Great employee onboarding is essential to keep the talent you've hired.
In this climate of low employment rates, employees have the pick of the bunch of companies. Therefore, ensure you use this free a new employee onboarding checklist, so your new recruits are fully settled in.
Having a fantastic new employee onboarding checklist has many benefits, as stated by an article in HR.com, including:
For new hires, onboarding is an ongoing process through the first few months of a new hire’s tenure at your company. During the onboarding process, new hires learn about the company, familiarize themselves with the team, go through training, and start their new roles. It’s important to start with a structures new hire onboarding process to ensure your new employees are engaged and feel supported during their first 90 days and beyond.
Hiring new employees is expensive. It’s reported that it costs around $3,500 to source and hire an hourly employee. Additionally, it takes about five months for a new hire to be fully productive. If the new hire isn't onboarded properly, your business will have wasted time and money in the recruitment process.
The sample new employee onboarding checklist below will enable you to design an effective onboarding and orientation process to integrate new recruits into your company in the right way.
New employee onboarding should be emphasized for the first 90 days of a new hire’s time at your company. During these 90 days you’ll also want to set performance standards and create an open dialogue with your employee to ensure that they continue being onboarded and engaged with at your company throughout the first year.
A new hire checklist is also known as an onboarding checklist,new employee checklist, or new hire orientation checklist. It’s a template that covers different steps for onboarding new employees.
Now, let's start to compile your new employe onboarding checklist. Use this checklist to create new hire templates for different positions in your company.
The pre-hire stage of onboarding starts before your new employee comes to the office. This ensures that everything is in order and your new hire will be engaged immediately. There’s nothing worse than having someone start a job and get bored on the first day or week with nothing to do.
Part of this checklist is a process called transactional onboarding, which focuses on filling out the necessary forms and documents, so your new employee is able to work legally.
New employee forms and paperwork include:
In your new hire welcome email, you should state the following:
Your current employees need to be kept in the loop about their new colleague. Send an email to introduce the new hire, so they can welcome the person.
The email to current employees should include:
Ensure that the new hire is comfortable and has everything needed to get up and running. They should not be waiting half a day for IT equipment and other supplies. This should all be sorted out before they come, so they have the necessary tools.
The following needs to be prepared before the new hire comes to the office:
The workstation should include:
The following also needs to be arranged:
On the big day, your new hire will be nervous. This is the time when you should do all you can to reduce their level of anxiety.
Here are the steps to include in your sample new employee onboarding checklist templates:
Give the new hire a tour of the office, so they know where important common areas are, such as:
This is the stage where you go into a bit more depth about the business. Explain how the new hire’s position is funded and the impact it will have on the company.
During new employee onboarding, you should:
Having lunch with your new employee will help your existing team members get to know them better in an informal and relaxed setting. At lunch, ensure that everything remains professional. Team members should discuss their work and interests, rather than making this an interrogation of the new employee. Remember, during new employee onboarding, you want your new hire to feel comfortable. Ensure that lunch is a conversation and not a Q&A with your current team.
Meeting with the head of the company shows your new hire that the CEO and other senior leadership care about every new recruit. When meeting with your new employee, the CEO should do the following:
The new hire's manager will enable them to have a more detailed understanding about their role and day-to-day activities.
When meeting with the new hire's manager, include the following on the sample new employee onboarding checklist for the both the manager and the new hire.
The first week is just as important as the first day when welcoming and onboarding your new hire.
Include the following on the new hire onboarding checklist:
Onboarding a new hire doesn’t end after the first day, week or month. It can go on for up to a year. According to an article in SHRM, 23% of employees left their jobs during the first six months saying that, if they had received more effective training, they would have stayed.
So, the first three months is a time to continue to implement the sample new employee onboarding checklist and do the following:
If your new hire is still with you, congratulations! This means your company has done a good job, but this isn’t the time to sit back and relax. This is the time to continue to implement the items on your new hire checklist to ensure that they stay with the company.
At this stage, the following should be included on the new employee onbaording checklist:
Find out how effective your new employee onboarding checklist is by asking your new hire to evaluate your onboarding process. You can create a quick survey to learn what they thought about the process - what was good and what needs to improve.
If you’re looking for a modern recruitment hiring tool that has onboarding features as standard, check out Fountain. It gives you the functionality to send and request documentation and order your new hire’s paperwork through one secure and safe portal.