During onboarding you need to build in time to develop the employee’s competencies and monitor whether they are achieving the standards required at the appropriate time.
To this end, your onboarding plan should cover the following:
- Agreed milestones that are aligned to the employee’s role. A practical timeline will mean the new employee can prioritise and gradually absorb all the details that are important and relevant to the job. A common model worth considering is the 30-60-90 day plan. This gives you and your new starter clear milestones to check on progress. For example, early in the role the employee may need to complete online training, learn new systems and meet key people. Later, you may want to set more performance-based objectives, such as having successfully delivered a task or project.
- Time for the new starter to understand the requirements of their role, including their job description – research shows us that clarity over the requirements of a role is key to efficiency and effectiveness at work.
- Sufficient opportunity for the employee to undertake training relevant to the role.
- Time for the employee to be given feedback and support from you and other colleagues.
- Role-specific tasks for the employee to undertake throughout their onboarding period. Not only will this help to upskill the employee, it will also help to deter boredom, which may occur if they are given too much organisational-related training or form-filling to do.
When planning onboarding, bear in mind that, if the employee is overloaded with too much information at one time, the risk is that they will forget much of it, so having a layered approach to learning (layering new learning onto a base level of knowledge) is worth considering.
