working with while also not feeling overwhelmed.
At ProofHub, one of the onboarding tasks is to just set up quick 1:1s to say hello and ask a few questions.
Being assigned to 1:1 conversations with team members (whether in-house or remotely) turns out to be the ideal warm-up for diving into true teamwork. New hires have a greater awareness of each other’s personalities, communication styles, and duties, which puts them in the greatest possible position to start engaging.
#4. Prioritize company education
People must first understand the business in order to be an asset to it.
Recalling my previous onboarding experiences (including virtual onboarding), I felt that I was given a brief slideshow depicting a vision of the company that the CEO had for seasoned stakeholders, rather than a completely new team member. We appreciate hearing about how you started in a garage and walked ten miles a day to get staples, but we also enjoy learning about what makes you the company you are today and what role I have to play to maintain that!
ProofHub always makes sure to keep every employee clear about its policies, working culture, and other important activities. Recently, we did an exercise by asking new employees while onboarding about their queries regarding using the tool. Check top questions asked by new ProofHub users.
According to a Bamboo HR survey, new workers who have had a positive onboarding experience are 18X more devoted to their firm.
Having known this, it makes sense for other companies to follow ProofHub’s lead and do the same for new hires. As part of our onboarding process, we help them understand the genuine ins and outs of the entire organization so they have insight and motivation for how they must not only perform their responsibilities but also take charge beyond their everyday remote work.
Take a look at the ProofHub platform, which allows you to keep track of project progress, access task information, and communicate with your team all in one place:
Our developers redesigned ProofHub’s onboarding experience by ensuring that the majority of it took place fully within the app, allowing new hires to get to know the product while also learning about its history and future.
Sign up for ProofHub today to learn how to be a part of the team!
#5. Encourage A Culture Of Gratitude
Remember how it felt to be a new kid.
Finally, what makes people feel accepted in a new environment is being around people who are humble, pleasant, and supportive– the workplace is no exception.
“According to Forbes, 96 percent of employees believe that demonstrating empathy is a key method to improve employee retention.”
Inclusivity does not imply assimilating new employees into an existing organizational culture. Rather, it broadens the culture to include the new ideas your new recruit will bring. That’s why it’s critical to collaborate with your current team to ensure a smooth transition for your new hire, and empathy is a huge part of that.
We want to know how our recent hires feel:
- What matters to them in their first few weeks at the company?
- What are their concerns?
- Are they enthusiastic?
- Are they perplexed?
- What challenges do they see?
- What do they think is true about their position in the company?
“Small Acts of Kindness” was one of ProofHub’s key beliefs as a company, and the company offered concrete examples of how it displayed this to its customers, workers, and the rest of the world. It was fantastic to see it in theory, but it quickly became apparent to me how welcoming managers and coworkers were to new hires during their onboarding process.
How ProofHub makes the onboarding process simple and all-inclusive
Yes, we may be a little biased, but ProofHub is a truly useful tool for onboarding new employees.
With ProofHub, you can create a collaborative onboarding process that will help more of your new hires become productive faster. Its workflows help lay out the procedures involved in interviewing and recruiting, inform all parties involved of new information and actions to take, and enable comments and task delegation at every stage.
Additionally, the solution assists HR professionals in automating repetitive tasks and ensuring reliable team coordination.
Let’s look at some of the features that assist HR professionals and project managers providing new employees a smooth onboarding experience:
- User Dashboard. It provides you with an overview of your present work by listing tasks, future occasions, and ongoing projects.
- Task management: With ProofHub, you can assign, prioritize, and keep track of project tasks so that new hires are aware of which ones need to be finished first. The tool also offers you a variety of views, such as a List view, a Board view, and a Timeline view.
- File Storing & Sharing: You can share files among teams and store them in a single location.
- Direct messaging: Using its Chat feature, you can message users directly while keeping your interaction private.
- Calendar: Send new hires automated reminders about current pending and impending work. It helps them know what they must do.
- Reports: As a hiring manager, you have access to progress reports for each employee, which can assist you in making improvements to the process.
- Stickies: Stickies are useful when you need to scribble down information, such as a reminder for a meeting with a new hire.
Make ProofHub a part of your onboarding program and connect with your new employees instantly. Book a demo.
In Conclusion
It’s all about first impressions. Onboarding is a critical time for new workers. It’s also a natural place to start if your organization has made diversity, equality, and inclusion a focus moving ahead.
New employees are already worried about whether they made the appropriate job choice and whether they’ll be able to make friends at work. Help alleviate such concerns by creating an inclusive onboarding experience where diversity is not just welcomed, but embraced.
