Onboarding New Employees

Onboarding new employees is treated as an HR process and delivered by a manager who was told about it the week before. That mismatch explains most of what goes wrong.

What the manager has to do is short and specific.

• Have work ready. Something real in the first three days. Nothing corrodes confidence faster than sitting idle while people are busy.
• Say what good looks like at 30, 60 and 90 days. Out loud, in the first week.
• Name a go-to person for the questions too small to bring to a manager.
• Give feedback early and small. A minor correction in week two is easy. The same correction at month three is a conversation.
• Introduce them to the people they will need, not to the whole floor at once.

None of it takes long. All of it requires the manager to know it is theirs.

The Fair Work Ombudsman covers employment obligations. This is general information rather than legal advice, and obligations vary by state and territory.

See Sentrient’s onboarding management system and learning management system.