Making a good first impression when a new employee comes on board is so important, both to help them fully understand the role and to do it as well as possible, as well as to give them clear direction moving forwards. Often onboarding is overlooked and isn’t always done thoroughly, however this can impact the long term success of the new employee without you knowing. So, we’re introducing three essential steps to help set your new employee up for success.
Clearly Define The Role and Goals
The first thing you need to do when a new employee starts is to clearly define their role and goals. Giving your employee an idea of what you want them to achieve in the first week, month, three months and six months will give them some structure whilst they are finding their feet in the new role. As well as their own goals, it’s so important to make them aware of the overall goals of the business and the direction it’s moving in, as well as a discussion of how their role can help the business to meet these goals. This will help them to maintain a focus of the overall business with their work, which should help them to become a valuable member of the team.
Pre-Plan Training and 1 To 1 Meetings
Next up, you should pre-plan the new employees training and 1 to 1 meetings, and put them in the diary. It’s so easy to let a focus on new employees slip when you’re busy, however without providing the right guidance and training, they can feel quite disorientated and unsupported in their new role. Whilst they will likely come to you for help, they shouldn’t have to worry about everything, so putting the training sessions and meetings in the calendar in advance will help everyone to stay on track. You should start with a weekly meeting, as well as check-ins throughout the week to make sure they know what they’re doing, then eventually you can move to bi-weekly 1 to 1’s.
Adequate Security Training
One of the things when it comes to employee onboarding that is very often ignored is adequate security training. Ensuring that new employees know about the security procedures at your workplace specifically, including data protection, cyber security and so on. They need to know about common scams in your industry, like broker scams, phishing or different types of fraud, as well as how to prevent security incidents where possible, or failing that, identify them quickly and report them. Without this training, your company could be at risk, so make sure that all new employees are taken through this, perhaps with a consistent powerpoint that everyone goes through, so you know everyone is up to date with best practices. Whenever a new risk arises, the powerpoint can simply be updated and reshared with everyone in the business as a refresher. You can never be too careful when it comes to the cyber security and data protection of your business.
