Plek blog

Onboarding #4: Stay in touch

Written by Marlou | Feb 7, 2019 12:30:00 PM

In our previous blog about onboarding we explained how to make your onboarding process official and how to implement it in your organization. In this fourth onboarding blog, you will receive practical tips from us with which you can help new employees to establish contacts in order to become more grounded in the organization. Of course we also tell you how you can do this on Plek social intranet.

Encourage establishing new contacts

You have landed a new job but you don't know your colleagues yet and there is still a lot to learn about your new workplace. To onboard new employees, Google gives everybody a dedicated person contact - a kind of coach who guides the new employee. The new employee can contact this person with questions. And of course it also feels nice to have a "buddy" right away.

A new conversation

Make sure that the 'buddy' of the new employee takes immediately initiative : for example, have him or her start a chat conversation (preferably before the employee starts his / her first working day) and ask the the buddy to tag the new employee, for example (on Plek this is done via @ name) for relevant messages and events so that they immediately become part of the conversation and feel welcome. You can also present the contact person to the new employee via Plek's platform onboarding.

Have the contact person or someone from HR post a message on your social intranet introducing the new employee so that other colleagues are aware of their new teammate.

Groups

Presenting groups that your organization offers to employees (especially informal groups) ensures that new employees quickly form an image of the culture of the organization. You can make it super easy for your employees to participate, for example through our platform onboarding: this stimulates new employees to immediately join existing groups. As an organization you can also automatically make your new employees members of groups, for example based on department or function.

Keep talking

If you've read all of our onboarding blogs, now you know that:

  • Completion of a structured onboarding process increases the chance that employees are still with the organization three years later by 58%
  • Turn your new employees into effective, productive, connected and happy colleagues through a good onboarding process
  • A good onboarding starts already before the first working day
  • A good onboarding does not stop after the first working day
  • The onboarding process of your organization must be made official for a more sustained effect
  • Establishing new contacts is important and simple

Hopefully, we have helped you a bit with setting up your onboarding process. What we especially want to emphasize again is that you have to keep in mind: if you have introduced the new employee and he / she gradually becomes part of the team, it is easy to assume that things will go well.

But this is where things often go wrong! Don't stop onboarding after the first month. Continue to guide new employees, provide regular feedback moments and keep in touch. You can also use Plek social intranet for this. If you would like advice on this, please contact us or call us 020-3697577.

We started an onboarding blog series in November. In part 1 you can read why onboarding is necessary. In part 2 we explain how to give employees a good start with a step-by-step plan that starts before the first working day. Part 3 contains practical tips with which you can make your onboarding process official and document it in your organization.

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