(This post was originally published on the Asana blog: 6 Ways to welcome your new employee on their first day)
While the hiring process can be lengthy and effort-intensive, the preparation for a new hire’s arrival can sometimes be surprisingly rushed and half-baked. Even if HR takes care of general onboarding, there are still plenty of to-dos that team leads need to cover to make their new teammate feel welcome and prepared.
When the onboarding process is clear, new employees become productive faster, feel secure in their new role, and are more engaged—everybody wins.
How to prepare before your new employee’s arrival
“You’re hired!” usually kicks off a frenzy of activity between the new employee and HR. As for the team the new hire is joining, it can be tempting to slap together some docs and decks and call it a day, but there’s more coordination that needs to happen to welcome new employees and empower them to succeed.
Coordinate with other teams
Assuming everybody else knows what to do for your new hire might lead to things falling through the cracks, which is deflating for someone’s first day. Here’s what to do instead:
Loop in your IT team to make sure the new hire’s desk and equipment will be ready on day one.
Be sure to schedule meetings with other teams. For a new sales associate, it’s a good idea to meet with customer success and marketing so they have context on who your customers are and what your company helps them achieve. This fosters better collaboration in the future, too.
Select an onboarding buddy or mentor
Starting at a new company, while exciting, can be intimidating when you aren’t familiar with people and processes. Instead:
Assign your new employee an “onboarding buddy” or mentor to show them the ropes. Ensure the mentor can make the time commitment and carves out proper time in their schedule beforehand.
Have their mentor schedule a dedicated time and safe space to ask questions and provide feedback. (You can even do that with a 1-1 project in Asana!)
Update your team’s documentation
Sure, HR might be taking care of the major paperwork, but it’s also important to check in on your own team’s documentation of processes and responsibilities.
Make sure everything is up to date and gives new hires full context on what your team does and how. For example, a marketing team might want to include process documents on how they run a campaign.
Check that links are valid and resources are easy to access so they don’t have to dig around. In Asana, you can @mention other tasks and projects and add attachments to tasks (see below).
Go through your team’s folders or projects to make sure they’re cleanly and clearly organized so your new hire can continue to easily explore resources.