Do You Have an Employee On Boarding Process?

The need to grow your bottom line is a good problem to have, but being prepared when hiring new staff members is crucial for a number of reasons. Unfortunately, for a small business, it's pretty likely you are hiring because you have too much work to do. Keep new employee motivation up by having a concrete process that ensures their workspace is ready when they walk in the door on their first day.

There's a lot that goes into hiring new staff and there are countless school's of thoughts and methods that different businesses employ while hiring. Regardless of your methods, being prepared and having a solid, documented plan will reduce the amount of time and money you spend on the new hire. Hopefully, the new addition to your team is excited and motivated to become a part of your company. You want to keep that motivation up - if he/she is coming into a mess, things aren't organized, and you don't have a place to put them, it's going to kill their good vibes about the new job.

Where does technology come into play? Well first off, if your new employee needs a workstation, make sure it's set up and ready to go. If you are supplying the new hire with a hand-me-down, it needs to be cleaned up and all of the standard updates need to be applied. Their email and access to other business applications needs to be rolled out and tested. Don't scribble down their username and password on a post-it note when you can print a nice branded welcome document with their initial login credentials. Of course, this document should walk them through changing their passwords and domain policies should enforce that, in case that printout gets lost or leaked.

Your new hire rollout process should be pretty detailed. Beyond what we mentioned above, here's a short list of other tips to consider:

• Set up a new workspace and workstation.
• Optimize the workstation and install all software and updates the employee will need.
• Be sure to check all software licenses - purchase new licenses when needed.
• Everything should be connected to the domain and the new hire needs to be added to the network.
• Standard email rules, filters, and signatures should be applied.
• Login accounts to training resources need to be generated.
• Compose a document to familiarize new staff with your network file structure.
• Ensure they can access the files and directories they should and block them from the ones they should not.
• Set up and test their phone extension and voicemail.

Having all of your technology prepared for the arrival of a new employee will make for a smooth transition for everybody. And in case things don't work out, it is equally important that you have a standardized offboarding process so the employee can no longer access the company network. We at Computerware can work with your HR department in developing an entrance and exit hiring strategy that will work best with the unique needs of your company. Call us at (703) 821-8200 and hire us to help you hire others!