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in this video we're going to talk about onboarding this is a basic hr topic but many of us haven't been involved so what's it about what difference does it really make these are some of the things we're going to talk about today starting right now hi there i'm andrea adams and the host of hr shop talk on the show you get expert insight into all sorts of hr topics i encourage you to subscribe to the show by clicking on the button at the bottom of the screen to continue learning from my smart and experienced guests today i'm talking to beverly summers bev has spent 20 years providing human resource management solutions and now assists clients in various industries performing human resource consulting and helping clients tackle the hr challenges they fear the most hr 911 to the rescue hi bev hi so uh first question here what is on boarding and is it the same as orientation yeah that's a great question and it really got me thinking because we used to call it orientation yes um it seemed to have evolved into onboarding and i'm not sure honestly if from a technical perspective you know how different or the same they are and so i would say i don't get caught up in the terminology for me whether you call it onboarding or whether you call it orientation it's about feelings and actions it really it's about making the employee feel feeling like they belong to the organization as quickly as possible making sure that they feel safe uh speaking up asking questions and making sure that they're as productive as possible from the get-go so making them realize that that you know switching careers or jobs or whatever it may have been was a good choice for them so why are you passionate about onboarding back in the day in the day i don't know when when things really switched over but orientation it was about you know making sure that employees had you know all the papers signed and the documents they've reviewed everything they uh they've gone through all the training the health and safety and you know whatever may have been involved at the time now it might have been a one-day process it could have been a three-day process whatever that looked like but for me i've taken an interest in onboarding because i see it as so much more than that i see it as a you know a way to like i said already make your employees feel wanted feel safe you can really be creative with your onboarding and maybe that's the piece i like too is you know bringing somebody new into the organization and really making them feel you know like you've personalized this for them it's not just a cookie cutter you know everybody goes through the same process we've made it special for you you know it's about making sure that those first few months their experience is awesome all right so you consult for small employers and maybe you've had an opportunity to see the situation both before and after so before they had onboarding and then after they've implemented onboarding and what difference have you seen it make for a leader of an organization i know one of the things i hear often that they appreciate the most is that they know everything's been covered it is training your leaders maybe to think about some things that they wouldn't have thought about if you just said to a leader look you're responsible for joe's onboarding he's coming you know starting monday and that was it well you know that that person if they don't know what they're doing then you know they may not cover everything that needs to be covered so um yeah i think leaders really like that it just is all-encompassing and uh it creates consistency you talk about the role of leaders and my experience has often been that we have these noble aspirations of how we're going to onboard an employee but then people get busy and then so many aspects fall by the wayside is that what you've seen and and how do you manage that yeah so that's what happens when you don't have a formalized process but when you have a formalized process then uh the leader of the organization whether it's the owner executive director or whoever that that person is who's kind of the um the high level gatekeeper of the onboarding process they may not be involved but the person that is leading the process has to report back in and in in my case i the process i use they'd have a checklist or a report that they have to give back and get signed off so you know everything's done you know with that too we get the employees feedback or we in process i i facilitate is we're getting the employees feedback so you're holding the leaders accountable so it's your leader meet with you um you're your onboarding guide meet with you how often did they set up your coaching meetings did they you know did they take lunch do they so you're an accountability factor there so um so yeah so again having this standard process it holds everybody accountable if you found this interesting subscribe to see all the episodes and comment what do you find hard about onboarding let us know in the comment section below and back to you bev so what are the phases of onboarding okay so in a you know a good onboarding there is a pre-boarding there is your onboarding you know after onboarding there is a follow-up process so um you know i don't have a fancy name for that but your pre-boarding your onboarding and then your follow-up and i also mentioned the evaluation so that would kind of be the fourth stage uh okay so let's talk about pre-boarding what goes into pre-boarding so pre-boarding starts at the recruitment phase before you've even selected your candidate of choice okay so you are recruiting and as part of that process and the reason why this is important is you're starting to set the tone for what the communication is going to be like within your organization and what your commitment is and if you follow through so through the recruitment you know you're communicating with your candidates you're following up when you say you're going to follow up so the candidate is already getting that experience and then once they're given the offer same thing you carry through you make sure that you communicate often you're you know you're following through on the deadlines if you say you're going to have an offer to them by you know end of day today you do it you're so setting the tone so also in the pre-boarding phase is where you start to get the ball rolling so here's a good time so let's say you've hired somebody they're giving their two weeks notice and they're going to be coming on you've got two weeks to order business cards to you know get name plates done to get an office set up so yeah so you have an opportunity to really wow the employee and that's what the onboarding experience is for me like i think okay how do i wow somebody to really make them feel like they made a good