How to Ensure New Employees Remember Info During Onboarding

The employee onboarding process is your company’s opportunity to introduce your new workers to your business and to give them the tools and resources they need to help ensure they smoothly transition to their new roles.

By carefully planning onboarding steps, you can provide new employees with the relationships, tools, and information they need to be comfortable and confident at their new place of work.

When you onboard new hires, you will need to provide your new workers with all kinds of information during the process, such as the daily tasks they will need to complete, a list of different departments and people who they need to contact in certain situations, and company policies, to name just a few.

It could be helpful to use onboarding software and an onboarding checklist to plan the onboarding process better. The checklist should contain things like the start date of each new hire and the information you need to provide them with, such as login codes and the departmental hierarchy of your company.

However, it can be challenging for new employees to remember all the important information they are given during the onboarding process, seeing as everything will be new to them and they are likely to feel anxious and excited.

So, seeing as you not only need to provide new workers with all the important information they require but also make sure they remember that information, you will want to check out the following advice.

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Send a Welcome Email to Make Employees Feel Part of the Team and Provide Them with All the Info They Need

By sending a welcome email to new workers, you will help employees feel part of the team. But a welcome email is also an excellent way of providing your new workers with all the information, tools, and resources they require.  Additionally, consider adding a professional email signature. This is a great opportunity to showcase your brand and provide contact information for further inquiries.

You should go over the important information contained in the welcome email in person as well, but if an employee forgets something, they will be able to easily look it up if it is contained in the welcome message.

Make sure that all important information in the email is very clear. Also, provide the contact number or email address of the person that new workers should get in touch with should they have questions or require information they cannot find.

To Maximize the Employee Onboarding Process, Provide Information at a Welcome Meeting

You will want to invite all new employees to a welcome meeting where they can get to know the team they will be working alongside. By doing that, you can help them to make immediate connections, get answers to any questions they have, and create better employee engagement. 

The transition to their new positions will then be much smoother. First days will always be nerve-racking, so a welcome meeting is your chance to put new employees at ease. It is also your opportunity to provide them with important information.

By talking to new team members in person about the important stuff, they are much more likely to remember the info and you will create a better employee experience. Furthermore, even though the information will also be included in the welcome email, it is best to provide new starters with print-outs of information and resources.

By doing so, you make it easy for them to flick through the pages over coffee breaks or on the train on the way home. By simply having the information in a physical form, your new starters are more likely to keep looking through it.

Also, use design methods like using the right fonts, including color and images to make the content more interesting, and using whitespace and bullet points so that every piece of information is clear. 

That way, your new starters are much more likely to remember the important information you give them. After a week on the job, they should know such information inside out. And by providing clear information from the start, you can better ensure employee retention. 

Create a Poster Featuring Key Information

Following on from the last point, it is a very good idea to create a poster that features all the key information. You can place posters on the walls of the meeting room and in other areas, such as individual employees’ workstations. You can also produce smaller versions of the posters to give out to employees directly.

When you have all the key information in one single place, new employees are sure to remember the content. And the more you use the right design techniques to make your poster attractive and engaging, the more you can ensure the content will be remembered.

Thankfully, you do not need to be a qualified designer to create eye-catching posters. Instead, you can use online professional templates to create a poster design that will help your employees to remember all the crucial information you need them to know.

Show Your New Employees Around the Workplace

Some of the important info your employees need to remember will pertain to the workplace and the work environment. For instance, new employees will need to remember things like where human resources and other departments are located, where fire exits are located, and who different people within the organization are.

To help them remember such things on a day to day basis, show your new employees around the workplace. Indeed, that should be an integral part of any onboarding session. Not only does it give the new starters a better way of remembering some important information.

It also creates a sense of belonging and enables them to become accustomed to their new environment. They can then be confident and ready in their new roles.

Introduce New Employees to Coworkers and Supervisors

During the welcome meeting on an employee’s first day, new employees should meet members of staff and senior managers that they will be directly in contact with in their new roles, and they can meet other members of staff during the walk around the workplace.

But it is also important that your new hires meet members of staff who they will be working with during the training period, such as coaches and section supervisors. Then, the new hire feel can be less daunting.

When new workers have the opportunity to speak informally with the people they will be directly working with in the first few weeks, they can get to know the company culture and learn about important information in a less formal way.

In turn, the information they need to know will be easier to remember. They will also have contacts who they can ask any questions.

Check in on New Employees During Their First Weeks

It will take time for new employees to learn everything they need to remember and to become accustomed to working in a new environment with new people. Therefore, do not limit the onboarding process to just the first day or week.

You should check in on new hires during the first few weeks to make sure they have everything they need and to answer any questions they may have.

The longer the onboarding process lasts and the more time and attention new employees receive, the easier it will be for them to remember important information and feel comfortable in their new roles.

So, do not leave employees to their own devices once they have started.

It will typically take at least a month for new workers to get to grips with everything and find their comfort zones, so pay attention to your new employees during the initial few weeks. If you do not, it could take as long as 12 months for employees to become familiar with everything!

Summing Up

As long as you remember to do the right things, from the initial hire process to the first day of onboarding employees, your new workers are more likely to remember the important information they are given during the automated automated onboarding process.

So, to recap:

• • •   Send a welcome email.

    •   Provide all important information at a welcome meeting.

    •   Create a poster featuring key information.

    •   Show your new employees around the workplace.

    •   Introduce new employees to coworkers and supervisors.

    •   Check in on new employees during the initial weeks.

      
      
      

About Author:

This article is written by our marketing team at HR Cloud. HR Cloud is dedicated to providing powerful solutions for your HR teams and creating an exceptional employee experience. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, onboarding, and to save you valuable time!