Take a moment and imagine being an employee who has newly accepted a job offer. As you prepare for your new job, many emotions rush over: excitement, relief, nervousness and perhaps even some grief about leaving past beloved colleagues behind. Holistic, intentional design from the “offer accepted” stage to the “90 days in” stage is important to creating an intentional, supportive and engaging employee onboarding experience.

Often, onboarding is misunderstood as “orientation,” which is typically a 1-2 day process of forms, compliance tasks and training. According to Training Industry, onboarding is the process in which new employees acquire the knowledge, skills and behaviors they need to become effective contributors of the organization. It is a structured and comprehensive training program that, with the right best practices in place, can foster a positive and welcoming experience for new hires.

In this article, we’ll review three helpful keys to creating a structured onboarding program that builds trust and retains new hires.

1. Bridge the gap between offer acceptance and day one.

According to Gallup, “the transition from candidate to employee should feel like a natural handoff that continues the momentum and fuels the excitement for the new job.” Often, this “handoff” is an overlooked part of the onboarding process, which can be one of the most vulnerable points for the new hire. These employees are moving through a career transition, even if they are coming into your organization from a similar role or background. This transition can bring about many emotions for new hires, from first-day jitters to the feeling of closing one chapter of work, relationships with former colleagues and familiar company culture and norms, to begin a new one.

The moment a new hire accepts an offer, they’re embarking on a new career path. This is a key opportunity to align specific activities to reinforce the new hires’ decision to join the organization, feel welcomed and create an opening for getting any new job questions answered.

A welcome gift, emails from future teammates, and a casual lunch or quick check-in with the hiring manager before their first day can send the message of care and a feeling of belonging before their first day on the job.

2. Automate what you can.

When a new hire joins a company there are many tasks, forms, meetings, documents for review, compliance and company culture resources that can be a lot to manage. Learning technology can help implement learning modules and automate onboarding tasks. Most tools can integrate with a payroll, training and benefits platform, making the process more streamlined. Onboarding tasks can be distributed to the appropriate stakeholders, for example, setting up a reminder to the hiring manager to send out a “new hire announcement” to the team. Adding tasks to assign the new hire, like reviewing company collateral such as training videos, or the handbook can easily automate an existing checklist.

3. The 3 P’s of a thoughtful onboarding plan.

Research from Gallup claims that only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job onboarding new employees. This failure gets in the way of the formation of an emotional bond between the new hire and the company — a connection that can make or break retention”. The most effective way to build a connection is to integrate the three P’s into your onboarding planning: establishing purpose, defining pursuits and building partnerships. Together, these keys can work to make a new hire feel welcomed.

• Purpose: Review company mission, vision and values and then connect the dots with new hires. The new hire should ideally walk away with a clear sense of the company’s culture and code of conduct, along with a sense of purpose toward how they can contribute to business success.
• Plan: Clarify and review job expectations, targets and goals. Clarifying expectations and sharing a learning plan that articulates L&D initiatives, such as completion of formal training, reviewing process documents and/or meeting with key stakeholders. Clearly stated goals can help increase achievement on the job.
• Partnerships: Identify appropriate stakeholders for relationship building. Becoming an effective part of the team involves more than just learning the job. An effective onboarding plan can integrate structured and unstructured opportunities for the new employee to build peer connections. According to Harvard Business Review, relationship building early in the onboarding process has a significant impact on the new hire’s decision to stay with an organization.

Moving Forward

Delivering engaging and structured onboarding can help new hires get started on the right foot. Bridging the gap between offer acceptance and day one can help mitigate first day jitters and establish a sense of belonging early on. Meeting with stakeholders and building relationships inside the company can also contribute to a sense of belonging and purpose. The three P’s can help learning leaders as they structure onboarding by remembering to provide purpose, a plan and partnerships to enhance this much-needed experience.

Onboarding is not a one-time event, but rather an ongoing process of continuous coaching, mentorship and L&D opportunities at each state of the employee lifecycle to reach their fullest potential.