Growth and Feeding of People . . . The Onboarding Process  

In our company, I made sure that everyone understood that our brand-new people were just as important as people who had been with us for years. Why would you go to the expense of hiring a new person if the group didn’t value them from day one? Long-term strong employees are fantastic—they are the backbone of your company. New team members bring a fresh new perspective and have been sought out and hired to make the team even stronger.

Here are some tips to make new hires feel welcome and cared for:

• Have 100 percent of everything a new hire needs when they come in: codes, their email address, business cards, equipment, office (cleaned), meeting schedule, and insurance. Do the paperwork in HR before they actually come to work.
• Ask about their personal likes-food, fun, talents, hobbies, family names, and kids’ ages-anything you might later want as part of their information.
• Assign them a buddy. Make sure “buddies” are people who really like doing this kind of thing. Nothing is worse than making this buddy job a burden to someone who is uncomfortable with it.

A new-employee breakfast immediately showed our culture. People at all job levels were in the same room with top management to introduce themselves and hear some of their perspectives on the company. Management requested that everyone tell us in a month or two what had “worked better” at their previous company. New people helped us all grow with new ideas.

Most organizations do an orientation on an employee’s first day. That is great, and I wouldn’t suggest any change to that. But I have found it is critical to bring those new employees back for a second “meet and greet,” or orientation, about ten weeks after they have joined the company. On the first day, people are excited and overwhelmed and, frankly, they really want to know where to get coffee. They absorb some of your critical materials on the first day, but not all. And a couple months later, their experiences, questions, and thoughts on your workplace will be so much more meaningful.