Employee Experience in Onboarding: How to Build It

Employees are also consumers, with all kinds of experiences interacting with companies. Sometimes, even before they join an organization, they're its customers — and then they compare those earlier client experiences with their experiences as an employee. On top of that, Generation Z is stepping ever more boldly onto the job market. For zoomers, unique experiences during recruitment and onboarding matter a great deal and shape how engaged they are at work. So today we're talking about how to build employee experience right from the onboarding stage, and who plays the key role in that process.

The role of employee experience in onboarding

Every employee gathers all sorts of experiences in the workplace. Just like onboarding, employee experience always exists in an organization. The only question is whether the employer is aware of it and able to manage the process.

And it can be managed, because building employee experience is a process you can design. IBM presented a comprehensive approach to this topic.

According to their publication, employee experience is made up of three elements: the social sphere, physical contact with the workplace, and experiences tied to doing the actual work. Let's look at each one.

What makes up employee experience?

• The social sphere — interactions with other employees. Their quality shapes the employee's experience, including during onboarding. A newcomer who has contact with the employer during preboarding feels supported from the start. Add to that the care of a buddy, who helps the new person build relationships with the team, among other things. A buddy is a kind of “pal” who shares their own experience and the unwritten customs of the company. That knowledge is valuable support in the first weeks on the job.

• Physical contact with the workplace — this covers all the tangible aspects of work. If an employee shows up at the office for the first time and has no desk or computer, that's not a comfortable experience. With remote work you need to take care of this too: ship the equipment well in advance, along with clear instructions for the first login.

• Experiences tied to doing the work — this area might seem trivial at first. After all, everyone knows what their job is. Or do they? We asked Polish employees what they felt was missing in their onboarding. Nearly 30% of respondents lacked space for role-specific onboarding and a clear scope of duties. What's more, 21% pointed to a lack of defined goals and tasks to deliver after the probation period. How do you prevent this?

Tip 1.

Free up your manager's time by taking repetitive, operational tasks off their plate. Ordering equipment and workwear or wrapping up paperwork with HR can be automated with an onboarding app. That gives the manager more time for role-specific onboarding.

Tip 2.

Set specific tasks during onboarding and spread them out over time. Discuss them with the employee and make sure they're clear. Track progress on an ongoing basis and share feedback with the employee. Don't put it off until the end of the probation period.

How to care for the employee experience during onboarding

1. Personalize everything you can

Designing a unique employee experience in onboarding is a bit like tailoring — to the needs of both the employee and the organization. One of those needs is the desire for agency, the wish to influence one's surroundings. When you make room for it in onboarding, you make the employee feel special. How? Above all, tap into the potential of preboarding and put these choices in the newcomer's hands:

• choosing their welcome gift. This practice is very warmly received by new hires. Not only do they get a gift, they also get to pick it from the available options;
• choosing their work equipment;
• the option to choose their benefits.

See how to personalize the selection and delivery of welcome packs>>

Give your communication a personal touch to show you're waiting for this specific person, not an anonymous employee. A phone call from the manager before the first day is a nice gesture that breaks the ice beautifully. You can also send a personalized welcome message or a creative gift with a named note. These seemingly small gestures build positive employee experiences right from the start.

2. Put knowledge within easy reach

Use preboarding to educate the employee about the organization. Introduce the company's history, mission, vision, and structure. Talk about company customs too (including the less formal ones). Maybe some of them will come in handy on the very first day?

An example? Following a ritual at LiveChat, a new employee brings something sweet to the office. To make the task easier for the newcomer, the company sends a creative welcome pack that includes, among other things, a cake recipe.

Once an employee joins the team, make it easier for them to get to know their new professional reality. According to a Panopto report, a new employee spends 13 hours a week asking others for help and 28 hours a month on inefficient work. That definitely doesn't sound like an ideal employee experience. Open access to knowledge would save new hires a lot of time and stress. So build knowledge bases and how-to guides for systems and tools, and make them available online. That way everyone can find the information they need on their own and come back to it whenever necessary.

Discover 8 proven ways to share knowledge during onboarding>>

3. Guide them step by step — and bring technology into it

The employee experience in onboarding should be engaging, not overwhelming. A trip to IT, a visit to HR, plus online and in-person training. That's not a clear onboarding path. It's more like the onboarding back kitchen — something the employee shouldn't have to deal with.

From the newcomer's perspective, the whole experience should flow smoothly and stress-free. To achieve that, you first need to structure the entire process and spread it out sensibly over time. It's worth housing it all in a single tool — for example, an onboarding app that walks the employee through the whole process.

Give the newcomer an easy-to-use interface available from a phone or computer. Through it, the employee can handle equipment matters, HR paperwork, and even go through a series of microlearning sessions. One effective tool instead of chaos and a pile of errands — that's our recipe for a unique employee experience. We apply it successfully in our Gamfi Onboarding app.

4. Keep what you promise consistent with what you deliver

For an employer to feel authentic to an employee, the onboarding experience has to be consistent with what the company communicates through other channels. Recruitment communication, employer branding efforts, even the client experience strategy — these elements have to work together. Otherwise, dissonance easily sets in for the new person.

Remember that employee experience begins where candidate experience ends. Information about the company culture should be reflected in onboarding activities. If a recruiter says a feedback culture matters to the employer, create space for two-way communication right from onboarding. Ideally, at the very start of onboarding, ask the employee about their recruitment experience. That way you build a bridge between the two stages and, at the same time, show that the “feedback culture” wasn't an empty slogan. Speaking of which...

5. Prioritize feedback and ongoing contact

The manager, the buddy, and the team — contact with them strongly translates into the employee's onboarding experience. The newcomer's comfort depends on their support and their responsiveness to the new person's needs. What's more, they should act as one team and complement each other in their contact with the new member of staff. How do you pull that off?

• Schedule regular one-on-ones between the employee and their manager. This creates space for open conversation and questions. It's also a good opportunity for two-way feedback.

• Keep your finger on the pulse. Schedule recurring employee satisfaction surveys. That way you'll quickly catch potential issues the new person is facing. Without them, it's hard to react in time and respond to their needs.

Read how to create an employee satisfaction survey and how to automate it>>

• Bring a buddy into the onboarding process to help the employee get comfortable with their new professional reality.

See why a buddy is a key link in onboarding>>

• Invite the team to get involved in onboarding. You may find volunteers happy to show the new member around the office or tell them about the organization's clients.

Building employee experience in onboarding — where to start?

Take a step back and look at the employee's perspective at every stage of onboarding. What emotions are they feeling, what are their needs and doubts? How do these change over time? Different questions will sprout in a new hire's mind during the first week than at the end of the probation period. That's worth keeping in mind.

Map out the whole process and use it to chart the onboarding path. Break it into stages and tie them to specific tasks set within time frames. Then assign them to the people involved in onboarding, discussing each person's role with them. And above all: stay in constant contact with the employee!

You'll learn more about the onboarding team in the article: “Onboarding roles: who owns employee onboarding?”.

And if you'd like to enrich your employee experience with an exceptional onboarding journey, we warmly recommend bringing our Gamfi Onboarding app into the process. It's a tool that guides each new person step by step through every phase of onboarding. It makes onboarding pleasant and stress-free!