Joining a new company is a difficult process even if it is a positive change. A new environment, new people, and new responsibilities can shake anyone’s world and make one feel uncertain. That is why many companies create adaptation programs to make sure the process of new hire onboarding goes smoothly.
Since we are a web development company, this is an example of IT onboarding.
Onboarding New Employees
We at ADCI Solutions care about each team member and do our best to ensure that everyone feels comfortable and safe at work. Therefore, we put efforts into a good new employee onboarding program. Most people in our team start as interns and make it all the way up from that point. Sometimes it means that being an intern in our company is the very first workplace for the person. We value such growth inside the company and try to make it comfortable for newbies to work with more seasoned team members.
Steps In Onboarding Process
Hire the right way
The first step of the onboarding process for new employees is a job interview. Surprising, right? But it is so. During the job interview, a potential employee forms the first impression of the company and its corporate culture and sets the first expectations, too. Researchers call this stage anticipatory socialization, and it has a major influence on the person's decision to take the job. Therefore, it is very important for an interviewer to be highly transparent about the job tasks and working atmosphere. Otherwise, the new hire will experience the tremendous emotional burden caused by reality mismatch.
We schedule the interview after the candidate finishes test tasks and their programming skills are confirmed. During this interview, we only check if this person matches the team spirit and fits the corporate culture.
Onboarding a new employee
When the person is officially hired and starts their first work day, we welcome them with an onboarding playbook about our traditions, corporate culture rules, and perks, such as English classes, the bonus system, educational events, and so on. This helps the new employee adapt to a new environment knowing whom to ask questions and how to behave in a particular situation.
We give a new hire a tour around the office and show them workstations they can take and communal spaces. Let the new employee meet the rest of the team. You might want to google fun ways to introduce new team members for that part because it's going to be awkward, believe me.
Onboarding meetings
We also organize special team building sessions that are attended by team members who work less than half a year (but the rest of the team is also welcome). Newbies are provided with necessary information about the work and corporate culture, and old-timers can ask the new employee meet and greet questions.
The agenda of such team meetings includes, first of all, getting to know each other better. It is crucial since the company grows bigger and we want to make sure that people know everyone’s names, hobbies, etc. The other part is the team building itself. Here we do some exercises to bond and feel the team spirit. And the final part is a corporate culture presentation where we openly speak about unclear moments and try to be on the same page as a team.
Training new hires
The next stage is the introduction to job duties. All of our new interns and employees have a team lead or a mentor who guides them through the onboarding process steps. This person provides the necessary information, teaches the new hire, and helps with getting to know other team members. After the internship is finished comes the stage of developing individual strategies to manage adaptation issues. It is connected with both professional and social integration, which should result in the employee integrating into the company's workflow.
Besides such specially organized activities, we also have regular team meet-ups that help newbies adapt. We have lunches together, play Xbox and board games, and arrange corporate parties.
By the end of a successful onboarding:
- the new employee should be familiar not only with direct duties but also with related responsibilities;
- the new employee has to show their first results;
- the new employee should understand the values of the company and behave accordingly.
Best Practices For Onboarding New Employees
New team members seem to be more confident and open since the moment we developed an onboarding program for new employees and started having fun team meet-ups.
However, we believe that sky's the limit. So we also created a short survey for team members who joined more than half a year ago. This survey includes a question on how hard or easy the adaptation process was and what would help to speed it up.
90-day check-in with new employee
We are still in the process of improving our onboarding procedure. And I hope that we’ll find the ideal way to make each day of our team members memorable.
