A great onboarding experience will set new employees up for success and support them to build strong relationships with colleagues. A structured approach goes a long way to ensure they are given the time to become confident and comfortable in their new role and support retention. Continually investing in your employee beyond their first 90 days will support ongoing engagement and retention.
New senior executives can find specific insights and resources to help them in their roles on the senior executive fundamentals website.
Policies and mandatory training
Take time to clearly identify the policies and procedures critical to the employee’s role and ensure they complete any mandatory training. Provide the employee with the opportunity to ask questions to understand the relevance to their role.
Develop their Performance Development Plan (PDP)
Introduce your new employee to your organisation’s PDP process and help them commence their plan. This may involve further discussion on your organisation, branch or team’s strategic plan and how your new employee’s work fits in with this. Ideally, this would be completed by the end of their first month. Find out more about Performance Development Plans.
Check in with the employee
It’s a good idea to check in with the employee about how their onboarding is going at the end of their first month and at the 90-day mark. This gives them an opportunity to discuss how they’re settling in, ask questions and provide feedback on the onboarding process. During these check ins you can also gauge their level of engagement with the organisation and their role.
Checklist: the first month with a new employee
- Confirm the employee understands any policies and procedures relevant to their role
- Develop the employee’s Performance Development Plan (PDP)
- Check in with the employee at the one month and 90-day mark to discuss their onboarding experience.