The latest episode of The Shortlist, SocialTalent‘s digital podcast, discusses empathy-based virtual onboarding, and how to do it effectively. Hear from Anjana Sreedevi, the Global Onboarding Design and Delivery Leader at IBM, about how she and the company redesigned their approach to remote onboarding during the pandemic. And the key to their success on this front? Infusing the entire process with empathy.

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But if an organisation’s onboarding experience has gaps, a candidate can be left scratching their head. You don’t want them wondering if they made the right choice signing the contract in the first place. 

By thinking critically about your onboarding experience and its gaps, you’ll be able to smooth over small bumps that often make new hires question their place in an organisation, and ensure that your future talent feel fully equipped to perform well from their very first day.

A streamlined first day

It’s the little things that set the tone for what’s to come for a candidate. Have you ever entered a workplace on day one, and their team wasn’t ready for your arrival? It signals that the work and culture to come will be more reactive than proactive. 

Small administrative tasks -like ensuring all IT and login information is correctly set up and allocated, or providing a starter kit with uniforms, payroll details, and access passes- can take the guesswork out of tasks that many existing employees take for granted. 

Furthermore, when introducing your new hire to the team, try to strike a balance between giving them time to get to know their new colleagues and overwhelming them with too many new faces on day one. Consider integrating a simple “team culture” video into your onboarding experience. Current staff members can film themselves giving video confessionals about the perks of the company that they enjoy.

Or, if time and budget allows, enlist a videographer to shoot an introduction to your organisation, its perks, the team culture, and how you recognise and reward your staff (check out this employer branding video that Scout Talent, a SaaS company, uses on all of their job ads). This is great collateral for your employer brand and future job ads. You’ll also be able to use it to streamline the first day of all future hires. 

Let them catch their breath

The transition from one job to another can be overwhelming, even for the best employee. Expecting excellence from day one can lead to burnout. Leaders should shoulder the bulk of the responsibility when easing their new hires into their roles. 

A long lunch in their first days with your organisation is a great way for new employees to slowly acclimatise to the work ahead. It also has the added bonus of letting them find their tribe within your team dynamic in a non-office environment.

Also, slowly increasing their hours over the course of the first week will help them adjust to your organisation’s pace. Try starting with a half day on day one, followed by incremental increases throughout the rest of the week. This will help them learn their roles and responsibilities, while still giving them time to decompress.

Prioritise feedback

No one likes to underperformance, especially when stepping into a new role or a new organisation. Take the time to provide feedback and show support to all new hires. It will show that communication is important to the smooth running of your business, and that they can be forthcoming with any issues or hurdles they are experiencing. 

Formalising this process in the form of regular 1-to-1 meetings gives structure to a review framework. Coming prepared to these meetings with feedback, whether good or bad, gives both you and your new hire the opportunity to discuss roadblocks, opportunities, and what the road ahead will look like. 

Like the idea of feedback, but not the idea of defined structure? Schedule time for your new hire to air their concerns or roadblocks over a weekly coffee. If they have no roadblocks, it can be great for your organisational culture to celebrate their early wins! Positive feedback when things are going well is just as important as constructive feedback when things are going poorly. 

Look out for passion projects

Our last point helps you identify growth areas for your new hire. Empowering staff to grow in areas that they are passionate about helps develop these potential growth areas into actionable goals. 

If you’ve got a great learning and development program, make this clear from the beginning. Your organisation invests in its staff and wants to help them grow their knowledge base. If you don’t yet have a dedicated internal L&D resource, start the conversation with new staff to find out what skills they can bring to the role, and how these can add value to your organisation. People work harder when they care about the work they’re doing. If you don’t ask your staff what they care about, how can you know where they’re wanting to grow?

Whether your onboarding experience needs a slight tweak or a complete overhaul, there are always steps you can take to make the first days and weeks with your new hires seamless.

As RMM’s assistant editor and frequent contributor, Fraser has an impeccable eye for newsworthy content and emerging trends. After starting his career writing for national sporting organisations, he made the move to the talent acquisition space, where he explores recruitment marketing, employer branding, DE&I, and more.

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Peter Wheeler and Christie Rall discuss the skills and enablers that we need to thrive in this new world.

The post The traditional workplace is behind us. What’s next? appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

A comprehensive suite of work perks can mean the difference between accepting and declining a new role, and it can be what turns a good job into a great one. From table tennis tables and well-stocked vending machines, to workplace wellness initiatives and on-site childcare, the bells and whistles on top of your role’s requirements can go a long way to making you feel like a valued part of the team. 

However, in the throes of a global pandemic, the small perks that used to appeal to us (à la free fruit and nuts in the company kitchen) disappear when you’re required to work from home. March 2020 saw the upheaval of many work environments across the country and around the world, and left many employees wondering – what now?

