Pre-Onboarding Can Help Launch a Successful Onboarding Experience

Once you’ve finished negotiating your new hire’s job offer, and checked their references, you might have the urge to take a breath, and even catch up on other work. As you do, keep in mind that onboarding isn’t just around the corner, it’s already here.

Many companies view onboarding as an integrated part of the hiring process. Some leadership professionals consider it to be a “magic moment” that can set the stage for how engaged, or disengaged, your new hire will be—a fact that can spill into retention down the road.

Doesn’t onboarding start on the employee’s first day?

To get these tasks out of the way, you might want to start onboarding before the employees first day.

Pre-onboarding takes place immediately after your new hire signs their job offer. What can you do to make your employee’s first day a magic moment.

According to a recent Human Resources Today article, a successful or unsuccessful onboarding experience can have a lingering effect on a new hire, and send ripples into things like your company’s retention strategy, along with whether or not your newest employee supports your company’s culture and vision going forward. Often, a successful onboarding experience points to onboarding steps your company took before your new hire’s first day.

Onboarding before the new hire’s first day can help you clear a number of essential administrative tasks from your new hire’s plate, and introduces them to the company before they arrive. It also gives you a chance to prepare your existing team for their new member.

Compliance Tip: Be sure you track time new hire is working to allow you to comply with wage and hour laws.

Here are three onboarding steps you can take to help jumpstart the larger onboarding process:

1. Send your new hire essential employment forms they need to fill out, and manage other administrative tasks.

Do you want your new hire’s first few days to be filled with paperwork, or setting up their email? Consider starting the new-hire paperwork process now, using a secure file sharing application when necessary, to send and receive the following:

• W-4 tax form,
• State withholding tax form.
• Direct deposit authorization form.
• The access and log-in credentials they need to set up and manage their company email, in addition to other employee-only project management tools your company uses.

2. Introduce them to the aspects of your company culture they didn’t discover during the interview process.

Now that they’re officially an employee, you can view the onboarding phase as a chance to provide them with a better look at your company’s culture.

• The onboarding phase can be a good time to share the employee handbook so your new hire can find more information about things related to how the company works, along with the way you communicate the mission and vision to employees.
• If your new hire receives and reads the employee handbook before their first day, this can give you a chance to check in with them early in the onboarding process, and answer questions related to policies, procedures, and accepted norms.

3. Make an announcement to your current employees, and check in with individuals if necessary.

Onboarding is about helping to make sure your new hire feels at home, and adjusts to the new job in a positive fashion. But onboarding also involves managing the existing work environment, especially as it relates to current employees.

• Notify other managers, security, front desk personnel, payroll, and anyone else outside your department who might be interacting with your new hire.
• Connect with the members of your department, especially those who will be working closest with your new hire.
• If possible, set up a “buddy system” among staff members. They can help manage different onboarding tasks during your new hire’s first few days, including showing them around, introducing them to members of other departments, and even checking in with them here and there.
• Connect with employees who might be concerned how the new hire will affect their role. This can help you avoid turning an existing employee into a passive job seeker.

When you put extra effort into onboarding, you can help your newest team member prepare to hit the ground running, while making sure your company is ready for them as well.