Business Resources: Onboarding New Employees

We joke (sort of) that when we used to hire people, it was sink-or-swim in the deep end of the pool. We would invite them to our general staff meeting, and expect them to figure out how we work, what needed to get done, and how to do their job. We were just all so overwhelmed that we didn’t have any brainspace to do anything else.

Now that we’ve had some time to breathe, we’ve built a basic onboarding system which we took for a test run this spring when we hired two new staff members. We didn’t do anything complicated, just: 

  • We took some time and made an onboarding list of all sorts of things that it might be helpful for new staff members to know.  

  • On their first day, we set up a meeting to go over this list.  

  • We set up another meeting a week later to check in and answer any questions that had come up.  

As part of this onboarding, we also created a “cheat sheet” to Fishadelphia’s work culture, which includes things like, whether there’s a dress code or eating in virtual meetings.  

Why does onboarding matter?

  • Increasing efficiency. In the most basic way, onboarding provides basic information about how to get things done, e.g., how to fill out a timesheet or submit a reimbursement, which reduces the number of questions people have to ask later.  

  • Increasing inclusion. There’s been plenty of writing about how different people bring different cultural assumptions to work (and life) (here’s just one example). Every workplace has a culture, which will be easier to navigate for people who come from similar experiences than those who come from different ones. Being explicit about culture means that we are acknowledging that not everyone here comes from the same culture. It makes the space more welcoming for people who may not share all the same cultural assumptions because they don’t have to navigate or figure out as many unspoken or implicit assumptions.  

     

To be clear: our onboarding is definitely still a work in progress. There’s plenty more to do.  But it’s a start and maybe it will also be helpful for you.  

 

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