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What’s one unique way startups can improve their employee onboarding process?

1. Have Weekly Check-In Meetings 

A lot of startups are so focused on hitting their acquisition goals they forget about employee satisfaction and retention. Don’t limit your view of onboarding to a stack of paperwork. Treat it as an ongoing process that follows the employee through their probationary period. At TechnologyAdvice, our talent manager holds weekly check-in meetings with each new hire for their first 90 days.  – Rob Bellenfant, TechnologyAdvice 

2. Have a Buddy System 

At the start of the onboarding process, assign the new team member a more experienced peer as a ‘buddy’ of whom they can ask questions and get feedback in their first few weeks on the job. It’s an easy thing to do but is often overlooked in the onboarding process. Having a buddy system for the new employee will enable them to ramp up faster. – Doreen Bloch, Poshly Inc. 

3. Give New Employees a Crash Course in Every Part of the Business 

Give new employees face-time with someone from every part of the business, including executives, sales, marketing, engineering, customer success, etc. There’s no such thing as too much context when it comes to employee onboarding. This crash-course method gets new employees thinking about how the business works together from a granular and a 10,000-foot perspective — both are crucial for success. – Chris Savage, Wistia 

4. Create Self-Service Processes 

Take the load of HR by creating automated forms that guide new employees through pertinent queues and requested material. You will alleviate bottlenecks in the onboarding process, and be able to scale without adding to your HR staff.  – Russell Kommer, eSoftware Associates Inc 

5. Have an Onboarding Interview One Month In 

The best way to improve your employee onboarding process is to consult your most recent hires. You can do this by arranging a follow-up interview with every new hire and your HR department about one month into their employment with you. Ask about what your training schedule was like for them, what they enjoyed, what could be improved on for next time, etc. Your new hires are an untapped resource. – David Ciccarelli, Voices.com 

6. Create an “Onboarding Box” 

For every new hire we create an “onboarding box” full of goodies tailored specifically to that person. It includes things like company swag, gift cards, and random knick knacks that they can appreciate. We bundle this with the employee handbook and have it waiting on their desk on their first day. – James Simpson, GoldFire Studios 

7. Use Virtual Reality 

Using virtual reality to onboard employees may not be efficient (it’s costly and time-consuming to develop), but it is unique and has the potential to be highly effective in the future, especially in a remote team setting. New employees can simply slip on a headset and be guided through the different processes, introduced to the brand, and more. – Jared Brown, Hubstaff 

8. Plan for the Worst But Hope for the Best 

Get the legal agreements done by a lawyer with experience and prepare a comprehensive checklist of everything the employee will need to access digitally, and be ready to revoke all of that when they leave the company. Make sure you own whatever they work on and that you can revoke access and secure your business when they leave. Don’t leave anything to chance.   – Lane Campbell, fastAdvocate 

9. Use Camtasia for Training Videos 

Use Camtasia to record training videos of tasks that will be performed by new employees. Every time you onboard a new employee, create a video and support that video with a document explaining processes. As you hire for new roles, you create new videos and store them all on a dropbox or folder to be used for future hires. With each new hire, invest the time in creating training materials. – Marcela De Vivo, Brilliance 

10. Invest in a Management System 

Find a system that can manage it. We currently use BambooHR, which helps with keeping all HR files in one place. It has a place to manage all tasks that need to be completed to get a new employee set up, which also includes training. This system will even help create a training system for each hire in each department. – Joey Kercher, Air Fresh Marketing 

11. Get Signed Company Culture Statements 

We make every employee read and sign our company culture standards of excellence. Ensuring they are 100 percent on board with our teams’ commitment to one another and to our customers has built a significantly improved culture that starts with our hiring process.  – Justin Sachs, Motivational Press 

12. Introduce Them to Customers 

A lot of companies wait until after onboarding and training to let new hires talk to customers. We do it right away. There’s no better way to feel and be part of the team than to start serving customers. – Brandon Bruce, Cirrus Insight