Describe a real-life employee onboarding example that worked well for your company?

An excellent onboarding method that has worked really well for us at Approved Course is recording videos on Loom where it gives the company the advantage of recording a shared screen to explain simple tasks, processes and information needed while showing the face of the person speaking and recording their voice to make it more personal and engaging for the new employee. With Loom videos, we break important information into a maximum of 2-minute videos very specific to each task making it easy for candidates to return to them and re-watch them when needed. It also gives the option of speeding up the video to be adjusted to the listner’s preference.

One recent example of how we've successfully onboarded new employees is by offering them a mentorship program at the start of their employment. This allows us to connect with our new employees as early on as possible in the employment journey. We've realized this mentorship phase enables our new employees to settle in faster, and to quickly adapt to our culture and processes. It also allows us to develop relationships with them before they even start working for us. This has been very helpful in developing a better understanding of each employee's strengths and weaknesses, which makes it much easier for us to ensure that we are providing the right environment, tools, and support system for them to excel in their roles from the start.

A small change we have made to our employee onboarding is providing all training materials and access to mentorship prior to their start date. It seems like a no brainer now, but allowing new hires the chance to prepare questions and familiarize with materials before formally onboarding increases repetition, crucial for retaining important information. Having a mentor who you can ask basic questions about our organization's culture, the chain of communication, or even the cadence of day to day work helps prepare new hires to integrate into a new routine gradually. All of this reduces confusion, overwhelm and anxiety, allowing us to get a much better idea of the hire's skills and progress once real onboarding begins.

We believe that onboarding should be a holistic and ongoing experience, not just a one-time event. A key part of our onboarding program is our handwritten welcome letter. Each new employee receives a personalized letter from their manager on their first day, welcoming them to the team and highlighting some of the things they can look forward to in their new role. We've found that this simple gesture helps set the tone for a warm and supportive working environment and lets our team members know that they're valued from the outset. Plus, it's just a nice touch that makes people feel special!

I am going to share a recent experience of the complete employee onboarding process for the position of remote content writers that went well. We divided the onboarding process into three phases based on the initial three weeks of employment to help the employee and the organization get to know each other. We conducted a series of introductory video conferences on the first day of joining and the subsequent week. It helped new employees better connect with their team members and feel comfortable in a new environment. We conclude the first week of onboarding with a product demo so that the new employee has a basic understanding of the product and can function within the team as an independent member. The following week, we gave them a basic set of tasks to complete to gauge their work effectiveness and efficiency. We discovered that in the final week, the new employees were giving their unique viewpoint on tasks and contributing significantly to weekly strategy sessions.

We ask all new hires to create a "user manual" for themselves, which is a brief document that includes a bit about their upbringing, professional journey, learning styles, communication preferences and hobbies. These new hires also have access to the user manuals of every other employee across the organization. It\'s an incredible way to humanize colleagues — especially in a distributed work environment — and helps new hires quickly get acclimated to their teammates and company culture.

No secret that employee onboarding is crucial and fosters people's engagement and sense of belonging. As a Florida-based RH Tech Company, we have realized that one of the biggest barriers to a great onboarding is that new hires don't know what to expect, which brings a certain kind of anxiety that can disturb the whole process. With that in mind, we have decided to insert actions to minimize pressure on the first day. One that is simple but has shown a positive impact in avoiding stress along the onboarding is a video we send the new team members before they even start working in the company. We invited the leaders and teams to record a short video introducing themselves and talking about the company and the job and send the new colleague some days before onboarding. We have found out that our new hires come for the process much more confident, knowing what to expect, and incredibly motivated.

When we saw Valve Corporation’s onboarding guide, we knew we had to adopt something like it. The employee handbook given to every employee is full of ridiculous humor and helpful information to help new hires adjust to their role, working out team and managerial expectations along the way. Starting a new job can be stressful, so the funny handbook helps lighten those first-day jitters and show off our company culture. We want new employees to understand that we love to have fun while we set expectations for them. According to our post-onboarding survey results, the handbooks are a hit - many employees mention them as their favorite part of the process.

We set up a pretty standardized onboarding system that we have been using for all our employees over the past year and a half. This onboarding process makes it easy to get started and stay on track. The first step is to give them a weekly briefing in person or over the phone about what's going on at the company. Then, they're assigned their first project: something simple like an email campaign or website redesign—something that can be done in a week or two that will help us get familiar with their work style. Once that's done, they're set loose on their own projects! They're given complete autonomy over what they do, how long it takes them, and when they submit their work. We also make sure to keep them updated throughout the process so they know if there are any changes to deliverables, and requirements. With this onboarding system, we've witnessed our annual retention rates shoot up by 28%, helping us greatly mitigate the effects of the Great Resignation.

Gift-giving proves to have many positive impacts on human emotions. When we welcome our new employees with swag bags and a warm message, it makes them feel comfortable and engaged. It removes all their anxieties and jitters because we genuinely show them how accommodating and approachable we are as a company. The mood-mediating connection we establish with the newbies serves as their first impression of our business culture. Our gifts to the employees create a lasting impact, mainly because our swag bags include things that last long, like a customized t-shirt and a personalized tumbler. People rarely forget acts of gratitude. Instead, it inspires them to do better in their job and return the favor to the company in the long run.

