Beyond Day One: Building a Better Onboarding Experience

Think back to your first day at a new job. You likely remember the paperwork, introductions, tour of the building, and trying to remember the names of everyone you met. If you were lucky, your computer worked, you knew where to park, and someone remembered you were starting that day. But was that onboarding or was it simply orientation?

Too often, we treat onboarding as something that happens on an employee’s first day or during their first week. We hand over policies, review benefits, provide a tour, introduce coworkers, and then send the employee off to do the job they were hired to do. Effective onboarding should be much more than that.

Onboarding is the intentional process of helping a new employee become a successful, connected, and contributing member of the organization. That process begins before the employee arrives and should continue throughout their first year.

More Than a Good First Day

A good onboarding process obviously benefits the employee. Starting a new job comes with uncertainty. New employees are learning new people, systems, expectations, terminology, and organizational norms—often all at once. A structured onboarding process removes some of that uncertainty.

Onboarding is equally valuable to the organization. Local governments invest considerable time and resources recruiting and selecting employees. Onboarding is our opportunity to build on that investment by helping employees understand expectations, establish relationships, learn about our organization, and become productive in their new roles.

And while a great first day matters, successful onboarding is not about creating the perfect first day, it is about creating a thoughtful first year.

Think of Functional, Technical, and Cultural

I like to think about onboarding in three areas: functional, technical, and cultural.

Functional onboarding answers the practical questions:

• How do I complete my timesheet?
• Where do I find policies? How does purchasing work?
• What benefits and employee programs are available?
• Who do I contact when I need help?

Technical onboarding focuses on the job itself, answering such questions as:

• What am I responsible for?
• What does success look like?
• What systems, equipment, regulations, or procedures do I need to learn?
• What should I accomplish in my first 30, 60, or 90 days?

Cultural onboarding helps answer a less tangible but equally important question: How do things work around here?

It helps employees understand the organization’s mission and values, how people communicate, how departments work together, and how their position contributes to serving the community.

HR Owns the Process but Not All the Work

Human resources (HR) should own the overall onboarding process. Someone needs to establish the framework, create consistency, define milestones, and make sure the process does not end after orientation. But HR cannot—and should not—do all the onboarding.

Onboarding is a shared responsibility between HR, the employee’s supervisor, and the employee themselves.

At the City of Chelan, we provide supervisors with a new employee onboarding guide designed to help them create an individualized onboarding plan in the weeks before the new hire starts.

City supervisors are encouraged to review the job description and performance expectations, establish goals and checkpoints for the first 90 days, identify employees for the new hire to shadow, and schedule regular one-on-one meetings. HR is right there alongside the supervisor to offer coaching and support as needed.

The guide also asks supervisors to intentionally create opportunities for new employees to get to know their team. Something as simple as a team lunch, morning coffee, or informal huddle can help a new employee understand who their coworkers are, what they do, and how the team works together.

That is the cultural side of onboarding, and it cannot be accomplished by HR alone.

Start Before Day One—and Keep Going

Onboarding should begin before the employee walks through the door. Before that first day, HR, various relevant departments (like finance or IT) and the supervisor can communicate what to expect, prepare technology and equipment, establish a training schedule, identify key people the employee should meet, and make sure someone is actually ready to welcome them.

Imagine the difference between a new employee arriving on their first day discovering that no one knows where they are supposed to sit and, instead, arriving to find their workspace ready, login credentials active, equipment waiting, and their supervisor with a plan for the first week. That preparation sends a message before anyone says a word.

The process should then continue through intentional milestones. At Chelan, our supervisor guide encourages regular check-ins during the first few months and identifies formal touchpoints at three, six, nine, and 12 months.

Not everything needs to be covered on day one. In fact, it probably should not be. The information an employee needs on their first morning is very different from what will be useful in 30 days, six months, or even a year later.

Use Technology (Even Simple Technology)

Consistency does not require an expensive HR information system. Before the City of Chelan had a more sophisticated human resource information system (HRIS), we used a free project-management tool to create onboarding task templates. Each time we hired someone, we could duplicate the template and assign tasks to the appropriate people. It was simple, but it worked.

Technology can also help spread information throughout the onboarding process. For example, information about an employee wellness program may be much more meaningful 30 days into employment than during the last hour of a three-hour new employee orientation.

Instead of trying to explain every benefit, policy, program, and organizational resource during the first-day information overload, consider creating email templates and scheduling them throughout an employee’s first several months. Chelan also offers a handout covering helpful benefits apps for employees.

The goal of technology is not to automate the human element out of onboarding. It is to automate the administrative pieces, so we have more time for the human ones.

Start Somewhere

Local governments vary tremendously in size, staffing, and resources. A large organization may have dedicated HR staff and a sophisticated onboarding platform. A smaller jurisdiction may have one person wearing several administrative hats. Either can have an effective onboarding program.

Here are some tips:

• Start with a checklist
• Create a schedule for the first week
• Give supervisors a simple orientation guide
• Develop a few reusable email templates
• Establish 30-, 60-, and 90-day check-ins
• Identify a 'should meet' or shadow colleague for new employees

Agencies should then improve the process with each new employee. It’s ok to start small and evaluate the results; some onboarding is better than no onboarding.

Conclusion

Ultimately, onboarding does not need to be complicated or expensive. It needs to be intentional, consistent, and shared. Whether your organization has a sophisticated HR system or a simple checklist, the important thing is having a plan—and recognizing that onboarding extends well beyond an employee’s first day.

Local governments invest significant amounts of time and effort in finding the right people. The job is not finished when they accept the offer. The next step is helping them understand their role, find their place on the team, connect with the organization’s culture, and see how their work contributes to the community they serve.

A successful hire gets someone in the door. Successful onboarding helps them succeed once they’re there. Visit MRSC’s website to find more sample onboarding checklists and documents.