In many organizations, employee onboarding is no longer just a how-to-open-the-register process. Modern companies with people-centric cultures have learned the importance of employee onboarding, of starting new employees off on the right foot and making sure that culture and experiential values are instilled from the start.

One of the most powerful cultural creation and reinforcement strategies organizations can implement is a fun, educational, and memorable onboarding process.

Let’s look at the employee onboarding process throughout the four key phases: applying/interviewing, pre-onboarding, day one, and the first weeks. 

THE APPLICATION/INTERVIEW PROCESS

Cultural expectations, particularly for brands that are not household names, begin with the application and interview process. How your ad is written, what is said and done during the interview(s), and the communication throughout the process will say more to a potential new employee about who you are than anything you say about your culture.

How is your employment ad constructed? Is it a laundry list of duties that looks like it was created by a lawyer or does it have personality and give potential employees a sense of who you are and what a day on the job looks like? 

Is the application process easy and clear?

What is the interview like? Full of personality and interesting questions or the same-old, same-old? Your interview is a chance to differentiate your brand or department and to make sure that the people you want to attract are attracted to you, and this is even more important in a tight labor market.

Is your communication throughout the application process clear and respectful? Do you try to communicate in a way that makes applicants feel at ease during a process that is full of stress and fear?

PRE-ONBOARDING

The pre-onboarding phase is crucial. What tone are you setting before they even “walk in the door” for their first day? 

Are you communicating excitement and instilling values, using tactics like welcome videos and personalized emails?

Are you making the required administrative, legalistic parts of the process as fun as possible or, at least, sandwiching them between more energetic and positive touch points?

DAY ONE

Many organizations have put careful thought into designing a powerful first day, with a particular focus on setting the tone for their brand and culture. If you must do an information dump, such as the history of the company, make it entertaining and interesting.

The most important target for Day One is making sure that new employees feel special and like they’re part of the team. 

Starbucks does a great job in this respect by giving new hires a green apron and a personalized name tag. 

Make it personal. Have a welcome sign, a personalized welcome gift, or both. Have people applaud when you bring a new hire into the break room. 

In sum, look for ways to send a signal to your employee that this job will not be like their last jobs. Your organization is different.

THE FIRST WEEKS

A lot will depend on your industry, company, and resources, but here are some key aspects of successful onboarding during the early weeks. 

Most companies focus on operational training; your goal is to make sure this training is holistically connected to your culture, your brand, and the customer experience. 

For any customer-facing roles, soft skills training is crucial. While effective training needs to continue over time, starting this training immediately after hire is essential to developing a customer-centric mindset, much less the skills needed to succeed with customers. 

(Of course, we do have virtual courses that can help you with this. Please check out our Rapid Hero training series, Employee Onboarding I, II, and III.)

Shadowing, having your new team member spend time with a more experienced team member, is an invaluable tactic. However, it is often done poorly. 

You must, must, must make sure that new team members are shadowing your star players. Shadowing should not be determined by who happens to be on shift at the same time. Shadowing must be arranged so that your team members are learning the right things from the right people. 

Finally, make it fun. Don’t just have a great first day and then a 180 degree shift in tone for the weeks that follow. Make sure to include fun and lots of positive reinforcement–all the time, preferably–but particularly in the first weeks.

This post only scratches the surface of creating a powerful onboarding process that is aligned with your culture and your customer experience objectives. Just remember, habits are formed fast, and a well-designed, strategically focused onboarding process is the key to instilling work and service habits that will make each new employee a valued and essential team member and a customer hero.