SWAG is great. Who wouldn’t like a new company  tote bag, bottle of wine and candy jar on their new desk? Welcome wagons are just that. They are usually things and small events that welcome someone new to a company, and after a few weeks are gone. If there is no more than that to bring someone new into your company, you are potentially setting your company as well as new employee up for failure. So from a technical and strategic view,  where does onboarding fit in the hiring process?

Successful onboarding is the result of several human resource management functions moving and working together in harmonious fashion. According to Karla Walker of American Family Insurance, five components make up the Strategic Onboarding Process and it is a collaborative process:

 

  1. Align: Ensure the organization agrees on the need for the new hire and specific role. This is key, the organization has to be on the same page before bringing in anyone otherwise a poor fit for the company in general may be hired.
  2. Acquire: Recruit, interview, and select the new hire based on hard skills, and cultural fit for the company.
  3. Integrate: Provide the building blocks: socialization for new hires to connect with others who can provide information and build relationships; culture to learn a sense of the organizational norms; clarification to ensure employees understand their new jobs and expectations and; compliance to teach the basic legal and policy-related rules and regulations.
  4. Support and Development: Give new hires and agents tools, resources, experiences needed to do the work. If this is not provided you are impairing the new hire’s ability to grow or succeed in any way.
  5. Accelerate: Help new hires/agents and the team perform better and faster.

Welcome bags/ boxes/wagons should still be provided. Introductory lunches are great for team building and a morale booster for existing employees, but be sure that you focus on more than SWAG when bringing in a new hire from administrative to executive level.

If you need help with your onboarding strategy, Brightwing’s Brightstartwould be more than happy to help grow your workplace culture.

Author: Jenny Dickey