New Employee Onboarding Checklist

A Comprehensive Onboarding Process Checklist

After going through the process of recruitment, you'll proceed to employee onboarding. You have put a lot of effort into hiring the best candidate for the position, so you need to make sure that they'll be comfortable enough to stay in your company for a long time. In a recent report, 77% of newly hired employees who went through a formal onboarding process hit their performance goals.

Welcoming your new employees through the onboarding process is one way for them to become familiar with the workplace environment. The onboarding process continues until your new employees have settled down and fully adjusted to their respective teams. Onboarding can be an effective process to improve new hires' productivity and loyalty.

The Onboarding Process for New Employees

Newly hired employees need a few introductions about the company history, values, culture, mission, and goals. An onboarding effectively familiarizes every employee with the company's overview up to details such as their expected daily work environment. The effectiveness of onboarding benefits both new employees and the company overall.

Talk With HR

Set goals at the get-go with your human resource department to keep track of the employee’s progress, performance, and future promotion. The HR team is responsible for helping your employees grow with the company by offering career development opportunities, managing expectations, and keeping an engaging and inclusive company culture. A great onboarding process can be the answer to increase employees' engagement and loyalty in the company.

Meet Members of the Team

Face-to-face interaction with the team members can help your newly hired employees be encouraged that they are important and valued to be part of the company team. Your new employees must meet with their new teams because they need to know their roles, responsibilities, and how they can support and contribute to the organizational goals.

Get Training for the Specific Role

Providing proper tools and training to your new employees is needed to perform their jobs with excellence. A personalized onboarding training can efficiently prepare the new employees for their specific roles, making them valuable contributors to the company.

Training on their specific role through an actual job learning experience and the company-provided knowledge can guide your new hires to have defined roles. Your new employees will be aware of how their roles will fit the team and the organization. An onboarding process will motivate them to stay and remain on the job with their best effort.

Onboarding Assessment

Checking the effectiveness of your onboarding program will let you know if it's working or not. Measuring the standard of the onboarding process can provide insights into what is and isn't working. To assess your company's onboarding program, you may refer to the 4Cs:

• Compliance - an effective onboarding program will make new employees understand the policies, rules, and regulations. Make sure that you'll have scheduled with your employees at 30, 60, and 90 days to compare their responses to assess their experience with your onboarding process.
• Clarification - clear communication with your new employees regarding goals and expectations is essential. You can clarify these things along with the impact of their roles on their company.  
• Culture - providing accurate information about the company, its mission, vision, values, and culture is an effective onboarding process. 
• Connection - having a great relationship with the team members for your new employee is an essential onboarding process. Establishing employees' connections to one another is a great way to build an excellent team.

A Detailed Onboarding Checklist for Your Program

The mission of having an effective onboarding program can be tricky. But don't worry because not all companies have a formal plan for the onboarding process. However, failure to make a formal onboarding process checklist can significantly impact how employees see your company.

1. Pre-Boarding

Taking care of the essential things before the new hire's first day is a must-have on your checklist. 

• A little gesture of sending an email to the new hire with guides and instructions about how to access your employee portal can be your first step.
• Make them review the employee's handbook and provide a timetable for human resource forms completion.
• List the important pieces of information such as when they will report to work, which office they should go to, and if there's an item they must bring to complete HR forms.
• Provide a workstation for the new hires before their arrival. Make sure that it's completely stocked with everything that they'll be needing to begin their first day on the right foot.
• Give them time to be mentally prepared by sending out the itinerary of their first day. In this way, they won't be overwhelmed with the workplace.
• You might also need to send out an email to every employee about the new employees, encouraging them to make the newly hired employees feel welcome and comfortable in the company.

2. First Day

The goal on the first day is to make the new hires feel relaxed. Here are few things that you should include in your onboarding checklist for Day 1. 

• Introduce the company through an orientation. They need to know the history, mission, and values of the organization they've been hired to work to.
• Try to connect them with your existing employees by introducing them, especially to the managers, supervisors, and team members.
• Ensure that the employees are fully aware of the important details of daily activities, including a phone system, parking, bathroom, break rooms, and more.
• Connect them with your HR department to confirm that all HR forms have been filled out and signed. All company policies, rules, and regulations have been reviewed through their handbooks, and any onboarding issues have been appropriately addressed.

3. First Week

After the amazing first day of the new hires, you have to continue your goal. During the first week of the onboarding process, help the new employee get familiarized with your company culture and encourage them to become productive as soon as possible. Here are some things to take note of:

• Have a one-on-one conversation or meeting with your new employees together with their supervisor. The meeting will be the key to clearly outline expectations and short-term goals. In addition to this, you can also get instant feedback from newly hired employees about their opinion on the company and their career goals.
• Make sure that the new employee fully understands the workflows and business processes that directly affect their role.
• Another way to introduce the new hires to key employees of the companies is through informal settings such as lunch outings.

4. First, Third, And Sixth Month

While the process of settling in for your new employee is ongoing, it's still important that you check them from time to time. Giving them enough support by providing training that will improve their work ethics and productivity can significantly impact their performance. Here the things you should focus on with their first few months in the company:

• The company should provide a series of training whether it's for their specific position or a cross-training. Feeding the newly hired employees information and making them knowledgeable enough will make them more beneficial.
• Check your newly hired employee from time to time, getting feedback about their views and opinions about their team members, company policies, rules, and regulations. 
• Monitor their work performance so you'll be able to provide them constructive feedback from time to time.

5. First Annual Review

When your employee finishes up their first year at the company, their onboarding process will conclude with an annual review. The purpose of the first annual review is to make you and your employee look back and make future goals. Here are some things that you should include in your annual review:

• Interview them after a year to get feedback so you can check the effectiveness of your onboarding program
• Review and assess their overall performance and provide them well-documented feedback.
• Provide them a career development plan, and their inputs should be present in the plan. Making a concrete plan focused on their career advancement will encourage them to stay in your organization.

Constantly Develop the Onboarding Program

A comprehensive onboarding process checklist for your onboarding program can be part of your company culture. The purpose of onboarding is to engage your employees in the company culture to exhibit prosperity and growth personally and professionally through your organization. Developing your new employee onboarding checklist is the key to the future success of your employee relations. 

If you are looking for a high-quality system for your HR needs, check out Lanteria. As part of the core HR features, you have the ability to manage onboarding and offboarding employees. Reach out today for a demo!