As a manager or Head of People, you're probably not getting accurate feedback on your onboarding process. New hires aren’t incentivized to share their true thoughts on their experiences while they try to establish themselves at their new workplace.
So we asked the hard questions for you. We spoke to seven new hires to learn about the challenges they faced in their first few weeks.
Here's who we talked to:
Despite the wide variety of roles and industries they represented, a few clear patterns of pain points emerged.
Here are the five biggest issues they faced.
Navigating a brand new environment and meeting tons of fresh faces will produce anxiety for anyone. But it's even worse when you don't know what to expect.
Many new hires showed up to their first day without knowing what it would look like or who they would meet. This lack of communication left them underprepared and created an unnecessary extra set of unknowns.
“I just felt like I wasn’t sure what to expect, and would have to roll with whatever happened on day one.”
What to do about it
After their onboarding, new hires struggle to know when it’s appropriate to ask sensitive HR policy-related questions. For many, it felt like there was no opportunity to inquire further about payroll, benefits, and remote work/vacation policies.
New hires often hesitate to bring up these questions out of fear of the (unwarranted) perception that it might mean that their mind is in the wrong place.
“I’m still trying to figure out my health insurance, and I think it’s the Operations Manager who deals with the retirement benefits, but I’m not really sure.”
What to do about it
New hires are eager to prove their worth on Week 1 but struggle to figure out how and where they can make an impact. It's hard to separate the projects where they can weigh in immediately from those where a few weeks of more context might be necessary.
Several new hires reported that independent work assigned during onboarding was helpful but rarely felt meaningful to the rest of the company.
“I just started to glaze over the onboarding videos, and I think it’d be more efficient if I could just jump in and show them that I could put what I was learning to use.”
What to do about it
Company swag and a fancy welcome lunch are great, but new hires — especially those who onboard remotely — reported needing more genuine connection points with their teammates.
Luckily, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel to accomplish this. It can be as simple as initiating a one-on-one get-to-know you conversation.
“I got a bunch of free company gear, but what really stuck with me — because I had just moved and didn’t have a car yet, I got a ride into my first day of work from my boss. It was a great way to actually get to know him in a way that wasn’t entirely focused on work.”
What to do about it
With all the hard work of building out a new hire’s onboarding process, it’s easy to forget to zoom out and convey the real-world influence your team is having.
Making time to share out your team’s successful work and how it’s impacted your customers/users will ground new hires in a sense of purpose from Day 1.
“There was a session where we went through patient feedback emails and the overall impact of the company. It made me realize this is more than just like a business -- we’re really changing lives.”
What to do about it
Looking to kick your onboarding program into high gear? Explore our how-tos on Building a Fully Distributed Onboarding Program and Building a New Hire Cohort Onboarding Day, or integrate your onboarding program directly into Slack using Gather.