Improve Employee Onboarding as a Team

Onboarding is widely neglected

A surprisingly low 12%* of employees believe their organization nails onboarding. That says a lot, and at the very least, it means immense untapped potential.  

A poorly executed onboarding process can lead to a number of problems, none of which are new to you:

• Lower job satisfaction: New hires may feel confused or overwhelmed - they are just not “on board” - which can negatively impact their satisfaction and performance.
• Lower productivity: Without proper guidance, new hires may take longer to get up to speed, affecting their productivity and that of their team.
• Higher turnover: New hires may be more likely to leave the company if they feel unsupported or out of sync with the company culture.
• Damaged reputation: High turnover and unhappy employees can harm a company's reputation, making it harder to attract top talent in the future.

The power of a well-structured onboarding cannot be overstated. It gets your new hires up to speed quickly, makes them productive members of your team, increases their job satisfaction, and strengthens their commitment to your organization. 

Yet creating an effective onboarding process that everyone follows consistently can be daunting. It's like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with pieces from multiple sets. You have various shapes and colors, but it's challenging to see the complete picture. You may already be using formal onboarding programs, buddy systems, job shadowing, or online orientations, training modules, and virtual meet-and-greets. But do you really know what’s working and what isn't?

Streamlining onboarding: What’s effective and what’s not?

We believe there's no silver bullet when it comes to onboarding. Your team, both old and new, knows best what works and what doesn’t, and that can change over time. With Nyord, you can capture the collective wisdom of your employees to continuously fine-tune your onboarding process. Here’s how it unfolds.

Team-centric onboarding - How Nyord steps in

Step 1: Understand the needs of your existing and new members

This step is about gathering observations and experiences from everyone involved in onboarding. Insight may differ between the new hires and the old hares responsible for integrating them into your organization and bringing them up to speed. But they are equally valuable. 

Find out what's already working and categorize it. Ask people in your organization: “Think back to when you started working here: What were the things that helped you fit in and contribute effectively? What made you feel valued, engaged, and supported?” Also, ask if there is room for improvement: “What would have been on your wish list? What would have made it easier to connect and contribute?"

Participants submit their takes anonymously. Also they provide feedback and rate other's contributions on a scale of 1 to 5. All insights are ranked in real-time according to their relevance to the group, providing valuable insight into the group's priorities.

Examples of insights that might emerge: A few of the most recent hires may raise that finding key information about how to submit sick leave, or how to align with the team on taking leave took too much time and effort. 

Benefits of using Nyord:

• Foster inclusivity: The platform's anonymous and asynchronous features ensure that everyone from introverts to extroverts, remote to in-office staff, and newbies to veterans can participate.

• Bypass groupthink: Participants’ input is hidden until they share their own insights, effectively avoiding the pitfalls of open brainstorming where initial opinions dominate the dialogue. This results in more diverse and innovative perspectives.

• Achieve quick results: With a blind rating system, team members assess the relevance of each other's contributions, only revealing the average score afterward. This speeds up the process of identifying the most pertinent issues.

Step 2: Co-create effective onboarding solutions

Now it's time to brainstorm solutions based on the insights you've collected. What actions can we take to get new hires off to a great start? What process changes can we agree on? Suggestions can range from small culture hacks to detailed initiatives. Participants post their suggestions, which are then open for comment and discussion by the team. As in step 1, ideas are rated anonymously, and the highest-rated ideas rise to the top of the list, so you can quickly identify the most promising solutions. 

Example of an onboarding improvement proposal: Skip the video tutorial. Instead, hand out a deck of cards with icebreaker questions - perhaps unusual ones - to talk about, when the new hire meets her colleagues for the first time. 

Benefits of using Nyord:

• Active engagement: Since almost everyone on your team can relate to the “first days on the job”, people want to know what their peers have come up with and what they have experienced. However, participants can only access this information if they first submit their own input. Build momentum through curiosity and the application of “give and get”. 

• Accelerate people alignment: Everyone is in the same loop, resulting in evaluated proposals ready for further testing. These solutions and how they got there are transparent to everyone. Eliminate lengthy debates and ineffective compromises.  

• Increase execution buy-in: Presenting potential solutions at this stage, along with their pros and cons, allows decision makers to form informed opinions, which simplifies the subsequent implementation process.

Step 3: Experiment and learn

Once the brainstorming is complete, you decide which ideas to focus on and turn them into experiments. These are "safe to try" alterations to your onboarding process that run within a defined scope and timeline. At the end of each experiment, your team votes on its success, providing authentic knowledge about which practices worked, which didn't, and why.

Example of a experimental change to an onboarding process: For the first six months, have three people on your team ask a new hire once a month in a 15-minute one-on-one if they really feel like they are part of the team and why, or if not, why not. Provide guiding questions and encourage openness and good listening.

Benefits of using Nyord

• Minimal communication effort: By initiating tests in a digital environment open to all team members, individuals can easily share and discuss their experiences throughout the experiment.

• Quantifiable results: At the end of the testing period, each participant is asked to evaluate the results of the experiment, providing measurable data.

• Streamlined record-keeping: All trials are recorded and shared across teams, fostering peer-to-peer learning and encouraging other units to adopt successful approaches.

Better ways of onboarding employees - with Nyord

Nyord provides a simple but effective framework for your team to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your onboarding process, that is inclusive, transparent and without the need for a skilled facilitator. By working together on challenges Nyord promotes engagement and a sense of belonging among your team members, boosting their productivity. Nyord fosters an inclusive, data-driven culture of improvement, and its easy-to-use interface encourages self-management, co-creation, and collaboration.

Ready to upgrade your employee onboarding approach?

Sign up and try Nyord today.

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