Wonder

Research Outline

Prepared for Nella A. | Delivered September 13, 2019

New Employee Induction Program

Goals

To identify innovative employee induction programs that include why, what do to, and how to complete such a program for the purposes of creating a manager's guide and new employee induction program.

Early Findings

Preliminary research indicates there is plenty of information available on best practices for setting up an innovative employee induction program. 
The number one reason to create a formal employee induction program is to reduce employee turnover.
According to Process.st, onboarding can increase employee retention by as much as 25%. Moreover, 15% of employees who have quit cited a lack of an effective onboarding program as a reason why they left.
Additionally, of people who quit their jobs within six months, 16.62% quit in the first week, 17.60% quit in the first month, 16.94% quit in the first two months, and 17.60% quit in the first three months. If an employee can make it through the third month, the odds of them quitting go down significantly.
A new hire checklist should include the following components:
Provide the new hire with a copy of the employee handbook.
Conduct a general orientation.
Review key policies on aspects such as vacation/sick leave, overtime, performance reviews, holidays, dress code, email/computer use, and other critical policies that employees have to know.
Review general administrative procedures such as telephone use, building access, mail, business cards, purchase requests, and other necessary administrative tasks.
Give a tour of the facilities and introduce the employee to key individuals. The tour should include restrooms, mail rooms, copy machines, kitchen, and other important areas of the office or facility.
In terms of position-specific procedures, introduce the employee to all team members, review job assignments and training plans, the job description, performance expectations, standards, the schedule, hours, payroll timing, and time cards. 
Ensure the employee gains access to computers, email, data on shared drives, databases, and the Internet.
Employee induction best practices include the following:
Understand it can take up to eight months for an employee to become fully comfortable with a position, so it is important to have a plan for the first day, the first week, and even the first few months.
Seek feedback on the employee induction process to understand how "easy (or not) it was for them to get up and running will tell you a lot about how to improve your overall induction process."
 Remote employees require different onboarding components such as video chats and phone calls. 
Be sure to clearly define all positions and ensure entire teams are aligned. This will also be the time to set expectations and explain any changes to the whole team.
Set expectations for employee communication from the start. This is critical because everyone communicates differently and new hires need to understand how and when they are expected to communicate with various team members.
Process.st offers onboarding checklists for various roles.
SHRM has put together a New Employee Onboarding Guide that walks HR employees through the onboarding process.
The guide provides best practices for the first day, the first few months, and the first year.
Some innovative employee induction programs are integrating virtual reality, an induction portal with gamification features, videos, character-driven training stories, and hypothetical scenarios.
 Best in class examples of employee induction programs are the induction programs for Netflix, Quora, Digital Ocean, Twitter, Buffer, LinkedIn, Zappos, Facebook, Google, and Pinterest.