You've landed your ideal candidate. Well done! Now the hard work starts. Getting your onboarding right is a critical way to help new team members integrate within your organisation.

It enables you to set clear expectations for new employees, give them a better understanding of your values and help them learn your processes. And this means they can quickly get onto the challenges that you hired them to tackle.

The changing workforce

The world of work is evolving. By 2020, 50% of the workforce will be millennials. In this new world, people want to be empowered and make an impact. They have new expectations about the tools that they use and the way that they interact with an organisation. They see openness and transparency as a given and they believe in an easy, two-way dialogue with their business leaders.

Many organisations are lagging behind these expectations. 40% of employers fail to give new employees the minimum support they need to start their new job. In one survey, it took 43% of organisations more than a week to get basic workstation logistics and tools in place.

A failure to get these basics wrong can be expensive. Almost a quarter of organisations lose new recruits in the first year. But it's not only about getting an office worker a laptop or giving your warehouse operative the right tools. It's essential to make information accessible, create community and provide a safe environment to make an impact.

And here's how you can use Workplace by Facebook to do it.

Using Workplace groups to 'pre-onboard'

Immersing new starters into your organisation and culture can be time consuming. With Workplace, you can cut out much of the paperwork by sharing orientation information using Workplace groups before employees even start.

First, create a pre-employee or new hire group by selecting ' Multi Company Group' type and add users via their personal emails.

Once your new hires are in the group, you can direct them to the relevant files or links to pre-onboarding training and resources. You can ask them to familiarise themselves with the company values and read 'What to expect on day one' material.

Using pinned posts to signpost the essential information

You can also use pinned posts to signpost people to the really important information that they need to get up to speed. By pinning threads to the top of their inbox, people can easily dip in and out of conversations without losing context.

Using Workplace to onboard from day one

Welcoming your new joiners into a new employee onboarding Workplace group helps them get up to speed quickly. You can share the right training and resources and introduce people to the social nature of Workplace so they can engage and build connections right from the off.

Org Chart lets you quickly look up individual profiles and team information so you can get to know their location, contact details, manager, team structure and even their daily schedule.

Here are a few suggestions.

Using Workplace to introduce new starters to mentors

Facilitating workplace mentoring shows that you care about nurturing new hires. And longer-serving employees can also benefit from someone senior that they respect sharing ideas and teaching them new tasks

Mentoring can work just as well online as face to face. You can set up private groups in Workplace to provide a secure space for mentors and mentees to build relationships.

And the Cortado integration with Workplace makes things even simpler by matching coworkers together based on their career interests and goals.

Using bots to deliver personalised onboarding

Using bots such as boarding pass by Price Waterhouse Coopers or new starter bot by The Bot Platform can help new starters get up and running and deliver unique and personal experiences. These bots integrate with Workplace Chat so that people simply type in a question.

These are often the repetitive questions that people ask all the time, such as the WiFi password or the printer number. The bot accesses your relevant database and retrieves the answers so your new hires can get on with the important stuff.

Onboarding toolkit quick guide

Groups

Groups connect new starters from day one. Reduce the distance between HR teams to the rest of the business. Share new starter training decks, introduce people with welcome posts and help people make an impact from the beginning.

Live video

Live video in Workplace helps hiring teams show their personal touch. Encourage leaders to go live in your team group to welcome new joiners and share information about their role, experience and a personal story.

Org Chart

Org Chart lets you quickly look up individual profiles and team information, showing you their location, contact details, manager, team structure and even their daily schedule. Too much effort? Try hovering over a name and you'll be able to see most of these details without even clicking.

Bots

Automate painful processes to make onboarding more delightful. Using bots in Workplace Chat will help new members of the team find useful answers to the everyday questions, such as finding the Wi-Fi password or the printer number.

About the author: Sameer Chowdhri is the global lead for Workplace for HR. With 20 years of HR experience, he advises digital HR experts who use Workplace on cultural transformation and the future of work to help humanise the employee experience.

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