decision to come to my company so that was pre-boarding so onboarding what is encompassed by onboarding so onboarding um it starts i should say pre-boarding too i forgot to mention that um you know you're sending notices out to your employees okay an opportunity to introduce the new employee to them so you're gonna ask the new employee for a picture a little bio really making them feel like they belong to the team before they've even joined the team right if you're gold and that's that's awesome so then day one they arrive to a friendly face nothing worse than somebody coming in the front door and like looking you know left right like where do i go right so somebody needs to be there waiting for them your day one should be fun i really and i mean i know work work is work but it should be as fun as possible so you know try not to dump a bunch of papers on the desk try to keep it as light as possible you know do your tours make your introductions um i always always always encourage people who go out and have lunch with their employee and a supervisor or you know somebody some people go out to lunch often but we'd be surprised some people don't get treated to that so it's a simple little thing like that and at the end of the day let them leave early i say go in check in on them and you know even if it's 20 minutes say like look it's exhausting day i'm sure you're tired why don't you go home now and uh we'll see you tomorrow so so yeah that's just day one so then your first week now you're getting into a little more of the uh the in-depth your training your um i the other thing i do is i encourage people to have key people meetings i call them so um you know why not let the new employee depending on the size of the organization have 10 minutes with the executive director or the ceo that's a wow right um other key people um you know maybe your finance people you know if they're a front line employee i'll use that example then you know let them see the inner workings and ask questions and hear from some of the other people they may never speak to them ever again right yeah but again making them feel special and then there's also just the all the this this is the stuff i said don't do on the first day right there's tons of paperwork we have to fill in we need to make sure we get signed up for benefits and payroll and that has to happen i also have a schedule that i would recommend that you create you give it to the employee up front so they know up front what the next week looks like and that takes anxiety out of the process right so they're already able to see like okay there's not good hopefully not gonna be any curveballs thrown at you but you know this is what we intend your first week to look like people like will really appreciate that now follow-up yeah so follow-up is that's that checking-in piece so we we often forget to ask some important questions like you know was it everything you expected it to be like you know did i forget something that you were hoping that i would cover um you know what's surprised you the most um you know are you are you still excited to come to work every day how can we make it more exciting for you to come to work so after you know i'd say about the four week mark somebody should be is settled in a little bit and then you're starting to get into okay now let's talk about what some of the expectations are what do i expect of you what do you expect of me what does coaching and feedback process look like reviewing the job profile and if there's goals you may not give somebody goals right away but you can give them an idea of what goals may look like talk about what the probationary period looks like and i always encourage people to give the probationary form up front as well it's not a secret yeah like the end of your probationary period this is what we're looking for so you know you know what we're looking for and and this is what we're gonna you know assess you on so again being honest transparent and giving as much information and following up with them asking you know getting their feedback i encourage companies to do a one week and a four week evaluation it's a quick you know can be five to ten questions you know what went well what didn't go well what how you know how can we do better um did everybody say you didn't do what we said they were gonna do right that accountability piece definitely evaluation and there's always room to improve okay so in some other stuff you shared with me beforehand you recommend identifying a buddy can you talk more about what the buddy does so the buddy is you know the buddy goes through some of the same stuff that the whoever's leading this process goes through it can be a buddy to the leader who's leading this process as well because you know if that person can't be there for everything but just to having that person kind of in the background who's you know maybe more of a peer and so the buddy can be that person who shares those kind of the the the culture you know i use some of the examples too of like look you know we have somebody that works here that's like super sensitive to fish so try not to okay and so find out the hard way exactly right and so there's a fine line for the body between you don't want them to be gossiping right so you don't want them to be like um i hope you never get sue as a supervisor because she's super picky like it's it's about trying to be positive too right so but let giving them enough to make them belong as quickly and feel like they're a part of the team right so uh what is one aspect of onboarding that isn't done often enough because it seems like too much work but in fact it's really important yeah i it's another really great question i think i think formalizing the process oh yeah you know we we think oh we've got somebody new starting and we don't you know we don't do the proper steps and to go through and realize how important each little step can be to creating amazing experience for the employees okay so final question here someone's looking to create or improve their onboarding process what advice do you have for them um so i think i already mentioned that you know you can google it so you can go and you can take little bits of everything and build your own um that takes a lot of time it can be done you can absolutely find people within your network who've done this and uh who will share with you hopefully there are organizations who sell these products you can go online and for you know whatever the price yeah buy these products so they're out there and then you can obviously tap into and you know a professional like myself thanks bev i've done many orientations but i learned something here and that brings us to the end of this episode i did an episode on wellness in a remote work environment and the link is right here thanks for watching and see you next time