The New Employee Checklist

The New Employee Checklist

Great! You’ve hired a new employee. Now how do you make sure they’re placed in a really great position so they can hit the ground running. Integrating new employees within your company culture, helping them get up to speed and productivity quickly, and ensuring they can be an asset to your self directed team is just as important as hiring them in the first place.

Social Engagement

The absolute most important thing you can include within your hiring and on-boarding process for new employees is social engagement. Forbes recently published an article on the topic which identified that work relationships can be incredibly important to employee well being. As humans we crave contact and connections with other people, and it’s important for employers to understand just how critical social connections in the office really are.

As a manager or a boss you will have some agency over the list of things new employees need to check off right when they start working; setting up computers, creating accounts, and other lonely non-social activities. This is a poor practice.

Right away, great interactions will help build amazing relationships which is becoming more and more statistically proven to increase productivity and performance out of your team. You might already see the benefits of a great culture and social engagement among your existing employees, which results in high performance. But if you want the on-boarding process for new people to go smoothly, and for them to match that standard of proficiency as fast as possible to start netting you benefits then create some social engagement.

You want that connection, and so do your employees— it will increase your bottom line by making them extremely helpful to you.

Preparation

Give six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe. — Abraham Lincoln

Something President Lincoln was noted to say, he would spend a substantial block of time for a given project in preparation. In this metaphor it was developing an edge so much sharper than the competition he would be able to overtake opponents with ease and proficiency.

Translating that into your new hire process that means putting aside the time and effort to make your own checklist and procedures so it becomes natural to bring new people on in a seamless and positive way. Doing that can only result in your new team members working better, faster.

This Week’s Take Away

Intentionally prepare actionable steps to create social engagement with your new hires. Think of what you will do that first day, and that first week, for your new people. It’s you as the leader that must create that; it’s not only the responsibility of the new employees and existing team members to chat amongst themselves.

One of the things I’ve done in the past when I hired two new assistance on the team, is we went bowling. We had a complete blast, got people smiling, and started to kick off that tremendously valuable social engagement. On the first couple of days I took some employees aside and requested they talk with our new team members; ask about what they’re excited about, what are they scared of, and what their favorite part about joining the team is.

I want you to design and engineer that first day, and that first week. If your new hire checklist has some social engagement as a part of it you will experience some major benefits.