What is Onboarding?
Onboarding is the process of introducing and integrating new employees into an organization.
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Understanding Onboarding
From the first moment an employee starts at an organization after signing their offer letter, they have begun a crucial process known as onboarding. This process, more than just an orientation for new hires, is a pivotal step that introduces them to their role expectations, the people and platforms they’ll be working with, and ensures that all necessary legal information gets sorted.
It typically includes things like:
- Integrating onto any needed collaboration platforms, communication tools, or other services and software
- Completing new hire paperwork such as state and federal new employee forms and signing up for benefits
- Communicating role expectations
- Making needed introductions to teammates and other coworkers
In some organizations, onboarding has evolved into a multi-month process that includes training and ongoing support. Additionally, more companies are turning to virtual or hybrid processes by leveraging and scaling technology to cut costs.
Benefits of Onboarding
Onboarding is not just a step in a new hire’s journey, it's a critical one. It's not technically the first impression someone will have of your organization, but it’s an important early phase to nail in creating a positive candidate experience. Organizations with smooth onboarding processes enjoy a host of benefits, including increased productivity, job satisfaction, retention, and employee team dynamics.
Effective onboarding prepares a hire for their new role and leads to increased productivity, job satisfaction, and retention.
Challenges and Considerations
Onboarding, especially when done well, can be time- and resource-intensive. It's a challenge to create a holistic experience for small businesses due to limited resources and busy staff. Additionally, it can be difficult to create a consistently high-quality process, particularly across departments. Acknowledging these challenges is the first step to overcoming them.
Small businesses may struggle to dedicate the resources necessary for crafting a successful onboarding process.
Best Practices for Small Businesses
Small businesses must prioritize creating a functional and effective onboarding process to adequately integrate new hires into their organization and retain them long after. To do so, they should make a clear and structured process. Use checklists, templates, or digital tools to ensure consistency across new hires. Leverage technology to maintain strong communication and ease the administrative burden on your HR team. Finally, the process should be personalized as much as possible, creating ways for standing employees to meet new ones and for those hires to voice their questions and concerns in a supportive environment.
Small businesses should leverage technology and personalize the onboarding process as much as possible to integrate new hires effectively and consistently.
Onboarding is crucial for integrating new workers into an organization, large or small. When successful, it prepares a hire for their new role and introduces them to the people and systems they’ll work with on the job. Despite the challenges and potentially significant resource demands, small businesses should prioritize effective onboarding. It's not just a process, but a key to creating positive work environments, increased employee satisfaction, and strong team dynamics. This reiteration of its importance can make HR professionals and managers feel inspired and motivated.
About the author
Casey Pontrelli
Casey Pontrelli is a multi-talented professional with a background in content creation, branding, and social media marketing. Whether writing for a newspaper, eCommerce website, B2B startup, or a marketing agency, she has taken her strong background in journalism and turned her focus to SEO and content marketing. She’s written about everything from boutiques to cars to small businesses, and enjoys most when she knows her writing has had an impact. When she’s not writing up a storm or creating attention-grabbing social media posts, Casey enjoys hanging out with her partner and three cats, Eddy, Larry, and Marcus, going on long walks in the Green Belt, and, predictably, reading.