Jay Munro, Head of Career Insights at Indeed, saw the impact of this shift first-hand, as clients and employees alike moved from in-office work to more flexible arrangements. 

“From an employer’s perspective, perks are an extremely valuable asset to help attract new hires and retain existing employees. It can be what sets us apart from other organisations that are competing to hire talent with the same skill set, and it can also keep your staff engaged with their role and singing the praises of your overall employer brand.

“On the other hand, for employees, these perks reinforce that their employer cares about the health, wellbeing, and enjoyment of their staff. It serves as a foot in the door to check in to see if they’re engaged with the work they’re doing, and that they’re happy to be working with the company.

“Now that the terrain has changed due to the pandemic, so must the perks that employers offer.”

Flexibility as the new normal

Remote working and flexible working arrangements used to be the holy grail of work perks, but with COVID forcing some organisations to quickly restructure how they worked, working from home shifted from a peak perk to the new normal for some businesses.

“Upon reflection, this was quite short-sighted” says Mr. Munro. 

“The freedom for employees to integrate their professional responsibilities around their personal lives is now expected. That kind of flexibility is far more valuable, and an employee’s ability to do so is not something that can or should be dictated by an employer.”

As hybrid working situations become more common, the focus will pivot towards how employers adapt to support their staff to work from anywhere at any time, and how they introduce new benefits to offset what employees have already lost. 

“One solution isn’t going to fit everyone’s needs anymore. Providing staff with the technology and resources they need on a case-by-case basis will help with their transition from a centralised workspace to a hybrid working model.” says Munro.

“Furthermore, it’s not just about the party perks anymore. Stuff like in-office pool tables or team-building days aren’t as easy to offer when a workplace has moved to a hybrid model. Less tangible benefits, like extra annual leave or superannuation, or subsidised health insurance, are now coming to the fore and can be used and appreciated when you remove the office element of a working environment.”

Managing expectations and minimising burnout

COVID has forced many employers to reevaluate how they worked day-to-day, and employees have been expected to adapt along with them. However, when personal and professional worlds collided during the work from home order in March 2020, the burnout that comes from being plugged in 24/7 started to take a toll. 

“Particularly at the beginning of COVID, it felt there was this expectation of availability at any time of the day or night. If your ‘office’ is right there, and you’re not doing anything else, why can’t you respond?” asks Mr. Munro. “The responsibility falls both to employees and employers to establish concrete boundaries, which circles back to the importance of employees being able to define what flexibility means to them. We know that those who work from home are working just as hard, if not harder, in these home environments.”

There’s a big difference, however, between organisations having the right intention to change the perks they offer to hybrid employees, and tangible action. 

Says Mr. Munro, “The first step should always be engagement. Engage your employees in this process of change at the ground level, and get their input to find out what’s important to them. 

“It’s also an exercise in identifying the gaps between what perks you currently offer, what your employees want, and what other similar organisations in the market are offering. Once you know what these gaps are, it’s much easier to plug them and provide your staff with a more holistic perks offering.

“It’s important to articulate to employees why these new perks will benefit them, because until you can explain what’s in it for them, you’ll have low interest and engagement, which leads to lower job satisfaction. Do you offer all staff the same perk options? Do you restrict what perks you offer to who? The initial communication and engagement piece with employees will go a long way to help with change management.”

Standing out to future hires

With a stacked employment market, and more jobs posted on Seek earlier this year than in any time in the platform’s 23-year history, candidates are well and truly in the driver’s seat. According to Mr. Munro, this means that organisations will need to make sure they’re doing everything they can to set themselves apart from their competition, or else risk seeing mass talent migration.

“If companies choose not to adapt their perk offering, it will ultimately mean that they will lose talent currently working for them, and will struggle to attract new talent to replace them. If you’ve chosen not to adopt a hybrid working model, now is the time to ask yourself – why? What’s holding you back from adopting this? If it’s technology, find out what tech your competitors use and how you can implement this yourself. If it’s a rigid existing management model, find out how you can alter to adapt to these rapid changes we’re experiencing. 

“It’s important to be open to change and to constantly keep your ear to the ground to see what else is working out there, rather than staying laser-focused on what you’ve always done.”

As workplace structure evolves, it’s becoming clear that there is no one ‘new normal’; some workplaces have returned to how they operated pre-COVID, some have incorporated hybrid working elements, and some have transferred to a completely remote workforce. In a constantly shifting job terrain, flexibility is what new hires now look for in a workplace, and it is ultimately what will keep organisations at the top of their field. 

With more than 15 years of experience in the recruitment industry, Jay Munro has worked in a variety of roles in agencies and job boards, from consulting and recruiting, to leading the product development of new sourcing technologies. As the Head of Career Insights with the Indeed Employer Insights Team, Jay pairs platform data with industry trend analysis to share Indeed’s story and bring the value of the company’s programs and solutions to life.

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