Onboarding Checklist for New Hires: Field-tested Approach to Success

Have You Created an Onboarding Checklist for New Hires?
If you have not created an onboarding checklist for new hires, you should pay attention.  Up to 25% of new hires leave in the first six months on the job mainly due to poor job and culture fit.  The start of a new hire’s employment is critical — it shapes the new employee’s attitude, understanding, and commitment to the job and the organization.

Leadership teams are taking notice: a recent study by Korn Ferry found 90 percent of executives believe that the retention of new hires is the main talent risk faced by their organization.  If you are in charge of talent management, it is important your organization is onboarding new talent in a way that makes sense.

A Proven Onboarding Checklist for New Hires
Here is a new hire onboarding checklist of what you need to accomplish in those early months and why your investment in time and money can make a huge difference to the degree of your new employee’s engagement and productivity going forward.  Your goal for onboarding new talent should be to get your new hires up to peak productivity as soon as possible at the same time as you assimilate them into your culture and make sure they understand how their role contributes to the overall goals of the organization.

1. The New Hire Information and Contextual Basics
   Your onboarding checklist should start with the basics that every new hire needs to start off on the right foot.  When it comes to onboarding new talent, there’s a lot of information for a new hire to learn.

   The Big Picture
   Our organizational alignment research found that strategic clarity accounts for 31% of the difference between high and low performing organizations.  The below items provide the big picture context, guidance, and direction for everything that will follow.  New hires need to have a clear understanding of the company’s:

   — Mission
   — Vision
   — Values
   — Target clients
   — Unique value proposition
   — Strategic priorities
   — Strategy success metrics

   Expectations About How Work Gets Done
   We know from organizational culture assessment data that corporate culture (how work gets done) has the greatest impact on revenue growth, profitability, leadership effectiveness, customer loyalty, and employee engagement.  The more you clarify how work gets done, whom to contact, when, why and how is extremely valued by new hires.  To set new hires up for success, be crystal clear about:

   — Business practices
   — Performance expectations
   — Behavioral expectations
   — Team norms
   — Compliance regulations
   — Compensation guidelines
   — Organizational structure
   — Rules of engagement
   — System requirements
   — Decision making

   Relationships
   Do not overlook one of the most powerful drivers of new hire engagement and retention: meaningful human connection. According to research from Gallup, employees who have a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged than those who do not.  New hires who feel isolated or disconnected from their colleagues take longer to ramp up, contribute less effectively, and are far more likely to leave within their first year.

   Build structured opportunities for new hires to connect beyond surface-level introductions.  Utilize team lunches, peer buddy programs, virtual coffee chats, or small-group meetups to help accelerate trust, performance, and loyalty.

   A NOTE:
   Do not convey this information via the all-too-common “death by PowerPoint” approach. Smart talent managers use 1×1 coaching, job shadowing, mentoring, and experiential learning combined with a robust knowledge management system to effectively and efficiently share the basics.

2. The New Hire’s Role in the First Three Months
   The first three months in a new role set the tone for everything that follows. They are the critical window when new hires establish credibility, build relationships, and demonstrate that they were the right choice for the job.  During the first three months, new hires should meet 1×1 with their manager on a regular basis. These one-one-one meetings provide a forum to:

   — Ask questions.
   — Review and calibrate expectations for job performance.
   — Clarify roles and responsibilities, deliverables, and priorities.
   — Deliver and celebrate early wins.
   — Lead, manage, and coach your new hire to perform at their peak.

3. New Hire Development and Assessment Plan
   Besides learning where they fit in the company and what their job-specific performance standards are, new hires need to know that there is a clear path ahead that sets them up for personal and professional success.  New hires want to know about:

   — Opportunities: What are the possibilities for my future with the organization?
   — Growth:  In what ways can I learn, grow, and thrive in their new company?

   Every new hire should have career development conversations that take into account their own interests, strengths, and motivations.  Those conversations should inform an individual development plan that is reviewed and monitored frequently as goals are reached or adjusted for current business realities.

The Bottom Line
Recent studies show that almost 50% of new hires fail within their first eighteen months on the job.  And sadly, only 19% of new hires become high performers.  To increase your odds, develop an effective and holistic new hire orientation program that is relevant to new employees, their hiring manager, and the business as whole.

If you want more than the onboarding checklist basics, download the 7 Proven Employee Onboarding Best Practices to Increase Speed to Productivity