Onboarding Success Key Actions For Integrating New Employees

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Oct 31, 2025, 12:43 PM

onboarding success key actions for integrating new employees

A strong, effective onboarding process prioritizes the new hire experience and creates a supporting, engaging introduction to a person's first weeks and months on the job. Adopt these best practices to drive better new hire engagement and retention. Effective onboarding is crucial for setting up new hires for success, boosting engagement and improving retention. The ADP Research Institute found that employees who have a formal onboarding process are 8.5 times more likely to say HR is value-promoting than those who don't go through formal onboarding. However, many organizations struggle to build a program that goes beyond the basics. Melissa Scasny, senior director of HR operations at ADP, shares insights on the key elements of a successful onboarding program.

From pre-start engagement to ongoing support, these eight onboarding best practices can help HR leaders create a seamless, welcoming and productive onboarding experience for every new employee. During the recruitment process, highlight benefits, culture and development opportunities. All these elements help job seekers decide which potential employers to engage with and can help build excitement about a new position. After new hires accept the job, introduce information gradually to avoid overwhelming them — but ensure you're sharing essential details to prepare them for their first week on the job, such as information about... Effective onboarding starts the moment a candidate accepts a job offer. Stay connected with new hires from offer acceptance until their start date.

Simple gestures, like sending a welcome note or a small gift, can build excitement and help new employees feel part of a community. As a SHRM Member®, you’ll pave the path of your success with invaluable resources, world-class educational opportunities and premier events. Demonstrate your ability to apply HR principles to real-life situations. Stand out from among your HR peers with the skills obtained from a SHRM Seminar. Demonstrate targeted competence and enhance your HR credibility. Designed and delivered by HR experts to empower you with the knowledge and tools you need to drive lasting change in the workplace.

Forbes Human Resources Council | March 4, 2025 Successful onboarding isn’t easy and is often done using a cookie-cutter approach. An employee’s onboarding sets the tone and expectations for their future at your company—and you want it to be a positive and mutually beneficial experience. A well-structured onboarding process ensures employees feel valued, informed, and confident. This crucial process involves familiarizing them with the tasks they must complete, key contacts they will be working with, important company protocols and processes, and organizational expectations. Creating a personalized and memorable onboarding journey sets the stage and leaves a lasting impression, boosting long-term retention.

Below, we’ll discuss the key do's and don'ts for elevating your onboarding process and ensuring your new employees hit the ground running.Want to learn more about optimizing employee experiences from day one? Connect with industry leaders at Forbes Human Resources Council and take your onboarding to the next level. Having a mentor for each new hire makes a world of difference. This person doesn’t need to be their direct supervisor but should be someone well-established within the company who can answer questions, offer support, and help them integrate into the company culture. A mentor can help your new employee navigate tasks, introduce them to key contacts, and be a sounding board as they settle into their role.Pro Tip: Mentorship helps new hires feel welcome and supported,... Your new hire is excited, but bombarding them with too much information can cause them to be overwhelmed.

Instead of front-loading their first day with endless paperwork and details, spread out the administrative tasks over a few days. Use digital platforms to automate these processes and make it easy for new employees to track their to-dos. Pro Tip: Create an organized, digestible onboarding schedule that mixes training sessions with fun activities, providing balance. Discover the top onboarding best practice strategies for 2025. Boost retention and productivity with our actionable tips and real-world examples. Create how-to guides and interactive walkthroughs without breaking a sweat — and say goodbye to repetitive questions.

Use our employee onboarding checklist template to simplify tasks, improve retention, and create a welcoming first day. Discover how to improve team productivity with proven strategies to diagnose real bottlenecks, choose the right tech, and build a high-performance culture. Set your new hires up for success, starting on the first day. Here are seven actionable strategies to enhance employee onboarding, boost engagement and improve retention. A winning onboarding strategy isn’t just getting new hires up to speed. It’s about creating a welcoming, structured experience that sets them up for long-term success.

The right onboarding program is so much more than checking boxes. A well-executed onboarding process can help with everything from boosting employee retention to increasing engagement to improving productivity. In fact, research from Gallup shows that companies with a strong onboarding strategy see 82% higher retention rates and 70% greater productivity. Yet, despite these benefits, many organizations still struggle to build an onboarding program that resonates with new hires and aligns with company culture. The good news? A few thoughtful adjustments (and the right tools) can transform your onboarding experience to make sure new employees feel valued, prepared and motivated from day one.

