Most Important Onboarding Mistakes to Avoid

Onboarding is the process of ensuring new employees have all knowledge, skills, connections, and behaviors necessary to thrive in various workplaces. The more intensive and detailed a business’s onboarding practices are, the better trained its employees can be for their benefit. While most business owners understand the importance of thorough training, they don’t always get it right. If you want to put your new hires in a solid position to succeed, avoid making some of the following mistakes.

Forgetting to Make It Fun

There’s no denying that onboarding can require a significant amount of learning, reading, and form signing. However, there’s no reason why you can’t incorporate fun employee onboarding activities to help the latest additions to your team feel more at ease.

Working for a new company can be daunting and nerve-wracking, and it can be challenging to absorb new information when you feel anxious about a foreign working environment. By including a few fun activities for new and current employees, you might enjoy a much-needed icebreaker that makes the rest of the onboarding process more tolerable and less stressful for all involved.

Cramming in Too Much New Information

There can be a lot for new employees to learn, and employers likely want them to be up to speed as soon as possible to keep their productivity levels high. However, overloading new hires with too much information on the first day can have the opposite effect.

Studies have shown that cramming can decrease performance, increase anxiety, affect information recall, and even lead to bad habits. Instead, adopt a focused and spaced onboarding process that you carry out over a series of months rather than days or weeks. New hires can then learn and retain helpful information without feeling rushed.

Forgetting Preboarding

Employers can sometimes be so focused on getting onboarding right that they forget about the necessary process before it begins: preboarding. Preboarding describes providing a new hire with essential information before their official first day. This can include the dress code, workplace policies, a building map, and contact details for the people they will be working with.

Consider putting together a welcome packet of information new employees can read through before they start work. Something as simple as knowing the products and services you provide and where the bathrooms are might be more helpful than you think for easing a new employee’s nerves.

Not Having a Set Onboarding Structure

Structure is likely crucial in your daily business operations, so it should be equally important regarding new employee onboarding. The more structured your onboarding processes, the more consistent your training practices can be for all new employees in the future.

Create a timeline for onboarding actions to occur, such as first office visits, helping new hires settle in, scheduling meetings, and organizing team-building events. Don’t forget to set aside time in your busy schedule for meetings with new hires to find out how they’re enjoying their new role, whether they’re concerned or stressed about anything, and to see if they have any questions.

Onboarding is not a single-day training session. Instead, it’s a months-long integration process that can set new employees up for success. If you want to create a strong and successful team, try to avoid making these mistakes above. The better your onboarding process is, the more proficient and productive your team might be.