How do you welcome new employees?

I've always thought that aside from the interview, the first day is the most important day in the employee life cycle and one that all too many companies cannot get right.

The first thing I concentrate on whenever I start a training role in an organisation is starting an appropriate induction course.

I make sure that any paperwork that needs completing gets done there too so that ID cards, pay, etc. are sorted from the beginning too.

And most of all, I make sure someone is there to welcome the individual(s) to the company as they arrive.

I have had some abysmal experiences on the first day with companies I want to make sure others don't.

Though the worst would take some beating, I was flown to another country with no contact details of the company, then told to report at 7 a.m. at the last moment the night before, no-one arrived until 9 a.m., I was then dumped at an empty desk and ignored for a month before being properly introduced to the team and my role. The only consolation was that there were a lot of other people in the same boat, but it was horribly frustrating.

We have the company orientation programme in accordance with the written training process and work instruction in our Quality System. This programme have been starting by welcome presentation and with the first coffee or tea in the Human Resources Department, we inform them by our company culture, processes, work instructions etc. details which includes all administrative employee requirements, we have some company introduction for interviews but also we have been giving more information about us at the first day and this orientation programme continue 15 days by department by department in all main functions. Department responsibles inform the new comers about their functional responsibilities and processes. Also at the first day the new comers have been getting the company tour by together the one HR responsible and HR introduce her/him to the Directors, Managers and functional department employees. Moreover we announced by the welcome email to the all employees who participated to our team, we share our best wishes and good luck for her/him. Also the new comer have been getting the first lunch by their new team or HRs ( for regional staff ).
I was giving the welcome flowers on their office tables in the past but it is not easy now a days .... after the global ecomic crisis issues.

We have a virtual orientation that employees go through and we encourage supervisors to celebrate the first day with a new employee. I will say that we have some improvement to make however and are actually working on that right now. I would be interested in continuing to hear what others do.

I have the responsibility of seeing that all on-boarding forms, etc., are done. Then show the new employee around our work site by providing a tour, where I incorporate company history. The direct supervisor will introduce the employee to others in the company -- usually by department. In about a week, we hold a formal orientation program with a film, and departmental visits where the new employee learns the functions of each. By then they are able to put faces and names with tasks, etc.

I love hearing what others are doing. Our company is responding to the economic crisis by putting in place a hiring freeze, so we don't plan on doing any on-boarding or orientation for a while, but you never know.
Other ideas I've heard about and plan to implement in our company is the pictorial directory (this will be uploaded to the company's Intranet site and will only be available to employees) and a "passport": the new hire is given a passport where each page is a department. The employee must visit these departments within a week of his hire, and get a stamp that he indeed visited and spoke with a person there. That person will need to answer three simple questions (what does your department do? Who is the director of this department? etc.) and when they turn in to HR they get a $15 starbucks card.

A lot of the companies we speak with, as a talent management vendor, have the issue that they have still very silo’ed approach to their HR processes and this shows up very often in welcoming new employees. Specifically the hand-off that should happen between recruiting a new person and getting that new employee to be productive at their job (what is classically called the on-boarding process) is often a rocky process. We have found it is important for organizations to think in advance about more than just the most basic things (e.g. security badge, computer, e-mail address). Rather, really leverage the information you gain about a new employee during the recruiting process into the parts of their near-term life in the job. An example of this is driving the key skill or competency information you learn in the recruiting process into learning and development plans to help that person become as functional as possible in the near term.

Emily Nichols
www.softscape.com

This is an area that my business has a lot of experience and expertise in.
To a large degree it depends on the role and the number of people you recruit into it but I think a combination of an HR led process and a more local introduction is likely to work best.

For both the outcomes should be twofold:

1. To provide a warm welcome so your new employee feels they have made a good choice on a personal as well as professional level
2. To enable them to settle quickly into their role and start making an early contribution will build skill and confidence

Some of the benefits of having an HR driven process are that a welcome will indeed take place and will be consistent across the organisation and you can start during recruitment so there is a seamless transition. New starters will benefit from getting the big picture, the vision and values of the organisation and the opportunity to see where they fit in. If this is a face to face event then it is also a great networking opportunity. An alternative is an online approach if it can be made stimulating and interactive. Corporate inductions work best when they avoid being an ‘information dump’ but instead give individuals an opportunity to discover what they need to know and provide clarity about where further information can be found.

A corporate induction doesn’t replace a local induction and needs to be actively supported by departmental managers who help translate the bigger picture into what it means in the individuals new role. They are best placed to introduce performance management processes and chose any appropriate training programmes. As a large part of settling into a new role is about learning on the job then the line manager and team colleagues can coach, guide and support as appropriate.

I realize that most of you work for large companies. We've just started a very small business, but expect we will need to add an employee within 6 months. The position is technical and will require fairly significant training.

We need to definitely do both the things listed by Dilesh Desai:
1. To provide a warm welcome so your new employee feels they have made a good choice on a personal as well as professional level
2. To enable them to settle quickly into their role and start making an early contribution will build skill and confidence

We also realize that the position we will have open requires a great deal of technical training and we are hoping to combine this with "hands on" where the new employee will work with the experienced technician who will also serve as "trainer." But the employee's work will be valuable from the beginning as it is truly a "four hands are better than two" situation.....

The guidelines we've considered so far for planning for this new employee are based on our own experiences as employees (often dismal--so are of the "don't do that!" variety)...

What advice might you have for a very small business owner?

The first activity I review on my contract is the induction and onBoarding programs.
Usually there is a minor one as induction but no OnBoarding, so usually create an OnBoarding program and marry it to the existing induction program.

Onboarding will always consist of the basics; i. e., complete paperwork, meet the staff (formal/informal) where do you work, but what needs to be considered above all else is the company's culture. Yes, make the person feel welcomed and wanted, but make sure that it's carried out the same (everytime) and in a manner that reflects what the company's uniqueness is. This demands that people from all departments be involved in the creaation process, led by HR, including an executive team member..

A friend of mine joined an investment firm as a Director, they welcomed him by sending a welcome letter with flowers to his house a day before his joining.

i was thrilled if this would have happened to me.
we do the following -
-a welcome letter
-his work station will have his name and business cards ready on day one
- a mail and we personally introduce him to all.
- a buddy is attached and his boss takes him out for lunch.
- he is asked for his Training needs and all the formalities are completed
- we handover a induction schedule to him.

For me it is relevant to have his/her Manager involved from the beginning in a new employee welcoming; it is not an "HR issue " and it is not an admin topic to be covered with all the current points ( labor contract, phone , mobile, desktop), in many of my professional responsabilities i have to fight against both handicaps and it is a healthy company which includes the welcoming topic in his portfolio (it is not the case in many here in Spain !!)

We offer a webinar series on improving your company's new employee onboarding program. You can find more information here: http://www.novitaunique.com/onboarding

Robert Bilotti
www.novitaunique.com