You’ve been singing the praises of this company to your friends and family for weeks, and here you are, finally, on the first day of your new job. You practice a power pose in your car, slowly inhale and exhale to calm your nerves, and make your way into the office.

As an HR pro, you get excited about the new employee handbook, the new people you’ll meet, the new office supplies, and jumping in to learn the ins and outs of your role. This is your jam, and someday you, too, will be leading orientations here, so you’re ready to take it all in!

But it’s half past the hour, and your manager has yet to show up. You haven’t been given any login credentials, and you are getting awkwardly closer to hiding in the corner while others engage with each other, sending confused stares your way. Just before you all but turn into an office fixture, your manager shows up with a forced grin on their face, sweat dripping from their forehead, and a frazzled greeting, followed by mumbled apologies and about a miscommunication over the schedule. You’re eager to be relieved from your awkward state, so you let it slide.

Then comes orientation, where you’re given outdated paperwork to complete and reassured that the 2014 version of the W-4 will process just fine. You ask when you’ll receive more information about the company, the inner workings of various teams, and general workplace practices.

Your manager points you to the public company website, paired with a comment under their breath that you should have already looked that over before the interview process. No more information is given, so you make a mental note to scour the intranet (if there is one) or ask other colleagues.

By 11am, you’ve taken the tour, been given access to your email, met a few people, and been told you’ll need to make time for compliance training among your other tasks this week. You’re then left to your own devices for a few hours, so you take a quiet lunch alone in your car and then come back to navigate the many emails that have accumulated since IT set up your account weeks ago. And oops, there’s the resignation email in there from the person you just replaced.

It’s 4pm, and as you approach the end of the workday, you’re unexpectedly called into a conference room with various stakeholders. They instruct you to deliver your presentation—one you haven’t heard about until this very moment. Do you ad-lib something on the spot or come clean that you haven’t prepared for this, possibly throwing your manager under the bus? But your decision doesn’t matter, because at that same moment, you look down and realize you’re in your underwear, and your grandma is there, too. Your alarm clock goes off. Whew, it was just a nightmare.

Okay, let’s check in. You’re safe and clothed now; there’s no presentation. But I bet some of that dream resonated with you, because every aspect of this nightmare (sans the underwear part) has happened to me at some point in my career. This nightmare is a reality for too many new hires. The good news is that it’s a preventable reality.

You can fend off the first-day scaries and enhance your onboarding ROI by creating a scalable, human-centric, and performance-driven orientation processes.

For most organizations, onboarding is a missed opportunity. We treat it like a frantic sprint through compliance paperwork and IT setups, leaving our newest team members feeling more processed than welcomed. When we treat onboarding as a checklist, we are not just creating a forgettable experience; we are actively contributing to early turnover.

A report by BambooHR found that despite the critical importance of onboarding, just 12% of employees believe their employer’s onboarding process is adequate or successful.

On the flip side, employees who have had an effective onboarding experience feel up to 18x more committed to their workplace, 89% felt more engaged, and these same folks were up to 30x more likely to feel overall job satisfaction. These numbers might feel like a dream (a much nicer dream), but if a manager can forget a start date and point a new hire to a public website to learn about an entire industry, then making these dream numbers a reality is absolutely possible.

The anxiety of starting a new job is universal. We can dramatically reduce that stress by connecting with our new hires before their official start date. A thoughtful pre-boarding process can transform their first day from a nerve-wracking event into a welcome celebration that gets them feeling like a new team member—not just someone filling a seat.

• The welcome series: Send informational emails ahead of your new hire’s start date with details about the company, its culture, departments, and general FAQs. (Standardize and automate this to keep it turnkey and scalable.) This builds early engagement, excitement, and clarity.
• The welcome package: As soon as your new hire accepts their offer, send a curated welcome package. This should include all necessary equipment to eliminate day-one tech stress, along with some company swag. A handwritten welcome note from their manager is a small touch that has an outsized impact.
• The first day: A few days before an employee begins, send an email with all the logistical details: their schedule for the first day, whom they’ll be meeting, and what to expect. This simple act of communication calms nerves.
• First-day introductions: Share a brief, fun bio of the new hire on a team-wide channel or email. This allows the team to welcome them before they even log on, creating an immediate sense of inclusion.

The first 90 days on the job are a make-or-break window where we must be intentional about building human connections. According to Harvard Business Review (HBR), companies with a structured onboarding experience see 50% greater new hire retention. That structure should be built around people.

• Assign an onboarding “buddy”: The single most effective tool for building connection is appointing a peer buddy to a new hire from outside their direct reporting line. A buddy is their first friend and mentor at work, a go-to resource for all the “silly” questions, and an immediate social anchor.
• Structure for connection, not just compliance: Design the first week’s schedule around human interactions. Schedule one-on-one chats for the new hire with each member of their immediate team, and provide a resource list of active social clubs, groups, or ERGs they can join.
• Clarify the “why,” not just the “what”: Managers should explain to their new hires how their specific roles relate directly to the company’s mission and how their department contributes to business objectives. Employees who understand their impact are engaged from day one.
• Normalize Feedback Loops: The first 90 days are pivotal for acclimating a new hire to a culture of feedback. Invite feedback at multiple stages to get ahead of any red flags in their experience before they become larger issues.

We can design the most beautiful orientation program in the world, but if managers aren’t equipped to execute it, it will fail. Our role as HR leaders is to make it easy for our managers to be great onboarding partners.

• Provide a manager’s playbook: Create a simple guide that outlines a manager’s responsibilities for each stage of the new hire’s first 90 days, from the pre-boarding welcome note to setting 30-, 60-, and 90-day goals.
• Focus on frequent check-ins: Coach managers on the importance of frequent, informal check-ins. These aren’t performance reviews; they are human check-ins to ask: How are you doing? What questions do you have? What can I do to support you?
• Prioritize on-the-job training: Research shows 76% of new hires want on-the-job training in their first week. Work with managers to design a meaningful first project that allows the new hire to learn by doing and achieve an early win.
• Create a manager feedback loop: Get feedback from managers frequently. This will give you insight into what’s working and help you identify key issues in the process internally.

Shifting onboarding from a process-driven checklist to a human-centric journey is a strategic plan with a clear return on investment. Organizations with strong onboarding processes improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by 70%.

And this list is not exhaustive. I could go on about onboarding for days, but these points provide a solid foundation for building a human-centric program especially for those overwhelmed with a compliance-only focus.

The bottom line is, when we invest in making our newest employees feel welcomed, supported, and connected, they don’t just stay longer—they are more engaged, more productive, more satisfied, and more committed to an organization’s success. As a bonus, we might just help prevent a few of those first-day scaries, and that’s a worthy cause, too.

—

The information contained in this site is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as legal advice on any subject matter.