A strong and meaningful training program will equip new hires with everything needed to perform in their new roles, and ensure a clear pathway to success is laid out. However, it is also a vital tool for your organization to give an excellent first impression; by selling its ethos, and the vital role the new-starter will play. Doing so will provide much-needed assurance, making new hires feel enthused about joining your organization.
For many, onboarding training starts out enthusiastically with the very best intentions, but this tends to taper off after the first few weeks. To ensure your organization doesn’t get caught by this pitfall, this article has set out six best practices for any onboarding training program that will lay the foundations for your new hires to flourish.
Provide easy signposting
All new hires will come with queries and small issues they need assistance with – this is only natural when starting in a new place. With this in mind, it’s key to signpost them to the right resources to ensure these queries can be answered quickly and easily.
Providing ‘soft’ versions of resources at the click of a button is ideal to empower your new starters to quickly find answers themselves and reflects how they might seek to solve a problem in their day to day lives. Of course, there always needs to be a balance between making information readily available and not overloading people with content.
Targeted information ensures new hires are in receipt of the key headlines of your organization, but prevents them feeling overwhelmed with lengthy strategic and policy documents. The more varied and imaginative your content, the greater its impact will be. Short guides, infographics, and bite-sized videos are all great examples of how to efficiently use the content for maximum impact.
Sell your organization’s ethos
All businesses come with their own special values and understanding this is part of introducing new-starters to an organization’s working practices, and the rationale behind these. This can be seen from the tone of policy documents, how staff work and use their office space, or how you expect your new hires to prioritize their time. All of this expresses the ethos of your organization and makes employees feel part of the bigger picture.
However, this ethos isn’t usually something that can be set out in a one-pager, or captured neatly in a structure chart; rather, it is learned over time. Your onboarding training is a key tool for exposing your new hires to this as soon as they enter the organization, allowing them to quickly become accustomed to the culture of their new workplace.
Ensuring that big issues are given sufficient attention is key in onboarding best practice. Highlighting issues such as, success in the workplace and valuing customers in the training program will build an important base and mindset that your new hires can easily buy into, and quickly begin to ‘live’ through their day to day work.