Your fresh-faced employee is not the only one being evaluated.
The onboarding process that you set up for new hires can have a massive impact on their perception of your company, the ease (or difficulty) of their integration, and even their length of employment.
Everything seems like a much bigger deal when you’re in a new environment – which is why this is the easiest time to scare off the person you just spent months searching for.
Once you become aware of the worst onboarding mistakes, you can successfully avoid them as you implement your stellar process.
So, what are the best ways to scare away new employees?
This list will walk you through five onboarding errors you should avoid at all costs.
1. Working Out of a Broom Closet
This may be one of the most common onboarding mistakes out there – and it’s also pretty sad.
What do your new employees find when they come into your workplace for the first time? Is there a desk set up for them with a new set of tools and supplies they will need to get started? Or are they going to walk in and find you rummaging through the office for a spare (and semi-broken) chair?
Don’t make your new hires work out of broom closet. Just don’t.
2. The Introduction Firehose
The only thing worse than being bombarded with a billion names and faces on your first day is no introduction at all.
While it’s necessary to introduce new employees to the rest of the company, they are not going to remember most of the people they meet during that time.
Instead of leaving them to figure it out, it’s a good idea to provide some sort of cheat sheet or other resource to help them sort through the people they will need to interact with regularly.
3. Creating Wandering Orphans
Failing to properly initiate new employees often leads to wandering orphans.
These sad creatures haven’t fully grasped where they can go for guidance, who they directly report to or even the location that they are needed in.
If you’re going to dump your new hires within 10 minutes of their arrival, you may want to consider arming them with some sort of a survival kit.
4. Hoarding the Keys to the Kingdom
Security is important.
But so is access to things like login information, vital documents and maybe the building that you’re working in.
Don’t turn your new employees into vultures.
Desperately trying to find usernames and passwords. Begging for access to the documents they need to do their jobs. Or stalking employees in the parking lot so that they can scurry into the building after them.
5. The First-Day Expert
There may be the occasional new hire that seems to immediately fill their position with authority.
They completely understand their job duties, they know how to get them done and have the process down from start to finish.
This is not typical.
Even if you have hired a very experienced individual, there is almost always a learning curve with a new company. This can involve your organization’s specific processes, products or services or even the people that make up the business.
Takeaway: don’t expect your new hires to be immediate experts.
It’s time to create better first days.
