Onboarding is a process through which new employees are introduced to functional and social aspects of their job roles. It allows new employees to get acclimated to the work culture so that they understand their roles and responsibilities and get absorbed in the new environment.
An effective onboarding program ensures that new employees are seamlessly integrated into the organization, and adjust swiftly to become proficient in their roles. It sets up employees for a new journey on which they can achieve their professional or personal goals.
Today, technology has gone a level up, and the way employees are onboarded and recruited has completely upended. Digital onboarding is a new norm in the corporate world, which has made onboarding a lot simpler and fun. With digital onboarding, the administrative and financial load has certainly fallen, but there are still some challenges on the way that hinders the smooth induction of new employees.
The long and complex onboarding process with ambiguous goals and unclear path makes onboarding ineffective. The lackluster onboarding experience pushes employees to step out of the organization in the first few days of their recruitment. Amidst ongoing labor market turbulence all across the world, you need to retain key talent and invest in onboarding which can make your employees stick with you for the long haul.
Whether you’re designing a new onboarding program or planning to overhaul the existing one, you must keep the fun and creative element intact to make employees engaged and energized.
In this article, we’ll discuss various fun and creative onboarding activities for new hires that can make your onboarding program a great success.
10 Fun and Creative Onboarding Activities For New Hires
- Start onboarding before they walk through the door-
We know that the first day at work can be overwhelming. Almost every new hire feels surrounded by a whirlwind of emotions, ranging from excitement to nervousness.
You can easily turn the employee’s anxiety and stress into excitement by interacting with them before they officially start working. HR can fix a quick video call of the entire new batch of employees with the manager of the company. Informal conversations before the start of formal work can make employees feel comfortable.
You can get all the documents signed electronically, register them on the company’s portal and provide them with their login IDs so that they can kick start their work quickly.
- Give them a warm welcome-
Remember, first impressions matter. When the new employee arrives, you need to give them a warm welcome so that they feel valued. There are umpteen ways to welcome them. For instance-
- Greet your employees with a warm welcome through emails
- Send them goodies like t-shirts, water bottles, a diary, a pen, or a coffee mug
- Shoot a video involving senior employees and team managers where they express their happiness with the addition of new employees to their organization
- Take them on a virtual office tour and introduce them to the office workspace
Such welcomes can make them feel an integral part of your family.
- Organize a virtual lunch-
Food brings people together in a way nothing else could. Virtual lunch is the best way to connect with the new hires despite being miles apart. You can virtually connect with the new employees through video calls and casual conversations.
Here are some interesting ideas that will help bond with new employees.
- Fix a theme-based lunch meeting and deliver food to their home
- Add some entertainment by turning your virtual lunch into karaoke sessions where everyone sings along
- Break the ice by asking questions revolving around their hobbies, past experiences, and future goals
- Discuss serious topics yet in a light mood (like the importance of completing eLearning courses in time)
- Play fun games like two truths and a lie, riddles, guess who? would you rather?
Virtual lunch can foster intimacy and good bonding among employees and help the new hires perform better.
- Allow the new employees to connect with their peers-
Before any formal conversation pops up between the new hires and the old employees, let the new employees connect with their peers on social media platforms like LinkedIn or other dedicated Slack channels.
Water cooler conversations through team chat apps can raise the morale of newly hired employees who are in desperate need of team bonding. They can ask a variety of questions to their team leaders and take suggestions on eLearning courses that can help advance their career growth.
- Assign new hires their onboarding buddy-
On the first day itself, you can assign new hires with their onboarding buddy who will guide them through the entire onboarding process.
A new employee usually has a lot of questions on their mind which need to be addressed before he starts his online training and work. For instance, he may have questions like- How do I access all the eLearning resources? What is the pattern of online training assessments? Where to find the official holiday calendar? Which is the most essential eLearning course for the sales team personnel? How do I complete my task on time?
When the new employees have someone to mentor them, they’ll feel more comfortable and get assimilated into the organization smoothly and rapidly.
Today, as technology has taken a great leap forward, many companies have started pairing up new employees with onboarding bots. You can integrate Artificial Intelligence into your employee onboarding LMS software. Onboarding chatbots respond quickly and provide in-time support to employees. It can amplify the user onboarding experience and reduce the workload of other employees who were earlier directed to mentor new employees.
- Share tribal stories with new hires-
Nothing can be more exciting than welcoming new hires to your tribe. There are different ways you can tell the success stories or share tribal stories with your employees. You can simply put all the achievements on the company’s website and let the new hires read themselves. No doubt this can be a great way to make employees feel that they’re part of a great organization, but as your onboarding has taken a new form, you need to alter your methodology to tell your stories as well.
Allow the senior and successful employees to share their videos where they talk about their eLearning journey, the benefits of enrolling in a specific course, and How they cracked a deal? What mistakes did they make in their journey? How did they resolve every problem with confidence?
Such tribal stories define the soul and culture of the organization.
- Prepare them for online training-
New employees enter an organization with high spirits and desires. They’re more inclined toward learning and doing their work in the best way possible to fulfill their goals.
During onboarding, you can prepare small snippets of online training courses provided by your company that are vital for employees to upskill themselves. By informing the employees about the structure and functions of online training, you can assure them of getting the best training for better performance.
- Tell them who is who-
Don’t be a company that expects its employees to do everything on its own. Make sure your employees get to know the industry-specific jargon so that they can assimilate into your organization seamlessly. You must tell them the important members of your organization who are responsible for running the organization effectively.
Provide them with an e-guidebook that mentions who is who in the organization. Such a guidebook can mention the details of the manager, HR, eLearning professionals, team leaders, etc, whom employees can reach out to in times of need.
- Be app-ealing-
Spotlight new employees in your employee app so that every employee of the organization can know about them. This way, new hires feel a sense of belonging. Seeing so much coming from your end will make them put their best foot forward.
- Ask them if they like the onboarding program-
An onboarding survey can help you gauge the effectiveness of your onboarding program. You can ask employees about their onboarding experience through rating scales or free responses.
Such surveys can be conducted after a week, fortnight, or a month after onboarding.
Conclusion-
The above-mentioned 10 strategies can help in providing an amazing and thrilling onboarding experience to new employees. This way, you can help them step up their roles by building confidence in them. By designing and implementing a strategic onboarding program, you can engage and retain key talent in your organization, which can take you to greater heights.