Can you hear something? Listen carefully and you’ll hear the sound of every business revving its engine at the starting line. As soon as this lockdown is lifted, even just a little, every business owner will race to be the ones who are up and running first. In this scenario, it’s literally first come, first serve with regard to customers.
Customers have been trapped inside for months and when businesses finally open, they want a certain type of product and they won’t care who gives it to them. One of the things that businesses will have to do is hire or re-hire workers as the demand goes from low to high overnight. Welcoming new employees as quickly as you can save you time and money.
Give them a guide
When new employees arrive to work, assign them a guide. This should be an employee who has been with you for a number of years or at least, has a good knowledge of how things work. When the hiree comes into work on their first day, their guide should meet them at the entrance of the floor they’re going to work in if you’re in a commercial office, or perhaps in the department. Let the other employees know who is going to be arriving and what role they will be undertaking. Quickly go around the room and introduce them to their co-workers. Show them where the toilets are, where the kitchen is and where they can go to eat their lunch or relax during a short break. Then the guide’s job is to onboard them onto tasks.
Slipping into the tasks
Onboarding is a tricky task and it’s hard enough without having the rat race of starting back up again, making matters worse. However, you can perform onboarding-lite, so as to not overload new employees and still have them contribute to ongoing tasks. Informal onboarding simply means they are shadowing an employee and doing any kind of small or menial task they need to be done. The guide can be this person, asking them to simply write emails, contacting clients over the phone to inform them of a change in the company’s order or time schedule of demands. Run them through the procedures and show them how tasks are allocated and where they can receive the extra information they need to complete them.
Part of the ship
Nearing the end of their first day, the new employees should be given ID badges. You can make your own at work using the ID printers from https://www.plastic-id.com/id-printers.html which are easy to install and operate. Simply ask the employees to bring a headshot with them or send them to you via email. The photos can then be printed onto paper or card and then laminated between two plastic sheets. To finish making them part of the ship you run, introduce them to the security staff in the building you work if there are any.
You are racing against time to onboard new employees and be among the first to offer customers products they have been craving. A quick and informal onboarding process is the best option for this type of situation.
IMPORTANT: Please note that this post has been written by an outside source – See Disclosure Policy
