Ensure a seamless transition from new hire to employee

New employees need more than just a packet filled with your company handbook and benefits information. A guided, structured onboarding process will help you nurture strong employees from day one and increase your retention rate.

If you’re looking to personalize your onboarding process, this guide will provide you the steps, templates, and checklists to create an exceptional onboarding experience that reflects the culture of your workplace.

 Table of Contents:

1. Make a Great First Impression

2. Pre-Onboarding

3. The First Day

4. The First Week

5. The First Month

6. The First Three Months

7. The First Six Months

A quality onboarding program is a critical point in the talent life cycle. During the interview process, it falls on the candidate to win you over. However, once you extend an employment offer and the candidate has accepted the position, it becomes your job to show them that they’ve made the right choice in choosing to be a part of your organization. From the moment the candidate accepts the position, you should be planning the onboarding process. An effective onboarding program positively impacts employee retention, employee morale, and, in turn, job performance and productivity. If you are new to this, you’re in luck! Dominion has created this guide to help you onboard all your new employees like a pro.

Of course, before Onboarding can begin, your applicant tracking process should be dialed in. Dominion’s Applicant Tracking (ATS) allows hiring managers to easily vet potential candidates, store qualified applicants, and slash the time it takes to hire the right employees. The best part?  Our single source solution saves you even more time if you pair ATS with Onboarding.  Everything flows right into payroll. 

The pre-onboarding process is an introduction to what’s to come (i.e. the full onboarding experience) and should start when the candidate accepts their job offer. They will naturally want to learn more about your organization, so help them out by providing tools, such as links to blogs, newsletters, or company policies, to get the ball rolling. Send them a welcome email so they begin to feel included before their first day on the job. Include details such as an orientation schedule, a list of what to bring on their first day, and any other relevant information to help them feel prepared.

The day has come and your new hire has arrived in your office for their orientation. Chances are, your new hire is going to be somewhat nervous, so help them feel comfortable as much as possible. Follow these tips to help you do just that:

Get to Know Them

If possible, take them out to lunch so you can talk about non-work related topics and get to know each other better. If this isn’t feasible, sit with them during lunch or set up a time to chat. You are likely the only person they remember, so be a friendly face around the office.

Give a Tour

Since this is their first day, the new employee will need to know where to find certain people, the location of printers, the lunchroom, restrooms, supplies, and so on. By giving them a tour, you are helping them feel more comfortable and allowing them to get acclimated with their new daily environment. During the tour, make sure you introduce them to key individuals in your company such as management, the HR Director, and of course, other individuals in their department.

Be Present

Make yourself available during the new hire’s first few days. Since you are probably the person who interacts the most with new employees, being available for them to ask questions and offer direction is important. If you have an office, keep your door open so they feel comfortable coming in and speaking with you. Also, make a point to swing by their workstation to make sure everything is going well.

Be Creative

Try making the new-hire orientation interactive. Come up with activities that they can do while learning about the company and their new role at the same time. Keep in mind that the new employee is receiving a lot of information, so it is helpful to divide the orientation into small segments. Create an agenda and try to stick to it throughout the day.

By the end of the first week, your new hires should understand most of what the company does and, most importantly, their role in the organization. They should also be done with the onboarding process. Make sure you have received this information before issuing their first paycheck:

1. Social Security Number

2. Home Address - Not only is this a way to verify identity but is also necessary to calculate any local taxes.

3. Date of Birth

4. Desired Payment Option - This will vary based on the payment methods your company offers, such as paper checks, direct deposit, or pay cards.

5. Signed Federal W-4 - This calculates how much federal income tax to withhold.

6. Signed State and Local W-4 (as needed) - This calculates how much state and/or local income tax to withhold.

7. Signed Form I-9 - Form I-9 confirms that your new hire can legally work in the United States.

8. Identification to Verify I-9 - This list is found on the I-9 here.

9. Form W-2 and 1095 C

Make sure your new hire knows they can log in to their Employee Self Service portal (if you’re using Dominion) to access their pay stubs, submit time off, select benefit plans, and more! Allowing employees to update their personal information not only makes sense, but it frees you up to take on more pressing tasks. Once an employee updates their information, it will be submitted for approval so you’re always in the loop about what’s going on. Contact Dominion if you’d like to learn more about our Employee Self Service.

During the first month, the new employee should be aware of their performance compared to the company’s expectations of their role. This is the time where they continue to develop, learn about the organization, and build relationships with coworkers. 

Throughout the first month, make a point to check-in with your new hire, offering them timely and honest feedback about their work, and requesting feedback from them about their experience so far. In addition to these meetings, be available to answer questions the employee might have. It takes over six months, on average, for an employee to feel fully comfortable in a new job. Use this time to clarify the employees’ professional goals and make sure they have all the resources they need for success.

Continue to introduce your new hire to the key players around the office as needed. It can help when hiring multiple people at the same time to pair them up so they have a friendly face as they begin employment at your organization. However, you can’t always hire multiple people at a time, and even when you do, you can’t force a companionship between two people. Pay attention to interactions your new hire has with others.  If the ultimate goal is to decrease employee turnover, it’s easy to see how important it is for your employees to build positive relationships with coworkers.

The first quarter is the time when the employee becomes fully aware of their responsibilities. They should start to work independently and be productive. They should be comfortable in their new space and become fully acclimated to their environment. 

Continue to check-in periodically with the new employee and continue to provide, and receive, feedback improve the overall process and ensure the employee is performing at maximum capacity. At the three-month anniversary of their hire date, set up an informal performance review. This is also a good time to look at their goals or create new ones. 

Dominion’s Performance platform is fully equipped to rate competencies, manage goal progress, and gather critical feedback. Performance is customizable to fit your company’s needs, automatically schedules reviews, provides valuable analytics, and syncs with our Payroll platform to process merit increases and bonus payments.

Hopefully, at this point, your employee is aware of what they don’t know as well. After they’ve had a few months to get acclimated to the job, extend an offer for them to undergo further training in areas they don’t feel comfortable with or in a growth area for this employee. Providing additional learning opportunities is a great way to nurture quality employees and show your investment in their professional development.

By this time, I’m happy to say, your job is nearly done. Your not-so-new hire has gained the momentum to produce quality content, take the lead on various projects, and has built solid relationships with their colleagues. The employee comes to work feeling confident in their duties and is meeting their goals regularly. 

Consider conducting performance reviews for your employees every six months. These offer great opportunities to review progress, assist in professional development goals, and give and receive feedback. It might seem daunting to do this every six months for all employees, but there are studies to back up the value of frequent performance reviews.

Onboarding new employees is no easy task. A lot of work goes into it. If you address each new hire with a strong determination to help them succeed and thrive, you’ll find your retention rates can increase and your employees could produce a higher quality of work. 

Luckily for you, Dominion offers Onboarding software that fully integrates with our payroll platform, simplifying your onboarding process, and ensuring a smooth transition from candidate to employee. With Dominion, you can create and assign tasks, collect new hire documents electronically, easily manage all of your new hires on one dashboard, and have employee information transfer automatically into payroll.  Let us show you how Dominion makes hiring new employees a breeze.