Remember your first day on the job? For various reasons, it can be both the best and worst day of your career. Nowadays, as a manager or supervisor who welcomes new employees to the firm, you might be looking at the “first day” from the opposite side. You are now a critical part of the onboarding process. And you can, to some extent, influence whether that first day is a good or bad one.

Despite its slightly nautical sound, “onboarding” is a simple concept, describing the process of introducing new employees to the firm; helping them “on-board” so to speak. It includes showing the newbies around, introducing them to colleagues and providing them with access and equipment, along with making sure that they are up to speed on the firm’s written and unwritten rules and procedures.

Effective onboarding is extremely important for several reasons. The quicker that a new employee becomes integrated and feels at home in the firm, the quicker they will be able to start doing the job that you hired them for. Recruitment is an expensive process, so you will want new recruits to start “earning their keep” as soon as possible.

Is your process effective? If so, how effective? Measure your employee onboarding

It seems obvious, but many companies end up with a poorly integrated workforce as a result of a lack of a clear and effective onboarding process. Since it is such a crucial process, it is important to define the necessary steps. Along with exactly who is responsible for carrying out and checking up on each step.

Evaluation of the onboarding process is also key, and measuring the employee onboarding success can be done several ways. An obvious way is to get feedback from those involved in the process. Critically, the new employees themselves, but also the managers and supervisors involved in the process, to see whether they felt that clear guidelines were provided to make their job easier.

An online survey can be a particularly effective way of assessing onboarding in your company. Quick and convenient, it has the added advantage of providing you with quantifiable results which allow you to easily highlight problem areas and iron out kinks in the welcome process. Measurable results will also allow you to track your progress across time and present a more attractive recruiting prospect.

Find out how anonymous surveys and review software from Netigate could help you measuring your employee onboarding process.