Employee Onboarding Checklist: Your Complete Guide to Ensuring an Effective Onboarding Process

The first day at a new job can feel daunting for a new hire as well as for the co-workers responsible for integrating them into the team. Enter employee onboarding: the process that helps ensure that a new employee has the information, knowledge, tools, and resources that they need to successfully get started at a new job.

For employers, the challenge with employee onboarding is to make sure that a new employee feels welcome and engaged from day one. The faster an employee is onboarded and becomes proficient in their new role the better your business will perform. Research shows that a successful onboarding process also supports increased employee engagement and retention. It immerses them right away in the company culture – a win-win for employer and employee!¹

By contrast, a bad onboarding experience is well-known for increasing employee turnover. Up to 68% of people who’ve left their jobs after only three months say that it had to do with the way their former employers handled the onboarding process.²

But what are the elements that businesses need to think about before, during and after the onboarding process? And what should they include in an onboarding checklist to ensure a successful and personalized employee onboarding experience? Let’s take a look…

3 Important Characteristics of a Successful Employee Onboarding Process

In addition to the paperwork that needs to be filled out and any training or orientation that the employee requires before getting started, there are three broad areas for employers to focus on when receiving a new team member:

Welcoming

Employees should feel welcome and engaged from day one. A great way of doing this is setting up special information sessions with key colleagues and assigning the new hire to a dedicated mentor or buddy who can lead them through the onboarding process and the intricacies of the work space, work processes, different departments, new office technology, and more. As the new employee gets settled, regular check-ins by the mentor or buddy can really add value to the whole onboarding program.

Informative

New employees shouldn’t feel overwhelmed or confused. It is extremely important for new employers to present clear and concise information and, if possible, spread out training over a few days rather than packing-in everything at once. Methods like microlearning (offering new information in small ‘digestible’ morsels) help new employees absorb and remember information.³

Additionally, presenting important information such as company policies and core values has a greater impact if it’s done by a senior manager leading a one-on-one discussion, rather than through a training video. With an in-person presentation, new employees will pay closer attention and generate a deeper understanding of the topic being delivered.¹

Organized

Any training should be well-structured to ensure a smooth onboarding process. All employees should have to go through the same onboarding procedure to ensure that the process remains consistent between a recently hired existing employee and a brand new employee that is being brought into the team.

The average new hire has over 50 distinct activities to complete before getting started in their new role. Therefore it is extremely important to manage each onboarding task in a structured and strategic way so that the new hire and the employer have a productive and positive start to their new working relationship.⁴

What Should be on an Employee Onboarding Checklist?

Between all the steps involved in onboarding new employees from the pre-boarding process and paperwork, to the short-term goal setting with the manager, here is your ultimate onboarding checklist, complete with items that require the most attention:

1. Schedule an appointment for the new hire with Human Resources to fill out any relevant forms and pick up any handbooks or uniforms.
2. Print relevant informational or training material such as an organizational chart, a map of your corporate office design, company directory, and a list of key contacts to help with orientation in the new work environment.
3. Prepare a new employee‘s workspace with supplies and equipment they will need to do their new job. You can also leverage commercial lockers to deliver these supplies to new hybrid or remote workers.
4. Set up the necessary user accounts and logins for access to the IT network.
5. Plan and/or schedule any required training programs.
6. Remind the relevant office and/or department of the new hire’s start date.
7. Introduce the new employee to colleagues with a company-wide email message.
8. Assign the new hire a mentor and/or a buddy.
9. Allocate time for 30, 60, and 90-day check-ins to see how the new hire is doing. 

Delivering a memorable onboarding experience

Making the onboarding process a welcoming and memorable experience can go a long way to making a new hire feel part of the company culture and part of the team. By ensuring better job performance and increasing employee satisfaction, employers benefit from higher levels of employee retention and engagement. Small gestures like creating personalized onboarding kits, complete with company merchandise and any required tools such as supplies, hot desking equipment, or uniforms can make a strong positive impression.

And for a remote employee or a hybrid employee, many of whom often find it difficult to integrate into the company culture, a parcel locker is an effective solution to delivering items related to the onboarding process, in addition to other work-related items, safely, securely and at the employees’ convenience.

To find out more about how our electronic locker solutions can help deliver MORE for your employees, contact a Parcel Pending representative today.

Sources:

1. Wool, Maggie. How a new hire checklist can take onboarding to a new level. www.betterup.com. December 28, 2021. https://www.betterup.com/blog/new-hire-checklist
2. Bamoomhr. TalentLyft. What new hires really want from onboarding. https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/ 4506945/Ebook%20URLs/What%20new%20hires%20want%20form%20onboarding%20-%20BambooHR.pdf
3. Wool, Maggie. The benefits of microlearning: Learn big, study small. www.betterup.com. November 10, 2021. https://www.betterup.com/blog/microlearning
4. Dewar, Jen. 10 employee onboarding statistics you must know in 2022. www.sapling.com. March 3, 2022. https://www.saplinghr.com/10-employee-onboarding-statistics-you-must-know-in-2022