There’s no “I” in “team,” and that is certainly true when it comes to employee onboarding. The onboarding of one employee has implications for all your employees, and how they work together in the long term.

One of the objectives of onboarding is to make sure the employee is properly trained and equipped to be a part of the team. Poor onboarding or no onboarding means a new employee will be less able to contribute to the team immediately, making life more difficult for their colleagues. Here’s how you can improve your team’s employee onboarding in five simple steps.

Five Onboarding Best Practices For Your Employee’s First Day

Early Onboarding & Orientation

Orientation is your first-impression with a new employee, and it’s an impression that they will take with them for the duration of their time at the company. Plan ahead what day one will look like for your new employee. This will provide your new hire with the confidence to succeed.

A Team-Wide Welcome

Getting the entire team involved in an employee’s first day allows them to become acclimated and comfortable in their new environment. Set up times for your employee to sit with members of your team to introduce them and allow them to learn how they’ll work with each person.

Ongoing Onboarding

Onboarding a new employee doesn’t stop after the first day, week, or even month. Setting up an ongoing onboarding process ensures an employee is clear on their expectations. Ideal onboarding lasts between 90 days and one year.

Immerse New Hires Immediately in Company Culture

60% of employers say the primary purpose of onboarding is to integrate new employees into the company culture. Yet organizational culture is often neglected in onboarding programs, leading employees to figure it out for themselves. This makes it more likely that new employees will have a rocky start, rubbing their colleagues the wrong way as they go against organization norms of which they are unaware. As a result, teams may not work together as well as they could.

Automation

Automating your onboarding process saves managers and HR employees hours of time filling out paperwork. Research from CareerBuilder found that in companies where onboarding information wasn’t captured electronically, HR managers spent three or more hours per employee manually collecting and processing data.

Onboarding Poor Practices That Burden Your Entire Team

Your team may not be aware of the impact poor onboarding has on them. Yet if your company has any of the following onboarding practices, there’s no question it has an impact on the whole team.

Effects of Poor Onboarding

Studies on onboarding tend to focus on the impact it has on the individual employee, such as how companies with little or no onboarding have greater turnover in the first few months after new employees start. Yet lower individual employee productivity and higher turnover affect the rest of the team, too. Poor onboarding causes:

  • More Work for Other Employees — And not just HR employees. If a new employee fills a role but is not equipped to do it properly, other employees are often forced to pick up the slack by training the employee and even taking some of their workload.
  • Wasted Effort — Think of all the time and energy your company’s HR professionals put into finding great talent. It’s all wasted if poor onboarding influences this talent to prematurely exit the company.
  • Less Cohesive Teams — It’s not always about culture. For instance, if an onboarding process fails to brief new employees on the organization’s vision, strategy and its priorities, different employees will have different ideas about what to prioritize and what their role is. Without a clear vision, teams can become fractured and less productive.

With the right onboarding solution, not only will your new employees quickly be working at their full capacity — so will your entire team.