In recent years, “onboarding” has become the popular term used to describe how new hires are orientated into a business. It is the most important step in ensuring that employees start their new jobs on the right track, as well as remain engaged throughout their tenure. You should have a new hire checklist template of things to include when onboarding a new worker. Organizations that fail to have an onboarding process increase the risk of employing workers who are less productive, which results in higher turnover rates. Furthermore, onboarding is a long-term process that begins before an employee’s start date and continues for at least six months to a year.
Research has supported the idea that effective onboarding can have a dramatic effect on job performance, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and retention. Therefore, it is important to make sure the relationship starts off on the right foot since the first experiences of a new hire in your organization are critical. Thus, if executed correctly, a successfully implemented new hire checklist template will maximize a new employee’s understanding of their specific roles and responsibilities, boost their confidence, as well as help them to become active participants in the organization and its unique culture.
Starting them off on the right foot with your new hire checklist template
- Pre Arrival:
Before the new hire’s first day on the job be sure to do a thorough background check of the new hire, including contacting their references. Your new hire checklist template should require your new hire to bring appropriate forms of identification on the first day of work. Put together a welcome packet from the organization and include the job description, welcome letter, contact names and phone lists, company background and culture information, as well as mission, vision, and values of the organization. - Give Site and Job Specific Fundamentals:
Give training procedures and expectations relating a workers job and location in your new hire checklist template. There are some basic details that you can’t forget to not provide to workers such as the hours and shifts they should expect to be working, payroll details, vacation time and sick leave. Design an employee handbook that covers a lot of these details and provides these to workers before they start working.
- Welcome the New Hire:
Your new hire checklist template should be designed with the goal in mind of giving new hires a warm welcome. You should ensure your new hire feels that they are part of your company culture. You should introduce your new hire to their fellow workers and if possible a member of senior management, ideally the CEO. They can then get a high-level view of the company to understand where they fit in. - Basic Need-To-Know Information in a New Hire Checklist Template:
Your orientation will likely include some complex information that applies to a worker’s role and location. This is the rich material that makes training high quality but before you get to that there are some basics you should cover for every new hire and should be included in your new hire checklist template. Ensure the new hire has security access to enter the site. The new hire should be given a tour of the facilities to know basic things like the location of the bathroom and canteen, where to store their belongings and where they can go on breaks.
- Company Policies and Procedures:
A large part of your new hire checklist template will be made up of company policies and standards you want your new hire to be aware of before they start working. These could include your company’s policies on discipline, smoking, absenteeism, personal use of equipment, drugs and alcohol, conflict of interest, and overtime. You have desired standards for your business and it’s important your new hire is part of meeting this standard. - Safety, Security and Emergency Procedures:
This section covers some of the most important information a new worker needs to know which should be included in a new hire checklist template. This knowledge could be the difference between going home safe and suffering serious injury. It’s essential to cover what to do in an emergency situation and what evacuation procedures to follow. Explain the safety practices that all new hires are expected to adhere to and the reporting procedures they are expected to follow in the case of an accident. Provide a quality safety orientation that explains the duties, rights, and responsibility of the organization and of the new hire.
- Paperwork:
When you onboard a new hire you need to ensure they have the right documents and qualifications. Failure to ensure they are properly qualified leaves you open to issues around compliance and risking massive fines and penalties. Using an online contractor management system makes this process a lot easier because you don’t have to deal with masses of paperwork. GoContractor enables contractor companies and their workers to upload documents as part of the onboarding
- Set Clear Expectations:
You want a worker to feel well prepared to start working after having gone through an orientation. There should not be any nasty surprises waiting for a new hire once they begin. That’s why you should make clear the expectations you have for the worker in your new hire checklist template. These could include standards of performance, workload, hours of work, and their major duties and responsibilities.
- Begin Training:
Once you have settled on what you want to include in your orientation it’s time to get down to business and begin training. Onboarding new hires was traditionally based on classroom orientations given by a safety manager or local site manager. One issue with this system was a lack of conformity in training across an organization. Site managers occasionally put their own spin on training which opened the door for inconsistency in training and potential risk of injury to workers. Traditional methods of onboarding new hires are also time-consuming because management has to set aside time for training and for large amounts of paperwork.
Conclusion
More companies are shifting to digital systems to train their new hires. An online platform like GoContractor can allow you to include all the information that we’ve already mentioned in the new hire checklist template. Online systems offer much greater powers of flexibility and customizability, allowing you to provide great training to new hires. Workers are onboarded before they step foot on-site saving you time and money. Implement the new hire checklist template today by using GoContractor to give your workers the best possible onboarding experience.
