Team Member Experience Path
Stage 3: Orientation & Onboarding
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Click here to view and download the
Team Member Experience Path Overview.
Click here to view and download
an Orientation & Onboarding Guide Template.
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“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” – Will Rogers
After recruiting, interviewing and finally hiring your ideal candidate, the stakes are higher than ever to provide your newest Team Member with a road map to their first year. You might be thinking, did they just say the first year? Consider this, if an individual is hired on February 1, your new Team Member will have no frame of reference for your organization’s business cycle, traditions, and the expectations of their role for the months of December and January.
An effective Orientation and Onboarding Process sets your Team Member up for success and is a reflection of your culture and organizational disciplines. We have found the value of the Orientation and Onboarding process is overlooked as an opportunity to meaningfully welcome, engage, and integrate your newest hire. In our experience, a new Team Member receives an hour or two of day one introductions, a brief informational meeting with the Human Resource Team and are then shown their workspace and expected to jump in.
Beyond the emergency contact and direct deposit forms, enrollment documents, and the password to their laptop, there is a vast amount of historical, institutional, and cultural knowledge waiting to be downloaded to your new Team Member. A quick Google search and you will find sobering statistics around onboarding like these from Sapling:
Effective onboarding improves Team Member retention by 82%
A mere 12% of Team Members strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding new employees.
Most organizations only focus on week 1 of onboarding
Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.” How can we provide Team Members with a meaningful and impactful onboarding experience that will lead them to the highest and best use of their skill set and to a place where they are positively impacting their co-workers, teams, and the organization? A plan. We recommend planning, mapping, and organizing a minimum of two weeks of Orientation and Onboarding. In larger organizations where multiple introductions, tours of facilities, learning and listening tours, and/or client connections need to be made the Orientation and Onboarding process may take up to four to six weeks.
Whether your organization uses a robust software tool, or hard copy paper guide, we recommend mapping out your plan and focusing on two primary areas, 1) Organizational Overview and 2) Role Overview. For this month’s tool, we are sharing a template of a basic Orientation and Onboarding Guide outlining the two areas. We’ll cover Training and the longer-term Training Phase and how they are integrated with the Orientation and Onboarding Process in next month’s Tool of the Month. In the meantime, this month’s tool is a good place to start with a new Team Member and we encourage you to partner with your organization’s HR Leader for additional information and resources to further develop the guide.
Orientation and Onboarding is a vital and critical pathway to setting Team Members up for success and a fantastic opportunity to put your organization’s best foot forward. Do all you can to make certain you know where you are going so you can help everyone else get there!
RESOURCE
Sapling
Sapling is a People Operations platform that manages everything from onboarding to offboarding.
Enroll for the Keystone Professional Course
Tuesday, June 15, 2021
What does it look like to set yourself and others up for success? Join us for a one-day virtual learning experience for Professional and Corporate Support Team Members as we surface the essentials practices, principles and components of an Administrative Professional.
From expanding emotional intelligence to leading up and practicing key support techniques, Professionals will be equipped with the practical knowledge and tools to set up each team member and leader manager for success.
Our next session will be held Tuesday, June 15, 2021 from 8:30-4:30 P.M. For more information or to reserve a seat for yourself and/or a Team Member, email Erica Moe at erica@lauraschanz.com. [Registration fee: $795]