“I truly believe that onboarding is an art. Each new employee brings with them a potential to achieve and succeed. To lose the energy of a new hire through poor onboarding is an opportunity lost.”- Sarah Wetzel
Onboarding denotes the process of inducting and integrating fresh business associates and new employees into a modern organization. Experts on organizational behavior note the onboarding process retains importance because it allows fresh employees to “quickly get up to speed with the employees who have been with the (sponsor organization) for longer. This lets new employees reach higher productivity levels much faster than if they had to figure everything out on their own.” The modern organization is expected to frame coherent employee on-boarding guidelines with the aim of ensuring that new employees feel comfortable in the workplace. A calibrated onboarding process also allows legacy employees to nurture new hires into highly productive participants in the workforce. However, such guidelines, when thoughtfully designed, can confer long-term benefits on the sponsor organization. Flowcharts represent the ideal vehicle to plan employee on-boarding guidelines and delineate the many mechanisms that animate an onboarding process. These diagrams also allow corporate planners to create an effective architecture that elevates employee on-boarding to an effective corporate mantra.
A new initiative to design and frame employee on-boarding guidelines must depict several distinct stages inside a flowchart diagram. Such an illustration could serve as an introduction to individuals that conduct the onboarding process with batches of fresh employees. The various stages could include an introduction to the sponsor organization, multiple training modules new employees must undertake, catering and transportation guidelines, software packages in use inside the organization, lists of senior employees inside the organization, broad indications on the different lines of activity inside the organization, and other aspects. This manifestation of employee on-boarding guidelines allows an organization to present a unified view to new employees, thereby speeding up the process of absorbing new talent at the organizational level. The flowchart also serves as a location for refining the essence of guidelines in response to changes in business environments.
In terms of fostering stronger employee relations, organizational operators can design specific employee on-boarding guidelines to enable higher levels of teamwork inside an organization. An inter-connected diagram could help design the creation of a strong human element wherein, new employees are introduced to senior managers, gain an idea of allotment to different work groups, access a digital introduction to the seasoned operatives that lead different work teams, introduce oneself to a batch of employees undergoing the process, and other reasons. Sections of the illustration should place a specific emphasis on delineating large, complex projects that were flawlessly executed by teams inside the sponsor organization. The inclusion of this aspect of employee on-boarding guidelines helps create a sense of unity of purpose; it also ingrains fresh employees with enthusiasm to participate in ongoing and new projects. Essentially, the flowchart serves as a runway that catapults new hires to highly productive roles within the sponsor organization.
Stronger connects with supervisors and managers at different levels must feature prominently in employee on-boarding guidelines for the modern organization. Therefore, guidelines should promote accessibility to higher levels of an organization in a bid to ensure transparency. A flowchart designed for the purpose could feature provisions for regular meetings and town halls in a bid to instil confidence in the minds of newly hired employees; the accent on creating such connects must reside in an overt organizational stance that seeks to promote co-operation and solid rapport between different levels. Such an instance of employee on-boarding guidelines also guarantees worker well-being, a key feature that could help defeat the spectre of rising employee attrition levels. Additionally, avenues that enable the transmission of balanced feedback must feature inside the illustration. These avenues empower human talent to rise above organizational dynamics in a bid to present lasting contributions to the business enterprise.
Continuous development must represent a key theme in the development of employee on-boarding guidelines and procedures. In line with this, organizations should consider etching expansive flowcharts that outline ongoing training and engagement over a period of six months. Process-specific rules and activities, refresher courses on topics of corporate interest, Q&A sessions with project leaders, a survey of snapshots that encase the current state of an industry, new training modules, deconstruction of successful projects, and such, must populate the expanse of flowcharts. The repeated instances of engagement ensure higher levels of participation from fresh employees. Additionally, these flowcharts may include blank spaces that invite onboarding employees to contribute to guideline creation. These spaces allow the illustration to serve as a sounding board from the community of new employees. Such a stance in designing guidelines empowers business operators to evolve the process of framing employee on-boarding guidelines in tune with contemporary practices.
Hiring managers play a crucial role in inducting and retaining human talent in the different levels of an organization. They could elect to devise a plan to engage fresh employees at regular intervals through the agency of a flowchart. The intent is to create an ongoing dialogue that promotes rapid buy-in among the new hires. Therefore, the inter-connected illustration could be divided into durations that span a 12-month period in four calendar quarters. At various points, such an illustration could depict planned conversations that span the organization’s history; the various brands that represent the public face of the organization; outstanding feedback from organizational clients; performance measurement metrics; the use of growth opportunities for career progression; the scope of training programs; the professional culture of the sponsor organization; etc. The resulting employee on-boarding guidelines can assist organizational members create distinctive impressions in the minds of new hires, thereby creating deeper levels of engagement. We note such a flowchart must remain open to refreshed inputs and new categories of content in a bid to retain relevance.
The program content of an onboarding process must be calibrated and re-imagined in tune with feedback (and suggestions) emanating from newly hired employees. Such a stance is critical in the creation of competent employee on-boarding guidelines that make the best utilization of organizational resources. A flowchart could be designed to mold program content for new employees that have served in the organization for a few months. The stages could include questions that encourage new employees to share their initial impressions, the scope of working with an assigned supervisor, discuss work satisfaction levels in the workplace, any unmet expectations in the current position, an appreciation of performance goals set by the organization, the scope of integrating performance feedback into work processes and more. The lines of nuanced and subtle interrogation allow employers to design fresh inputs into guidelines, thus spelling higher levels of success in future employee induction programs.
The modern organization can gain immensely designing and implementing enlightened on-boarding guidelines. The various lines of suggestion encased above can assist a fruitful coming together of diverse strands of human talent and the multi-faceted requirements of a modern organization. The intelligent steward can combine various aspects to fashion a very contemporary version of the employee onboarding program. In doing so, the steward enriches organizational culture while driving higher levels of engagement with diverse sets of new hires. The flowchart continues to provide steady support for designers of such guidelines – these illustrations also empower designers to incorporate new ideas and fresh lines of activity that draw on the collective experience of an organization to bolster onboarding plans and programs.
