Build Culture from Day One
Building a successful, supportive culture starts on day one. In fact, we believe that the first 90 days are an absolutely critical part of the employee journey. It’s during this time that you can either develop a proactive culture to help employees shine in their new positions or risk losing your new talent to poor onboarding procedures. At UrbanBound, we’re constantly working to refine our own onboarding practices to retain our new hires. Here are a few of our favorite tips:Make day one memorable – No paperwork! Too many new hires spend their first days completing mundane tasks – sitting in long orientation sessions, reviewing and signing documents, and formatting email signatures. Boooooring! Give them an experience worth sharing with the friends and family who will inevitably ask about their first day.
At UrbanBound, our new hires are met with a card from our leadership team, a water bottle, a t-shirt, and box of chocolates. It doesn’t have to be anything extravagant, but a small gift can go a long way toward helping new employees feel welcome. Consider taking your new hire out to lunch with the leadership team to foster and promote open communication. Again, nothing too fancy required; just get your new team member out of the office and talking with their new co-workers.
Plan Onboarding with Intention
Prepare a Launch Pad for Success
Set expectations. Work with your new employee to lay out exactly what success looks like within the first 90 days. Give attainable and measurable goals that new hires should be striving to achieve and ensure you’re providing them with the resources needed to succeed. If employees have something to work toward or new skills to acquire, it gives them a benchmark for how well they are performing. These 90-day action plans can also give you a better idea of your employee’s skill set and provide direction on what areas to focus on in the future.
By having a well-defined set of onboarding processes, you can help make those first 90 days a stairway to future success with your company.
