There are many reasons why employees leave their job. Dissatisfaction with the management, low salary packages, insufficient benefits, politically motivated corporate board, lack of career advancement, and the list goes on and on. As a business owner, it is important to prevent employee discharge because the cost of replacing one could mean huge amounts of money.
Building employee retention and loyalty are critical to the success of your company. Businesses who excelled in the employee onboarding process have experienced increased revenue and higher profit margin. Along with retaining top talents, securing an efficient and effective onboarding solution in place helps scale the growth of your business.
When hiring new employees, take this as a golden opportunity to teach them relevant job skills while building trust within the organization. Below are some of the best employee onboarding tools you could use to foster workforce retention and savor company growth.
Gone are the days of leaving the onboarding process to your HR management or hiring supervisor. The success of this measure depends on the whole company, and not just to one person or department alone. To engage new employees easily, and to introduce them to the corporate world faster and more expedient, form a small team that will represent each department of your company.
The idea is to let hirees learn more about the company, how it works, and who the people are behind it. This cross-departmental team represents a broader aspect of your business, and each team member must carry out specific tasks for a successful onboarding program. To make things manageable, you can subdivide and assign each member a particular job:
It is just normal for new hires to have tons of questions. Inquiries about how the business works, standard departmental procedures, existing templates, customer spiels, and process flowchart clarifications are very common. To save time and effort answering all these inquiries, have a single repository of all information housed in a convenient platform. This way, it makes questioning easy to manage and updatable whenever needed.
To successfully onboard employees, they should be supplied with the right knowledge and pertinent data. And offering an information center equipped with everything they need makes things smooth and easy. It should include a database of HR and company policies, codes and proper conducts, phone list of departments, forms that need to be completed, standard FAQs, and floor plan including emergency protocols. When creating a repository of information, consider:
As the old saying goes, first impression matters. And one of the best employee onboarding tools you could ever offer is to make the first day of your new employees memorable. Keep in mind that if you want to retain the best workers, it is your duty as the owner to engage them right from the start. They should have a good and lasting impression of the company starting from day one to establish rapport and gain trust.
Letting them know that they are very much welcome and treasured as part of the company is the key towards a memorable onboarding experience. You can do simple things that count most, such as making their table neat and tidy or putting a welcome note to help build camaraderie. You could also try other onboarding solutions during the first day like:
To help onboard new employees without making them feel awkward or alienated, keep them busy during the first two weeks of employment. Giving them their schedule ahead of time sets a clear direction on the things they need to accomplish without having too much pressure. Remember that your goal is to keep them busy, not overwhelmed, so create an easy schedule following their own pace.
One management software app you can use is Airtable. This application allows you to organize employee tasks and responsibilities in an easy, flexible, and efficient way. It can be used as a spreadsheet, database, calendar, workflow guide, and much more. Other things you can do to keep them busy include:
Last but not least on these best employee onboarding tools is to let your new people know that their comments and suggestions are heard. Asking what they feel, what makes them unhappy, and soliciting their feedback is all essential to let employees feel that they are important to the company. Aside from the fact that it adds a personal value on their job, you, as the owner, can get to discover certain areas that need improvement – that you may not even know.
Most, if not all, new employees are afraid to give feedback. It makes them feel worried, uncomfortable, and unprepared. But soliciting honest suggestions links the communication gap between you and your people. Likewise, getting their feedback gives you a fresh perspective on how to see things in a different manner. To help new employees open up their insights, you can try to:
Hire a feedback coach to elicit workforce suggestions on a regular basis. Use onboarding tools or apps that specialize in handling the anonymity of employees. Create an online portal where people can secretly answer and submit surveys.