Pro Tips for Creating the Best Onboarding Experience for New Employees

“Here’s the coffee machine, there’s the printer, and that’s the pingpong table. Oh, and we almost forgot about your desk. Welcome to the team!”

Employee onboarding is so much more than running through the obligatory office tour and filing I-9 after I-9. Sure, those basics are important, but the way an employee feels on their first day, week, and month at work is a reflection of your company’s culture and impacts their employee engagement, as well as their short-term and long-term potential at your company.

Past research has found that a strong employee onboarding experience can lead to a number of positive results, including increased employee retention and improved performance. An official or structured employee onboarding process for new hires keeps personnel on payroll: It supports 58% of employees sticking around for three years, according to one study. They’re 50% more productive, too.

From collaborative strategies to getting folks pumped before day one, every company approaches an effective onboarding program differently. That means offering much more during the first week beyond branded T-shirts and other swag. All of the best employee onboarding experiences are welcoming, create a sense of belonging, and provide training. Top talent will be looking for this type of work environment.

During or after orientation, it’s helpful to ask if there’s anything that could be improved or if they received the information they needed. But it’s not a good idea to tell employees to structure their own onboarding, asking them who they think they should speak to or ask them what they need to know to get started. That’s not an approach that would make becoming part of the team easier. Quite the opposite. Not only could it set them up for failure, but first impressions matter. You want to support them, not sabotage them, and certainly don’t want them looking for other opportunities before their first 90 days in their new role are even complete.

Shaping an onboarding strategy

Whether you’re putting together an official onboarding program for your business on your own or you’re working with a human resources consultant or an HR team, begin by outlining what your onboarding strategy should look like, aligning it with your company values. Then streamline your expectations with an onboarding checklist, so you can begin working on what each step will look like. Here are some of Gusto’s checklists to give you a head start:

• First day on new job checklist for managers
• New employee orientation checklist
• Remote employee onboarding checklist

A checklist will also be useful for sharing in your employee handbook what your onboarding program includes, as well as sharing on social media like LinkedIn what new employees can look forward to. That’s an outward reflection of the culture you’re building that will attract talent, and could even be included in job descriptions.

Official onboarding programs often share several common elements:

• An overview of the company’s mission and history
• A team introduction, along with how the new employee’s role aligns with other colleagues
• A one-on-one sync with the hiring manager, during which expectations and goals are discussed, as well as a cadence for regular check-ins
• Meetings with other company leaders, especially function heads
• Training and development sessions for tools, systems, and processes, along with any companion materials from documentation to recordings

Regardless of how you shape your structured program, you’ll want to ensure that it’s representative of your company personality, and while it will have a format people will come to expect, it should also be flexible enough to adapt and improve as needed based on any feedback you receive and solicit. In the meantime, here are some guidelines to help you build the best onboarding experience for your employees.

1. Look for self-starters.

That’s right, successful onboarding can actually start during your hiring process. If you want employees who get up to speed quickly, look for folks who are independent and self-reliant. In a small company, you probably need someone of all trades—someone who can identify challenges and actively crack them.

For one small business, finding these entrepreneurial people meant targeting more seasoned hires. When Alexis Rosenbaum was the CEO and co-owner of Game Day Feels, she shared that when it was a five-person company, she only hired “people who have had real-life job experience,” because “as a small business still in the startup phase, our time and resources [were] limited.”

They didn’t have the bandwidth to train people on time management and other basics, she said. “When we got clear on exactly what we were looking for in an employee, it made a huge difference in our team, studio culture, and business growth.”

That sentiment holds true for other small business owners. In a study of more than 1,500 business owners and HR professionals with less than 50 employees, 33% are seeking self-starters when selecting new hires and 32% are looking for those who have strong time-management skills.

Soft skills like that are highly valuable today. In fact, a 2024 LinkedIn survey reveals that the top skill now is adaptability, and these are the other top 10 most in-demand skills:

1. Communication
2. Customer service
3. Leadership
4. Project management
5. Management
6. Analytics
7. Teamwork
8. Sales
9. Problem-solving
10. Research

Make sure you hire well by bringing on employees who possess those abilities and experience. They will be energized by a smart and organized onboarding program. Courtesy of Inc.com, here are four questions when looking for mini entrepreneurs:

• “Describe a time when you took a significant risk in your professional or personal life. What happened next?”
• “Rank the jobs/experiences on your CV from your least favorite to your favorite. Explain why they’re in this order, and how they could have been better.”
• “Can you describe a challenge you’ve faced more than once working in team settings? What have you tried to overcome it?”
• “What do you value more—perfection or speed? Why?”

