Onboarding New Hires: A 9-Point Checklist

In a recent post, we shared the lessons we’ve learned about employee training that works. The hallmark of our training process includes an intensive week-long learning session on SEO concepts and our SaaS platform. In this post, we follow up with a checklist for onboarding new hires that we’ve refined over time to help integrate new hires fast, so they can be more productive sooner. This approach includes a combination of both a dedicated training program and an onboarding approach that goes beyond the initial classroom and into the work environment.

1. If you have a dedicated training program, ensure you have a dedicated instructor and training room on site and that tech support is available in case of a breakdown.
2. Closely related to the point above is to provide trainees with a binder that assembles everything they need to know about the subject matter and company. If you have a software product like we do, give students access to a demo account, so they are intimately familiar with it.
3. Don’t make the training materials overly difficult as the goal is for new hires to achieve a thorough comprehension of your company, its values and customer offerings quickly.
4. Ensure new hires are thoroughly trained in all of your products and services, even those considered outside of their purview.
5. See to it that new hires are familiar with your brand’s website, especially where it concerns their team.
6. Once the new hires are in the workplace, include cross-training with closely related teams, so they can help support connected strategies.
7. Help keep your new hires focused on learning in the first couple weeks – or even the first month; avoid distracting them with work before their training is complete.
8. Another key to the new employee’s success is understanding the corporate culture, from how to best handle a problem and whom to talk to if anything is needed to the everyday of how things work. Make sure you get them up to speed here.
9. Ensure that new hires understand your company’s overall goals for its future and their stake in its success.

As observed in this post about onboarding here at BrightEdge, the sooner new hires are ramped up, the sooner they’re productive. So rather than leaving new employees to figure stuff out on their own, a better investment in both their and your company’s future is to take the time to facilitate integration.