7 Ways to Personalize Employee Onboarding. Welcome, [First Name]!
Employee onboarding can be an intimidating and overwhelming experience for new hires, but it doesn’t need to be.
While onboarding automation can make the process more efficient, a personalized onboarding experience will make employees feel more welcome, prepare them for success quicker, and ultimately leave them feeling like they made the right decision.
Why Personalization is Important
An effective onboarding process goes beyond just handing over a welcome packet; it ensures every new hire feels connected to the organization and aligned with its company culture.
A personalized onboarding process acknowledges that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work for today’s diverse workforce. Instead, tailoring the experience to address individual needs can significantly improve retention rates.
Start the onboarding journey with a strong first impression during the first week. This could include role-specific introductions, such as customized training modules or webinars that focus on the new role.
Incorporating interactive onboarding elements, like tutorials or live training sessions, keeps new users engaged and builds a sense of belonging. These tailored experiences ensure every employee feels supported and confident as they settle into their responsibilities.
Don’t forget to follow up! Real-time feedback loops and check-ins after the first week allow you to adapt the personalized approach further.
Below, I've explained each of these items in more detail, to help you make it personal.
7 Ways to Personalize Onboarding
So how can you personalize employee onboarding in your workplace? Here are my favorite ideas to to help you create a better onboarding experience.
Get to Know Them Before Day One
The secret to a great onboarding program is that it doesn’t start on day one. Before a new employee starts work, the HR department will collect core data such as date of birth and social insurance number for payroll purposes, but the onboarding process can seek other data as well. This is called the preboarding process.
Get to know the new hire before they even set foot in the office. Find out what they’re passionate about and why they wanted to join your organization. Ask about some of the things they like—that way you can surprise them with something unexpected in their welcome pack.
Do they have a sport they love? Consider a small nicknack for their desk. Is there a type of food that they love? Consider getting that cuisine for lunch on their first day, or getting them a gift card to a local restaurant.
Nail Their First Day
The first day is a pivotal moment in the onboarding journey that sets the tone for their employee orientation and helps create a lasting first impression.
Kick off the day with a thoughtful welcome letter tailored to the employee's previous experience and role. This letter can come from their direct manager or even a senior leader, expressing excitement about their arrival and emphasizing their importance to the team.
Including personal touches, like a mention of their skills or why they were hired, makes the first impression even more impactful.
Before the day concludes, schedule time for a follow-up meeting with their manager. Use this opportunity to gather feedback about their experience, address any immediate concerns, and set expectations for the first week.
This shows the employee that their opinions matter and helps refine the personalized onboarding process.
Arrange a Leadership Interaction
Involving leadership in the onboarding journey is a great way to build a connection to the organization’s vision and company culture.
Schedule a brief meeting or informal coffee chat with a senior leader who can share the company’s mission, values, and goals. This interaction underscores the company’s investment in the new hire and provides a unique opportunity for them to ask questions and feel inspired.
Provide Personalized Swag
Many companies offer corporate-branded swag in a welcome kit—calendars, notebooks, hats, pens, etc. It’s a nice feeling, but most employees realize that at the end of the day it’s all promotional for the company’s benefit.
Instead, consider incorporating personalized employee swag that has an employee’s name or even initials on it. Many promotional product vendors will be happy to include a monogram that can help personalize the employee onboarding experience.
A new employee might use a branded notebook or carry a branded tote bag out of necessity, but at least some part of it will still feel like work. Instead, imagine how that employee would feel if the bag had their name on it, or if they were drinking out of a mug that had their name right alongside the company’s.
It may cost a little bit extra in the swag budget, but that hands-on experience of being part of the company is irreplaceable. Personalized employee swag ties that employee directly to the company, and it’s something that can happen from day one.
Create a Sense of Belonging
Starting a new job can be nerve-racking, and a simple meal or team-building activity can 1) make someone feel special and 2) be a nice, informal way to introduce the new hire to their colleagues and help them form connections.
In-person bonding over social events is irreplaceable. Employees have a chance to connect with each other beyond focused video calls, and they form relationships that let them feel integrated into the environment.
However, if your team works largely or fully remote, you can still create fun virtual team building activities to help build connections between dispersed team members.
Remember that team building can also happen regularly on a smaller scale.
Test Their Skill Levels to Tailor Training
Have you ever sat in a seminar or lecture where you knew all the material already, and felt like it was a complete waste of your time being there? The onboarding process doesn’t need to feel like that for your new hires!
Instead of guessing at their experience from their resume, consider testing them on core material to see how much they already know. This can be done by using a learning and development platform that makes the process straightforward and convenient.
Skill testing can be done in a way that’s engaging and isn’t patronizing or punitive. Consider incorporating quizzes, games, and other aspects that cater to various learning styles to keep participants engaged.
The results will let you create a more personalized onboarding experience that’s less time-consuming, more efficient, and lets your new hires feel respected for the knowledge that they’re bringing to the table.
Set Goals Together
No one’s onboarding is going to look 100% the same and each will vary by role, seniority, knowledge, skill level, and also the personal goals of the individual.
First, consider implementing an onboarding checklist that lets employees know where they’re at in the process and what’s still left to come (onboarding software can also help with this).
New hires will feel as though they’ve accomplished a small milestone after each stage of the process, and that they’re on their way to success in the role.
Next, think about how to improve employee engagement long-term. It's helpful to have new team members meet with colleagues and managers to talk about that long-term goal setting early on, with a focus on what success could look like for them further down the road.
If a new employee tells you that they have goals of reaching management and you see that they have the potential, start nurturing it at this early stage.
A mentorship program, for example, can help enhance employee training beyond the formal manager-employee relationship.
Make Room for Personalized Touches
You can more easily make time for personalizing employee onboarding by ensuring that everything that can be automated (AKA, taken off your plate), IS automated.
I suggest HR workflow solutions for this because they can handle time-consuming administrative tasks with precision and efficiency. For example, it can automatically send welcome emails tailored to each new hire, request and track the submission of required documents like tax forms and contracts, and assign tasks to the appropriate stakeholders, such as IT for setting up systems and managers for scheduling check-ins.
HR workflow software can automate reminders for both employees and managers about upcoming deadlines, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.
By taking these repetitive but essential tasks off your plate, you can dedicate more time to crafting personalized onboarding activities, such as creating mentorship opportunities, organizing virtual meet-and-greets, or tailoring training to the specific needs of each new hire.
Final Thoughts
Most workplaces understand the importance of the employee onboarding process, but few realize just how important it is.
Personalization, coupled with other best practices for the onboarding process, will go a long way to ensuring that the new team member feels welcomed and has a future at your organization.
The common consensus is that a 30, 60, 90 day plan helps ensure that new team members are properly initiated into the culture and properly supported.
To measure the effectiveness of your onboarding, look at metrics such as voluntary turnover and use onboarding surveys to gather feedback from the new team members themselves to optimize the onboarding process.
If you have any questions feel free to hit us up in the comments or join the conversation over in the People Managing People Community, a supportive community of HR and business leaders passionate about building organizations of the future.
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