When is it best to introduce new hires to their team?

If your day one process is currently a full blown company induction and full of a lot of heavy learning about the organisation, your processes, policies and procedures then sometimes it can feel like you are squeezing too much in by adding team engagement as well.

So when do you start to think about introducing new hires to the teams that they will be working with in your business? 

First of all let’s look at some stats around this; in our Welcome Onboard survey in 2019, 57% of respondents told us that introductions to their team made  up part of a good onboarding program, but 56% said that no welcome activities with team mates were planned leaving a lot of businesses with the potential to fall short here. And with 34% of people who had been through a bad experience leaving within 6 months this is not something that you can leave for later.

Building relationships with team mates is a key item to get in on day one or before if you can. Exactly how to approach this will depend on the role and your organisation though. 

Historically you might have used graduate recruitment processes where candidates have lunch with the team on assessment days, a good way to see how someone might fit in as part of selection as well as starting to build some relationships. You might even have had people come along to social events when they have been happening ahead of someone’s start date. It was also pretty simple to book in team lunches where some of the new hires colleagues come along to have a relaxed chat about things and really start to bring them into the fold.

Right now all of these processes are more difficult because of the situation that we find ourselves in with lockdown restrictions and more remote working going on but there are still plenty of other ways to get people involved, if you want some more ideas on that you can see our previous blog on the topic here: http://webonboarding.com/how-can-you-encourage-current-employees-to-make-new-starters-feel-more-welcome/

Even if your day one process does have to be pretty learning heavy I’m sure there are some breaks during the day one induction sessions where some of the team can be involved. Most people connect well with a chat over a cup of tea or coffee, even if it is done virtually, and sharing stories over food is a practice that predates all of our office environments so that works well too. 

You could also have pre recorded videos with team members introducing themselves to send before day one, or a simpler data sheet to pop across. Even connecting people with each other on LinkedIn is a nice place to start.

One final stat to end on only 19% of onboardees feel integrated into their teams after two weeks in their role. With that being the case it looks like getting some bonds formed with team mates as early as possible in the process would help settle people in faster.

Latest from the blog

Monthly Archives

Book a demo to see how Webonboarding can improve your onboarding processes.

Fill in your details below to get started: