Without an effective hiring process, no business can hope to prosper. You need to not only identify the best possible candidates, but to provide those candidates with a suitable introduction to your company and how you do things.

That way, you’ll limit the adjustment time necessary for the new recruit, and allow them to contribute from the start. Without an effective onboarding process, your hires might never reach their full potential. This is crucial if your workplace brings together a mix of remote and hybrid workers, who might otherwise never get a chance to take in the business and its culture.

So, what does an effective onboarding process really look like? Let’s take a look at how you might design yours.

Information overload

During onboarding, your new recruits will be expected to absorb a great deal of information. This includes not just what you’re telling them, but a myriad of other subtle social and cultural cues. A consistent approach to things like dress codes and working practices can help everyone to get their expectations straight from the start.

The onboarding plan

The first step should be to devise an onboarding plan. You can make changes to this plan as you go on, in response to feedback from your new hires.

Ideally, you’ll want to make it easy for your employees to share information and to collaborate with one another. A centralised app can help with this. When everything that an employee needs to know is in the same place, then they’ll have to do less work in bringing together the contents of various emails, instant messages and phone calls.

Employee onboarding process checklist

Ideally, your process should include several distinct steps. Let’s run through some of them.

Onboarding starts when a hire is made official. This means that you’ll be handing a job requisition form to your HR team. This step is often made easier when you’re working with a modern human resources management system.

Certain kinds of businesses might wish to undertake a background check. It’s easier to change your mind if you do this before finalising the hire. Any new hire forms should be prepared and completed at this point.

You’ll need to communicate your business’s routine to your new hire. Outline their duties, and the schedule that they’ll need to abide by. Next comes the induction – which is arguably the defining stage of the onboarding process. It can be useful to assign a mentor, who’ll be able to make the new hire feel welcome, and provide them with guidance.

Finally, you should set up a working environment that fits both the needs of the employee and the business. If any training is needed immediately, then you should agree on a schedule that will see it completed by a given point.