Investing time in your employees is the best way to keep employee turnover low and your return on investment high. The first few weeks a new hire is on the job are crucial to setting expectations and getting them excited about your startup.
One of the top challenges for managers in any startup is finding enough time for onboarding new team hires, especially communicating the expectations around their team culture, values, and soft skills (teamwork and communication skills).
In my experience, creating a new hire team document that clearly outlines expectations can be effective to help new hires integrate well into the team. It helps build trust with your team by setting clear expectations on the best way to work with you and each other.
Here is an example of my new hire team document that you can use as a framework if you’re interested in creating your own version. I have removed some confidential information, but left everything else intact.
You should also do the following with all your new hires:
- Setup 1:1 time to give and get feedback
- Create an onboarding plan with 30/60/90-day goals
- Setup meetings with internal teams and external stakeholder
- Assign a guide to help support new hires during onboarding
By investing the time upfront with new hires, your efforts will pay off with higher employee engagement and retention — and your startup will benefit from employees that are able to be more productive sooner.