2. Get people excited about the company’s mission.

If you’ve got an awesome product, mission, or brand, help your team personally connect with it from the get-go. Even if your product doesn’t seem so attractive at first glance, take the time to identify and communicate how you’re helping your customers. When new hires can feel that authenticity, it speeds up their connection to what you’re all about.

Patreon, for example, empowers creators to find funding online. So Lauren Ficklin, a former People Operations Business Partner at Patreon, would get new employees psyched on day one, welcoming them by placing a small gift on their desks, made by different Patreon creators. “The packages include a description about the creator and what they’re known for, so new folks can get to know the people we serve,” she said.

At the time, it was also standard there to hold “an onboarding class the first and third Thursday of the month” to cover the founding story, company values, and the product, so people feel special and connected to what and why of the company, Ficklin explained. Think about it—there are so many jitters when people start a new job. Immediately connecting folks with the mission can help amplify their excitement and quell any nerves.

3. Try peer-led onboarding.

As a business owner, you’re probably used to doing pretty much everything on your own, including providing a training program for new employees. But when you reach a certain size, consider assigning an onboarding buddy to take on that load.

Though this helps you, it’s actually best for your new employee. Immediately, they have access to someone who can answer key questions, show them around, and be a general contact point for anything they need. It’ll help them feel much more integrated and useful straight away.

Rafi Norberg, president of Nexus Marketing, shared this insight:

“I used to personally onboard each new employee, which didn’t work well. There was a disconnect because I’m their boss, yet I was helping train them for a role I don’t do myself. So we switched to a peer-led onboarding process, and it’s been hugely beneficial,” he said. “New hires are paired with a dedicated buddy who takes them through a set curriculum. New folks bond with their co-workers more quickly when working with a peer rather than their boss.”

4. Help employees define their roles.

Invest extra time in setting expectations. Even if those truths seem self-evident to you, over-communicating them only helps clarify everyone’s role. So help your employees set and reach performance goals early on, while continuing to provide ongoing feedback and support. More highly engaged managers have more engaged teams, according to a Gallup meta-analysis of 200,000 manager-led teams. That can translate into a positive impact on improving business outcomes, such as productivity, turnover, and profitability.

At Mill Creek Brewing Co., co-founder and CFO Michael Krewson goes one step further:

“From the beginning, we set up expectations and check-in meetings. We also ask our employees to help define their own roles. That way they feel they have control over their work,” he explains. “It also helps to have a lot of in-the-moment feedback,” Krewson points out. “We regularly ask our team: What do you need from us? How can we help you out? When employees know we care, it builds a sense of trust and ownership.”

5. Make the extra effort to make that first week a little easier.

Don’t just tell employees you care about them. Show them. Doing this early can set the right tone from the start. Benjamin Apel, who was the co-founder of Final (acquired by Goldman Sachs) and is the CEO of an embedded payments solution startup called Mesa, explained it this way:

“I think taking a moment to understand what a new employee’s challenges are in performing their day-to-day tasks can make a new teammate feel like they’re wanted,” he said. For instance, “Is the commute a pain? Let us know how we can make that easier, so you’re not busy worrying about it your first week. That’s a small example, but I think it goes a long way in showing buy-in from the company.”

Likewise, if your employee asks to start mid-week instead of on a Monday, consider that request. Beginning onboarding during a shortened work week could allow employees to better absorb all the new information because you can split sessions with a weekend break in between. It may help people retain information better when the schedule is organized this way.

If you don’t have the flexibility to change when employees start during the week, as in if you always start on Mondays or another day to onboard multiple people on the same day, you may want to consider making Wednesday or Thursday your formal start day for company onboarding. That way you can confirm that support services like IT are available to ensure computers or workspaces will be ready for the start date, along with leadership’s availability for inspirational meetings where managers can introduce what different departments do.

At the end of the day, the most important thing is to build a new employee onboarding program that suits your business. With all this advice in mind, you’ll have the toolkit you need for team-building before and after that thrilling first day. Gusto also makes it easy to onboard your new team members, so they can take off running.