“Welcome onboard”
What is a good onboarding orientation? First impressions are always the most important. Same thing for orientation a company prepared for its new employees. I see people quit the job in less than a week simply because of a very bad onboarding experience.
- Lunch meeting for newcomers.
What is this? This is a trick from a Japanese company — they mandatorily ask newcomers to schedule multiple lunch meetings with people in the company — anyone except C-level staff. The newcomers can group together (no more than 3 people in a team). Invitee can’t decline the meeting except for necessary issues. They can have totally different genders/races, professionalities, nationalities and backgrounds.
Why is this good? New employees need more information than others. The first 3 months are usually busier — Can they successfully build up some relationships with their colleagues? Can they get to know the team/department/organization/BU? Can they fit the company’s culture? Can they find some friends/allies in the workplace? Can they see the relationship between the team’s mission to their work on hand? Mandatorily asking new employees to schedule lunch meetings with their senpais gives both sides a perfect opportunity to chat. I do think this policy saves a lot of employees with relatively introvertive characters.
2. Buddy system
It’s like a DRI for getting newcomers onboard — indicating someone to take care of the new employee closely.
Why is this good? Because a shallow “welcome” is far from enough for the newcomer, and except for very warm-hearted individuals, many people have no idea what to do if there’s no clear assignment. Depending on the personal character, some people will boldly ask for help while others may prefer to spend time solving issues by themselves. Usually newcomers will have many questions — technical or non-technical. A specific buddy will greatly accelerate their process adapting to the new environment.
3. Boot camp on Facebook.
It’s a period of time (3–5 weeks) for new employees to grab some technical issues they feel interested in and try to solve them. Then based on the issues they solve they can have a better understanding of the team and process the team matching.
Why is this good? There are many factors that may make an employee frustrated besides compensation. Are the coworkers friendly to them? Does the pressure fit their expectations? Is the project exciting to them? Do they like the tech stack the team is using? Different people have different expectations. Bootcamp is like an experimental stage for both the employee and the team.
