Do you think companies need to update their new employee onboarding?

7 Comments

1. AnonymousFebruary 28,2022 at 6:10PM UTC

   I started a fantastic job 2 weeks ago. While HR had a solid and lengthy Onboarding process with several trainings, form collections and policy reviews, IT still struggling with my platforms and access to our VPN. I'm at the start of week 3 and will go in this week to help figure this out in person since remote Onboarding for IT is not working for them.

2. AnonymousMarch 2,2022 at 9:04PM UTC

   I've been in my role for 3 weeks, I'm in office now but will transition to remote.
   It was a disaster, they did not have a computer for me on the first day, I don't have my phone set up, everything is under the previous employees, name, there are no policies, procedures, or documentation in place. The manager has no interested in building out or developing the role. I need access to his calendar (recruiter scheduling appointments for him) and he refuses access. It's been unbelievable. I couldn't imagine what this process would be like if I had been fully remote from the start.

3. Madam anon663March 3,2022 at 2:28PM UTC

   My company has only gotten worse with onboarding. Before Covid, it was bad. Really bad. Managers are handed a key to their office and that is it. New hires are given the wrong information, wrong place to park, come dressed inappropriately for a manufacturing environment, its just a mess. No wonder we have a revolving door of turnover, its a zoo.

4. Kristie WhiteMarch 3,2022 at 3:43PM UTC

   As someone who has worked with HR for a very long time, I suspect it is not so much that the on boarding processes are terrible as it is that weak on boarding processes have been hit by very high volume. It’s impossible to take a weak process and scale. And HR is as overburdened as any department in this pandemic with the labor shortage. So you may have to ask for what you need. Number one, what equipment/access do you need to do your job. Number two, Get a clear description of your work and the goals for success. Number three you need to know what their expectations are of you when it comes to creating reports, checking in, communications, networking, FaceTime with the executives. If you can ask these questions, I think you can get a pretty good idea of what your position. And you will have to push for the answers, because it doesn’t sound like you’re going to be able to depend on HR or the company to tell you these things.

5. AnonymousMarch 3,2022 at 3:52PM UTC

   I work at a laboratory, so we are always on site. I still consider myself a new supervisor, even though I am approaching my 5-year anniversary. Throughout these years, I am constantly reevaluating my home grown on-boarding process. I put together a checklist of important items to go over with new employees and update it regularly. I send an email to the new employees before they start letting them know the dress code, and other important first day information. This hopefully gives them an opportunity to ask questions and feel prepared before they start. I also spend a decent amount of time the days prior to the start date reviewing my onboarding documents to make sure I am up to date.

   A lot of our training is peer to peer, so I like to set up meetings with the person who will be doing the on-the-job training to make sure they have all the tools and support they need. I check in with both the trainer and trainee regularly, both together and separately to make sure everyone has what they need the first few weeks.

   There is always room for improvement. I would love to hear what other supervisors do and hear what things new employees value most during the onboarding process.

6. AnonymousMarch 3,2022 at 5:49PM UTC

   My onboarding at the job I most recently started was appalling. However, I created an onboarding OneNote where I put in all the things I learned, and handed it over to my manager when I left. I have spent a ton of time rehauling training and onboarding for other organizations, and it is incredibly important to overall job satisfaction. At one organization it helped us with our retention rate of employees. No one likes to feel like they were just thrown into the deep end. It's overwhelming, and they also like to see what's coming down the line. If you don't have a plan, and communicate that plan, it can seem chaotic--and this last job was. So much so that I basically left after three months.

7. AnonymousMarch 10,2022 at 3:34AM UTC

   So much! Our current onboarding plan is some videos and a few self taught, self paced online tutorials. It was rough, but two other women started on the same day - and we were all on the same team. Having other people to wade through it all was really helpful. It’s not made any improvement over the last year. It’s probably gotten worse especially with more remote hires, honestly. Some managers really phone in it and some try really hard…