Checklist: How to Set Up Your New Hires for Success
One of the aspects of my role as a manager that I genuinely relish is on-boarding new employees. I enjoy those first few weeks, when I have an opportunity to influence someone's career. Because face it: The way a new employee is treated when they arrive colors their attitude and aptitude for the rest of their time in your organization. Treat them well, pair them with a great mentor, and provide the tools, technology, and training they need, and they are well-equipped for success. Screw it up, and they might never recover.
That's why I was happy to see Dick Grote talk about on-boarding in a recent post at the Harvard Business Review. I'm already a believer, and you should be too.
Of course, large companies usually have some sort of institutionalized onboarding process for new hires. Smaller, less bureaucratic companies might not want something as formal, but they should still put together an on-boarding checklist to make sure they have all of their bases covered. It's not rocket science; look around your organization and pull together the information and resources that will position people for success.
Don't forget to:
- Set up a new PC and be sure it's configured with email and other internal tools he or she will need.
- Print a box of business cards and have them available the day the employee arrives.
- Ensure the workspace looks inviting -- a nameplate is tangible proof that you recognize you've hired an individual (even if that individual is about to work in a cubicle).
- Create an organizational chart in a program like Visio and explain it in detail to the new hire.
- Assign a peer mentor to your new hire to answer questions and deal with issues as they arise in the first few weeks.
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