The most effective onboarding experience that has worked for my company is the buddy system. It entails assigning an experienced colleague to new employees. The assigned experienced colleague volunteers to be a new hire’s buddy and mentor them friendlily for the roles. Some responsibilities include taking the new employee around and introducing them to other colleagues, taking them to lunch for the first day, answering the questions new hires may ask, and check-in in with the new hire regularly. The buddy system enhances positivity in welcoming new employees, improves workplace relationships, and enhances understanding of the company culture. The new employees feel supported by having a colleague to turn to in the first few weeks of indecision at a new job.

Pre-onboarding is the best real-life example I can provide. As an initial level of actual onboarding, pre-onboarding makes everything way easier and faster when a new employee starts working for the company. It begins just a few days before onboarding. We work remotely so at this stage employees-to-be receive equipment to check if everything is alright with it. What’s more, they get a detailed onboarding schedule complemented by information on what to prepare for when (e.g. documents from their previous work). The starter pack also includes some resources about the company. Pre-onboarding is a brilliant, effective, and easily implemented solution, which I would recommend to any employer, especially in the case of big companies. Last but not least–employees appreciate it, I can tell you for sure.

Remembering the names and faces of all employees is challenging for someone starting a new job. That said, we typically schedule short meetings for the newcomers during their first few days. We let them use this time to introduce themselves to their colleagues and get to know other employees, especially those with whom they will work closely in the company. Doing so makes the onboarding experience more memorable and engaging for the new hires, giving them a sense of comfort working in our organization.

We customize every onboarding experience to the team member being brought on. The first day, they are partnered with someone on their team who has similar interests. They\'re introduced to everyone in the office and each team member gives a little factoid about themselves. We take them out to lunch, to a place they are comfortable in. At the end of the day, they receive a personalized "swag" box and are thanked for joining the team!

When a new hire has a mentor with the same or similar job duties, they are able to learn so much more than they would from a presentation of informative slides. Mentors are responsive and participative, able to prioritize what aspects of the position receive more time and focus based on how the employee is actually acclimating. More than that, having a mentor is the most effective way to make new hires feel like they're part of the team, significantly improving employee engagement. Mentoring doesn't have to be costly and time-consuming either-- even small businesses can create and implement a program that offers new hires a temporary mentor while they adjust to the company culture and the unique challenges of their job.

When we made the move from a physical work space to a remote one we faced a lot of challenges that needed to be overcome, including onboarding our new employees. We had a standard onboarding process which involved an introduction to company culture, meet and greet, and training on our custom software, as well as role specific training with a peer. Of course, once we moved to the remote workspace our onboarding process was effectively obsolete. First off, we implemented a video led onboarding process which covered most of the bases along with one2ones. The feedback we received from the first round of recruits was instrumental in reaching the point we are now. Our team is spread around the globe and the video led approach needed support of written materials and infographic styled documents. Taking an omnichannel approach has proven more inclusive and has almost eliminated the need to remediate after onboarding has finished.

Through The Great Resignation, one area that is especially important to cover during the onboarding process is a thorough review of all the benefits, perks, and special engagement programs that are available to new-hires. In addition to education around our basic benefits like medical and dental, we also emphasize that new-hires are eligible to join groups and social programs like our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force and our Spirit Committee, or join Slack channels that connect them with like-minded peers. It's more important than ever that employees feel engaged and connected, so it's critical to spend time marketing those initiatives from day one.

We've found that the best way to onboard new employees is to offer training in-person, so that we can see how they interact with the rest of the team, and give them immediate feedback on their performance. This also makes it easier for us to provide support if they need it after they're set up, as well as having a ready-made support network of peers who can help with any questions or concerns. In addition to training, we also offer career development opportunities for our new employees—we want them to feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves and that they're growing along with the company. We've organized hackathons and other events where employees can go together as a group and work on projects together, so that they can learn from each other as well as from our leadership team. We give out awards for outstanding performance at these events, which helps keep everyone, especially new staff, motivated!

All new employees receive our product during onboarding. Not only do we want them well-versed in what we sell to our customers, we also want feedback. What flavors do they like? Which ones don't work for them? We value their input. This feedback allows us to create new flavors and tweak our current ones. While our new employees learn a lot from us during the onboarding process, we want to learn from them as well.

I have been working as an IT manager in Salesforce, the most significant SaaS company in the world. Our company employs over 35,000 people globally, and our welcome kit contains stickers, books, a gift certificate, a name tag, and, most importantly, a toy gun. This toy gun is essential because this company has a distinctive and unique culture. We organize nerf gun wars. Distinct departments of our company get a chance to finish among themselves and have fun in their leisure time. Salesforce welcome kits change daily and are often customized based on our different teams. We create a new employee with all the conditions for personal development and showcase his powerful professional qualities.