Onboarding: Guide your new hires the right way

Training expert and ILS founder Jay Lambert poses with a cutout image of Norm from Cheers

"Who's this guy?," asked Norm.

Starting a new job can be stressful, and most of us want to go to a place where everybody knows our name.

Onboarding goes better with an assigned guide.

This is why having an assigned guide during the first week of a new job can significantly impact the new employee’s success and overall experience.

A guide can show a new employee around and introduce them to other team members (or customers, in Norm's case). This becomes a great start to putting the person at ease and making those connections.

But, it shouldn't end there.

Norm, for example, was always a friendly guy -- unless you sat on his stool. A guide can also steer new employees clear of any in-office taboos.

Here are some other significant benefits of making an assigned guide part of your new hire onboarding program.

Organizational Context

An assigned guide can provide essential information about the company, its culture, and how things work, helping new employees learn to navigate their roles more effectively.

Productivity Boost

A buddy or mentor can accelerate the learning curve by sharing tips, shortcuts, and best practices towards becoming productive faster.

Improved Satisfaction

Having someone to turn to for questions and guidance fosters a sense of belonging and reduces anxiety, especially during the initial days of a new job.

All of these benefits to the employee also aid the company, of course, with improvements to efficiency, culture, and retention.

Does your onboarding program use an assigned guide and mentor?

And, bigger picture, how quickly do your teams know everybody's name (and make them feel glad that they came)?

How does this apply to eLearning, ILT, and virtual training?

Well, that's a great question. One of the strategies we employ is creating mentor stories to included in the training These can be in the form of interviews presented as live or animated videos, stories for learners to read, or audio recordings to be illustrated in the training.

Or, sometimes we design the training to include characters as the narrators. The scripts of eLearning or videos can be written with the tone of a guide, sometimes even presenting scenarios with choose your own endings, or other ways for learners to relate to the presenter as a guide.

Design your eLearning or training project to guide your learners the right way.

The right way is your way of making the learners feel like they are in a place where everybody knows their name. We can help you do that, no matter what type of onboarding training program you create.