Looking after a new employee during their first few weeks at work can mean the difference between their success and failure as employees as well as your success and failure as an employer, manager or supervisor.
Proper orientation determines how fast the new employee can be productive and efficient in his or her new job while giving you a good opportunity to make your new employee an efficient part of your team.
Below are 15 suggestions that will help you deal with your new employees during their first few weeks to help make sure that they get started on the right track.
1. Have a induction policy for welcoming and training new employees. Don't just leave it to whoever is available. Human resources should cover the HR side of the induction with a trainer (if you have one) or a senior manager or supervisor covering the more hands on part of the job. Either way the following is a minimum of what is required.
2. Give your employee a warm welcome. Don't just point them to the area they work and let them get on with it. Nothing makes a new employee feel comfortable more than a warm welcome.
3. Give them a brief description about your role as a supervisor. Knowing who's in charge and what you expect from them will make them more comfortable with you as the boss.
4. Give your new employee a welcome tour of the whole department or, if the site isn't too big, the whole site. Make sure they know how to get to the bathroom, emergency exits, cafeteria, etc.
5. Give them a brief summary about the company, its history as well as its mission and objectives.
6. If possible demonstrate your company’s products and/or services, paying particular attention to the products relating to the area in which the employee will work. This will make them more secure and confident with the work that they are going to be doing.
7. Explain to your new employee how the company works particularly if the company has any unusual working practices or a different structure than the norm. Again, this will help familiarize them with the company.
8. Tell your new employee about the company’s competitors and what is being done to make sure that the company is staying ahead of the competition.
9. Explain in detail your new employee’s responsibilities and describe their job functions. Don't leave it to the other employees to teach them the basics unless there is a trained member of staff whose job it is.
10. Let your new employee be aware of what you and the company expect from them. This includes proper work ethics, productivity, teamwork, and appearance.
11. Explain the specific conditions and requirements of employment, including hours, pay, pay periods, holiday pay, sickness provisions, pension, medical benefits, lateness etc.
12. Be very clear about the safety rules, policies, procedures and regulations. Explain and show proper use of safety devices.
13.Introduce your new employee to his or her co workers along with a brief description of their jobs and responsibilities.
14. Outline opportunities for promotions and other opportunities.
15. To give them time to acclimatize give them a work buddy, a friendly experienced worker, to show them the job and work with them for the first week of two.
Covering all of these basics will help new employees settle in and they will be more efficient able to be contribute much more quickly compared to employees that are just left to their own devices.
15 Steps On How To Welcome Your New Employees
Virtual Employees
When we say something is “virtual” in modern terminology, we are almost always talking about something related to the internet. So Virtual Dating is dating using the internet. “Virtual” does not mean something that does not exist. But it implies you are replacing a normal physical entity with a real but for the most part unseen entity that lives online.
The trend in strategic business planning is to incorporate an aggressive “virtual marketing” plan with your traditional plans. So it makes sense that eventually the move to virtual resources would reach human resources with the availability of virtual employees.
In the last two or three years, virtual employment has taken off and become a very real resource for businesses wishing to tap into valuable experience and subject matter expertise that cannot be found locally. Agencies such as Team Double Click and Rent-A-Coder provide an army of ready to work professionals that can step in and get a job done quickly and efficiently for an employer.
The obvious first application of virtual workers is to subcontract to an online employment agency certain task specific projects that have a short beginning, middle and end. Building a new function into a web page is a good example of a project that can be packaged into an understandable project and signed over to a virtual consultant to perform the work and return to the online employer. The handling agencies collect funds via escrow so neither the employer or the consultant are at risk and the handling company claims a percentage of the fee as part of their pay for facilitating the partnership. Everybody wins.
But the concept of virtual employment is going beyond providing another variation on outsourcing to a consultant. Many virtual employment agencies provide administrative assistants, sales support and many other functions normally associated with a full time employee but those services are done “virtually”. A virtual office manager can have calls routed to his or her remote phone, emails redirected and conduct office meetings and negotiations with vendors via email or instant messaging. Using these modern tools, a virtual assistant can provide almost every function an on site assistant might be able to do but do so at a lower cost to the employer.
The virtual employment trend in business has obvious benefits for businesses that are in need of qualified help. It opens the door to recruitment sources that can supplement the local talent pool. Many times virtual staffing agencies may have on their “employee roles” people with a specialized background or skill. The agency is skilled at defining exactly what their client businesses need and matching up the right virtual employee to the job so the business has the right skill sets where they need them, when they need them and only for as long as they need them.
In addition to the benefits that virtual employment has for businesses to fill needs for skilled workers, it’s an excellent resource for talented workers who want to make a contribution to the business world on their own terms. Virtual workers almost universally work at home or where they chose to work. Often the work is task based with a deadline so the worker can select the hours that fits their family and personal schedules best. And, like working for a temp agency, the employee can build a resume with the agency that improves the quality of work they get over time.
Virtual staffing is a trend that has been a success for all involved as it has matured in the last few years. We can look for this twenty first century methodology for bringing in talented workers to continue to grow as more and more businesses get comfortable with staffing their employee ranks “virtually”.