Effective On Boarding Process : Step By Step approach

On boarding a candidate is one the important process which HR should do properly. When a person joins a company, he feels everything is new and different. First day in new office is always filled with joy, confusion, questions, hesitation, all together mixed feelings. Hence it is necessary that new joiner should be made comfortable with new environment. Person responsible for on boarding a new joiner play important role here.

Let’s see, how can we make a perfect on boarding process and ensure joining formalities are taken care?

Candidate joining confirmation

You must have informed office timing to candidate along with offer letter hence you can expect candidate to join at office in timing. First thing in morning, you need to check out, number of candidates expected to join today. You can simply confirm from your reception about candidates who are joining in office where you located and for out location candidates either confirm from admin executive (if you have any) else call candidate on his mobile to confirm his joining.  Accordingly, send intimation to all support functions including recruiter and reporting manager about candidate joining status. This is important as they also need to take action at their end and it will be good if they come to know about it in morning itself.

Making new joiner comfortable

Once candidate joins and waiting at reception, do not let him wait for long. You should welcome him warmly and let him sit in a conference room or place you have for new joiner induction process. You should ask for tea and coffee and arrange.

Joining Kit: At the same time, you can handover joining kit to candidate to fill. I would suggest that Joining Kit should be bind in form of a booklet.

There are various documents which should be part of such Joining Kit. These documents are mentioned below:

• Welcome note
• Joining Report
• Employee Information Form
• I Card Form
• PF Form 11 (PF Declaration Form)
• PF Form 2 (PF Nomination Form)
• ESI Form 1 ( ESI Declaration and Nomination Form)
• Gratuity Form F (Nomination Form )
• Confidentiality Agreement/ IPR Agreement
• Any other Agreement standard for employees
• Induction Feedback Form

In my upcoming post, I will talk about above mentioned documents in detail and other useful facts about joining kit.

Personnel file documents: Also inform candidate about documents which need to be submitted for personnel file. You can also send list of documents required for personnel file from candidate while sending offer letter so that candidate is aware and get time to collect these documents and bring it along when joins.

Vital documents which you need to collect from new joiners are:

• Acceptance of Appointment letter
• Educational Qualification documents
• Relieving letter/ Experience letter of last company (or all companies with whom he has worked)
• Photographs (3-5 depending upon your requirement)
• Permanent Address proof 
• Present / communication address proof
• ID Proof

Apart from other you should also keep following documents in personnel file which are already available with you:

• Copy of resume
• Employment application form
• Salary proof of last company
• All documents in Joining kit

In my upcoming blog, I will write about vital documents and other useful documents which can be kept in personnel file in detail along with usefulness of these documents.

Induction about Company and policies

Once new joiner is through with filling the joining kit and submission of personnel file documents. You can start his induction on company and its policies. It is advisable to have a presentation ready for giving induction to new joiner.

Your induction presentation should cover followings:

• About Company
• Top Management of Company
• Vision, Mission and Ideology of Company
• Various Service offering/ Product of company
• Key Clients
• Main HR Policies and Procedures
• Payout Dates (Salary, Reimbursement, Incentive etc)
• Details of Support functions contact person along with their email id and phone numbers

Normally, first day new joiner get download of so much information that it is difficult for him to remember all hence he loose his focus. You can have a Induction assessment test after induction is over. This will help new joiner to go back to main important points again and understand them.

I will soon write about induction in more detail so please wait till that time. Above, will give you a basic framework.

Bank Account opening

You need to get bank account open for new joiner so that salary, reimbursement, incentive etc can be transferred there. You can tie up with any of the bank which suits to your requirement. If you have localize operations then choose bank which has better connectivity in your area or in case of pan India operations, find bank with national presence. Now with facility of accessing any bank ATM has reduced our pain in selecting a bank as employee can withdraw money from any bank ATM. Sometimes, due to pressure of opening bank account for large number of employees located across India, especially in case of mass hiring, we go with KYC (Know Your Customer) arrangement with bank. In this case employee needs not to submit any ID proof, to get the bank account open. Only some banks provide this facility. But I would strongly oppose this practice. Please ensure that your employee do submit ID and Address proof to get the bank account open. Tomorrow, in case, bank account opened by KYC method, where you have attested and signed the bank form on behalf of employee, found involved in illegal activities, you can also be in trouble.
Coordination with Admin and IT

A new joiner require laptop / desktop, mobile, SIM, Official Email id, Sitting place, Visiting Card, Access Card, any other tool, hence it is important for HR to coordinate with these support functions to make sure arrangement of same. During pre joining formalities, we discussed that HR should inform support functions about candidate expected joining in advance so that they can make necessary arrangements. Please go through the link which talks about 3 Basic steps to do before candidate joining!!.

You can also give a demonstration to new joiner, on how to access official email id through web browser. In case you have a software, to manage HR processes i.e. HRIS, then you should also create a login for new joiner and give him training on how to access ESS (Employee Self Service) module of HRIS (Human Resource Information System) software and various benefits of same. Some companies do give notepad and pen (with company logo printed on it) so you can also see that if your budget allows.

Handover appointment letter and explain

You should handover hard copy of appointment letter to new joiner and explain the same to him, especially the salary structure part. Once he understood everything, then get acceptance on one copy to file in his personnel file and give second copy to him for his record. Don’t give it loose, please give it in company printed envelopes.

Induction about Project through reporting manager

Once you are through with HR related activities, then you can communicate reporting manager to meet new joiner. It is very important that the person to whom new joiner need to report, should meet him to set up base with each other. Reporting manager need to take out time to meet new joiner and induct him about project / department/ function on which he need to work and answer queries. Further, reporting manager should introduce new joiner to rest of team members of project/ department. HR person should, also as process, introduce new joiner to every member of branch so that rest of team members should also know about new person joining.

HR person can send mail to all employees, which should describe about person who has joined today along with his designation, past experience, educational qualification, hobbies and contact details. Normally, companies have a group email id which includes each and every employee, HR can send mail at this group id.  An advise to HR that never ever let this group email id open for every team member to be able to send mail. If it is open for everyone then anyone can send anything. So beware.

Induction Feedback and tracking

Once induction is over, you can ask new joiner to fill Induction Feedback Form. Induction Feedback form should contain all those important steps which are mandatory for new joiner ON BOARDING process. Also provide space for new joiner to give his remarks to improve the process. Do take a serious note of such remarks and implement if you found any good suggestion. Induction feedback form ensures that new joiner has gone through each and every step and his on boarding is complete now.
You should also maintain a tracker (in the form of spread sheet) which capture each and every stage of new joiner induction. It will be a consolidated sheet which can be referred in future for any sort of reporting and information required about on boarding process. It should describe TAT during each stage.

Be in touch with new joiner for initial few days

Initial few days are little difficult for new joiner as he takes some time to adjust in company. He has many queries to get answered. HR person should be in touch with new joiner for initial few days and help him in getting settled in system. Some companies do practice Buddy Program for making candidate settled in system. Please refer my blog on What is Buddy Program and how to design it?

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