Establishing and maintaining strong company culture is a critical component of employee retention. Companies that focus on building a positive company culture have a 40% higher retention rate than companies that neglect this critical management aspect. Wise leaders know that retention for new hires starts before a new hire’s first day of work and continues through onboarding and training. Here are some tips for introducing your new employees to your company culture.
Share Company Culture During Onboarding
Introducing your new hires to your company culture starts well before their official start date with the interview and onboarding processes. The onboarding process should include sharing information about the company culture, its mission and values, and how the new hire fits into the overall picture. These efforts should continue during the orientation and training processes so that new hires can hit the ground running with a good understanding of company culture from their first day at work. Partnering with an HR company with experience designing solid onboarding processes, like Employco, enables your organization to build a strong foundation for new hires with onboarding that quickly includes them into your company’s culture.
Ease the Orientation Process
Assign new hires a guide or mentor from the company’s seasoned staff to show them around the office and introduce them to their colleagues. Managers can discuss individual, team, and company goals and share how the new hire is a part of those goals. They can also ensure that new employees have the resources and support they need to do their job well and achieve their goals. Tying some of the first tasks for new hires to company goals and helping a new employee understand how executing these tasks contributes to the company’s overall mission is a great way to integrate them into the company and the culture.
Make the onboarding process fun! Introduce new hires and their coworkers to each other in creative ways that help to integrate new hires into day-to-day operations. Gift new hires with company swag and invite them to company-wide events such as picnics or happy hours to help break the ice and begin to transform new hires into colleagues.
Encourage Collaboration
Providing opportunities for new employees to collaborate with their teammates and other company members is a great way to build rapport and bring them into the company culture. Encourage collaboration between new hires and their co-workers by forming cross-functional teams. These groupings allow new hires to learn about the company’s daily activities hands-on while building positive relationships and learning about the daily activities of their teammates. Collaboration can also introduce new hires to job paths and aspects of the company that could lead to future career growth opportunities. Designing programs that encourage collaboration through strategies, tools, and processes is one of the best ways to strengthen company culture. Collaborating with an HR partner, like Employco, makes it easy to design and implement programs that foster and support collaboration.
Show Recognition and Appreciation
Both new hires and seasoned workers appreciate being rewarded for their efforts. Savvy managers incorporate channels for recognition when employees do well. Even small tokens of gratitude foster a sense of community and reinforce a positive sense of collaboration during the onboarding process and beyond. Providing all your employees, including new hires, with the ability to recognize and appreciate their teammates is a great way to foster and build company culture into your daily work life. The experts at Employco understand how to help organizations build and implement the right recognition and appreciation program to strengthen company culture. They’ll create a customized program that suits you perfectly.
Implementing smart onboarding practices helps new hires adapt quickly to your company culture, values, and work. This helps to foster a strong company culture, which often translates to higher efficiency and a healthy bottom line. Having the right processes and tools during onboarding helps set up your employees for success.
Contact us for help designing and implementing your onboarding processes.