Employee Onboarding — The right way!
Onboarding…This is a common verbiage used for Customers (to a company/ of a company). Here I’d speak about the customers to a company/organization i.e it’s new joiners.
“Onboarding, also known as organizational socialization, refers to the mechanism through which new employees acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become effective members of the organization”, says the Wikipedia.
It’s just as plain as bringing a baby to the new world.
Significance/ role of Onboarding
A new member in the family expects a warm welcome and a guide on do’s/ don’ts certainly. It becomes an unstated ritual for the HR to make the new comer feel at home. HR is ideally supposed to be a parent who nurtures the employees like her own kids. This is the time when the right mindset can be trailed into the employee.
It’s the ripest time to instill the company values and culture in the employee. The fitment in the culture transforms to contribution in the culture and an apt Onboarding reaps its fruits in the due course of time.
What difference does the right Onboarding make
The right onboarding fosters that charm and instills the energy so as to make the new comer’s approach resonate with the Values the company follow.
How do we Onboard the new joiners at Kayako
Not the newest of the ways across the Industry, but certainly a different way to welcome the new members at Kayako.
Onboarding process I’d say begins right after the candidate accepts the offer. Right next day, the candidate is sent a Surprize packet containing a few Kayako goodies along with a copy of ‘Effortless Experience’ and another book relevant to the team the new hire will be joining in.
Taking the case where the candidate joins in after a month or two, of the offer acceptance. It’s highly essential that the People Ops connect with the candidate isn’t lost. A frequent catch up call (may be for any occasion falling in between. birthdays are definitely a good way, if they fall in between) helps you see through the candidate’s progress in the preparation towards joining you.
Fast forward to a week before the candidate’s joining, sending a Pre joining welcome mail. It has the required details of what does he expect on the day he joins (Timing, Induction schedule, Documents to be brought, First point of contact and any phone number that ‘ll come handy). An interesting thing , the IT team is given a heads up for that shiny apple gear (yes, that 27" giant Thunderbolt screen, latest 17" MBP, etc).
Then comes the D day, the reporting day for the new hire. Candidate is welcome with a Welcome kit comprising; a Kayako Tee, CamelBak, Notepad, I-card.
A quick run down through the company policies and procedures to be followed, the boring form filling and document submission is then pepped up with this ‘Click a cool pic’ errand. This picture is sent with the Welcome email that goes to the inbox of each and every Kayaker, be it in any part of the world. And the picture beholds your personality/ or your role at Kayako/ or what the new hiree super likes to do.
This, personally, is my favorite part of the induction day. And then comes the Slack and the jamming sessions saying Hi and hello! on #Watercooler (Slack channel that brings all Kayakers at one place) and #Onboarding (Joined new? have a doubt? ask here?)
The newbee is then let gone to the team/mentor and it calls the day end.
For a week from the day 2 onward, the mentor assigns the project to the newcomer, sets up his expectations and does the regular check ins for keeping the new hire and the company expectations at the same page.
This week is followed by a plethora of events from CEO catch up to long term goal planning, few team/company celebrations, quick coffee time chit chats with the colleagues, and a detailed onboarding do away by People Ops. Hence begins the making of another awesome Kayaker.
Tada…
P.S — We’re hiring at Kayako for Ops Engineer and Product Engineer, and many more profiles.
