It is important that the new members of any team adjust quickly and efficiently. This is especially true for the IT teams since technology involves constantly evolving systems. Setting up the new team and bringing them up to speed as soon as possible is necessary so that work can begin without a waste of time.
Customizing the onboarding process to the needs of a technical hire ensures that the new joiner has a memorable experience and the Return on Investment (ROI) on hiring plans is beneficial. With much of the world turning digital especially after the advent of the pandemic has caused a seismic shift in the way tasks are carried out nowadays. It would be best to make the process precise and seamless in order to expedite the complete employee onboarding process for IT professionals.
Goals of Employee Onboarding
The goals of employee onboarding have remained the same:
- Accommodating
- Assimilating
- Accelerating the new hire to complete productivity
However, there are some considerations to be borne in mind when members are being recruited to the IT team. The roles and skills of technical hires are different as compared to other departments.
Steps to Onboarding
An efficient employee onboarding process helps to increase productivity sooner than later while leaving no room for any ambiguity. Some of the general steps to the onboarding process irrespective of the department you are onboarding in are as follows:
Align new hires with company values
Sharing with new recruits the core values of the organization will help clarify the purpose behind what everyone is doing.
Preplan Onboarding Activities to Suit the Role
Customizing the onboarding process will help new recruits to understand their roles and responsibilities faster. This helps them to settle in faster and start working right away.
Communicate Goals and Expectations Upfront
New hires must understand their roles and what is expected out of them for the next year or so in order to streamline their work with the objectives of the organization. This way there are no grey areas.
Assign a Peer Mentor
Assigning a peer mentor or a buddy is a good idea so that the buddy can provide quick support. Integrating with the company culture and answering any questions a new recruit might have can be handled by the peer.
Onboarding for IT
Building effective onboarding plans to ramp up and retain talent is part of building the image of the company. Creating a favourable first opinion is half the battle won with regards to the workforce.
Best Practices for Onboarding IT Professionals
The following are some of the best practices that can be followed for onboarding technical employees
Focus on Technicalities
Tech work focuses on specific skills and processes. Beyond the paperwork, payroll and benefits pre-boarding time can be utilized to show new tech hires how much they are valued. This will reflect in organizing access to any resources that they will need and so on.
Help Them Understand Their Value for the Business
The key to onboarding new recruits is to ensure they understand what they will be doing and how it will impact the business plans and goals.
Give New Recruits a Small Project to Handle
Assigning a small exercise for recruits to handle will allow them to showcase their talent and capabilities. The team with which they will work should be sensitized to help them with queries to make orientation a more pleasant experience for the new recruits.
Give Them Time to Dig through the Old Code
New hires should be given time to dig through the old code which is a great way to bring new joiners up to speed. It makes them familiar with the code base and code styling of the organization.
Give Them Hardware which is Optimized and Ready to Use
Computers and laptops issued to new recruits should be fully optimized to run the systems, software, and processes required by them without any glitches. This way, work can begin right away.
Personal Development Opportunities
Technical employees are passionate about what they do. Giving ample learning opportunities to the newly recruited employees will form a part of their individual career development plan. These can be aligned with the business objectives of the organization.
Give Them a Good Knowledge Base System
Taking into consideration the several systems and document sources that exist in an organization, it could take a long time for newly onboarded employees to get familiarized with all of it.
However, a good knowledge management system that can accelerate and manage all this can be extremely beneficial.
Offer Virtual Autonomy and Personal Connect
In today’s world, a substantial amount of work is often done in a remote setup. Newcomers must be offered a mix of connecting virtually as well as an occasional physical check-in.
Balance Learning with Doing
Passing on information to a recruit could at times seem like an overload of information. A more skilful way of doing it would be to balance theoretical knowledge with the practical aspect. This way the learning process becomes more meaningful to the new joiner too.
Building Cross-Functional Collaborative Teams
This helps to develop rapport across all teams within the organization rather than with just the team the new recruit is inducted into. This puts the employee at ease, gives them a fair idea about the working of each time, and more importantly builds their network.
Onboarding Should Be a Process Not a Single Event
One time long sessions just do not work for anyone anymore. Instead, have the sessions delivered in bite sized portions to make it a gradual induction process. This way the key concepts can be prioritized and given precedence to.
Encourage New Hires to Give Feedback
New joiners should be encouraged to give feedback. This helps them to not only understand the context of their roles within the company but also gives the company a lot of insight about what can be improved.
Conclusion
Every organization gets only one chance to create a first impression with a new joiner and up to 20% turnover is said to occur in the first 45 days itself.This highlights the importance of an elaborate Employee Onboarding plan for companies. This can also be automatised by using the right Employee Onboarding Software.
When companies create and implement a customized onboarding software for its employees, it ensures that new employees are more engaged, more productive, and settle in sooner.