Here are seven proven ways to take your onboarding strategy to the next level. The journey from a signed offer letter to a fully engaged, productive team member is one of the most critical phases in the employee lifecycle. Yet, a handshake and a laptop are no longer enough to secure top talent for the long term. Data from Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2023 report shows that only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding. This is a startling statistic, especially since a strong onboarding process can improve new hire retention by 82%, according to research from the Brandon Hall Group. This article moves beyond generic checklists to provide nine evidence-based employee onboarding best practices, offering actionable frameworks used by leading companies.

We will explore how to transform onboarding from a transactional, administrative process into a strategic, transformational experience. The goal is to accelerate productivity, embed cultural values, and secure long-term employee commitment from day one. For a deeper dive into establishing a strong foundation for new hires, explore these additional 8 onboarding best practices to set new hires up for success. This guide provides a comprehensive roadmap for building a program that covers everything from structured 90-day plans and buddy systems to technology-enabled experiences and meaningful first projects. The period between a candidate accepting an offer and their official start date is a critical, yet often overlooked, phase of the employee journey. Effective preboarding transforms this waiting period into a strategic advantage, making it a cornerstone of modern employee onboarding best practices.

This process involves intentionally engaging new hires to build excitement, reduce first-day anxiety, and accelerate their integration into the company culture. A well-structured preboarding program confirms the new hire’s decision to join your team and lays the groundwork for long-term engagement and retention. By front-loading administrative tasks and providing cultural insights, you free up their first week to focus on meaningful connections and role-specific learning. Onboarding new hires isn’t a sprint, but it isn’t a marathon either. It’s really a triathlon, with HR professionals playing several key roles — coach, event organizer, and head cheerleader — to help employees transition through three distinct stages. For employees trying to navigate a new role and a new company, onboarding maps out a path that will take them across the ultimate finish line: job satisfaction.

But without careful planning and personalized support from HR and others, new employees can quickly feel overwhelmed, fall behind, and even drop out. This guide will help you get your onboarding program in tip-top condition so that employees cross the finish line with ease, energized and ready to begin contributing to the business. Employee onboarding is an opportunity to show new hires how your organization lives its values on a daily basis. It is a strategic initiative that demonstrates communication practices, internal processes, organization priorities, and the support employees can expect during their time at your company. Beginning when a candidate accepts a job offer, the onboarding process lays the groundwork for employee engagement, productivity, and retention. Of course, there are certain steps that must be completed, like documenting employment eligibility and collecting tax withholding information.

But while onboarding is often associated with paperwork, the heart of the onboarding process is setting up new hires for a long, successful tenure with your organization. Eight Core HR Metrics Your Business Needs to Track Your team’s success depends on making smart decisions about your people. While gut feelings have their Understanding the New Salary Thresholds The Department of Labor’s final rule (issued April 26, 2024) raises the minimum salary level for the Fair Labor Standards Do you wonder if human resources is the right career path for you? The numbers tell a powerful story: 86% of HR professionals report being

The numbers tell a stark story – 82% of employees face burnout at work. One in four battle these feelings constantly. Your business feels this Effective onboarding is crucial for the success of any organization. It sets the stage for new employees to become productive and engaged team members. By providing a structured and welcoming integration process, businesses can ensure that new hires feel supported and prepared for their roles.

This article will discuss the importance of onboarding, key elements of successful onboarding, strategies for effective integration, measuring onboarding success, and overcoming common onboarding challenges. Before delving into the best practices, it is important to understand the significance of onboarding. Onboarding refers to integrating new employees into an organization and familiarizing them with their roles and responsibilities. It goes beyond just orientation and paperwork; it sets the foundation for a positive employee experience and impacts long-term retention. When new employees join an organization, they often feel a mix of excitement and nervousness. They are eager to make a good impression and contribute to the company’s success.

However, without proper onboarding, this enthusiasm can quickly fade away. New hires may feel lost, overwhelmed, and disconnected from the company’s mission and values. Onboarding is more than just a box to be checked off—it is a strategic process that helps new hires acclimate to the company culture, understand their roles, and feel supported. It is an opportunity for organizations to demonstrate their commitment to employee success and to engage new hires from day one.

Onboarding Success Key Actions For Integrating New Employees

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