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How to use your employee platform to successfully onboard new hires

4 min read

How to use your employee platform to successfully onboard new hires

Find out how to use an employee platform like Jostle to smoothen and improve your employee onboarding process.

If your organization uses an intranet or similar employee platform, you probably already know that it’s one of your workplace’s most powerful tools. So it only makes sense that when you’ve hired new employees, you get them familiar with it as quickly as possible, right? A smart and easy way to do this is to incorporate elements of your platform right into your employee onboarding process. 

Not only will this hands-on experience help get them acclimated to their new platform, it’ll give them a good feel for your organization and how it runs things. Plus, the first-hand look at all of the resources that they have available to them will ensure they get started on the path to employee success right from the get-go. 

So with that in mind, here are some quick suggestions taken from Jostle’s own playbook on how you can successfully incorporate your employee platform right into your onboarding activities. 

Notefor consistency, all examples reference features from Jostle’s own platform. Other intranets/employee platforms may not have identical features or may use different names for similar features.

Successfully onboard new hires with an employee platform 

 

1. Preparation

Get the ball rolling with some pre-onboarding action. A new tradition we’ve started at Jostle is to create “Welcome Events” for each of our new hires’ first days and add them to our Events calendar. Then, we announce them in our Activity feed so everyone can leave their own greetings on the Event notice’s comments section. When our new hires log in for the first time, we send them the link to their “event” so they can read the notice and immediately feel welcome!

 

2. Introductions

Once our new hires have settled in, we show them the basics of how to post an article to our News view. Then we have them put pen to paper (or rather, fingers to keyboard) and compose an “About Me” post to officially introduce themselves to their new colleagues. It’s a great way to break the ice, and the comments section usually fills up with another round of “welcomes” and well-wishes.

 

3. Employee processing/orientation

Our Library is our organization’s document repository, so we begin our formal onboarding by starting our new hires there and pointing them to where they can find our employee orientation material as well as the policies and procedures they’ll need to review as part of their onboarding. 

 

4. Support system

Our Discussions (or chat) feature plays a key role here. There are many ways you can utilize your platform’s chat tool as a support system for new hires. For example: you can add your new hires to group chats with peer supporters or pair a mentor with a new hire and have them launch a private one-on-one Direct Message. Jostle has also been built to provide a space for themed chats and special interest groups, which are perfect for new hires looking to find others with shared interests.

New hires frequently get flustered when they have questions and don’t know who to go to, and both of the above options give them someone they can reach out to directly with any concerns they may have throughout their onboarding. And of course, this comes with the added bonus of getting your new hires familiar with the ins-and-outs of your platform’s chat tool use and management. 

 

5. Checklists

If your platform comes with the capability to assign tasks to users, then creating an onboarding checklist for new hires would be a perfect way to utilize it. With Jostle’s Tasks feature, we can go one step further and create tasks that are linked to Library items and Discussions. Meaning, we can assign tasks that link our new hires directly to that orientation material in our Library, then they can check it off as “completed” once they’ve reviewed it. 

We can even make a task for them to join a certain group chat and link the task directly to the chat. Then it’s just: Click link  >  Join chat  >  Task complete. Done! 

And Tasks also helps Team Leads and others involved in onboarding organize their own actions and inputs, usually well before the new hire has even been added into our system!

 

6. Interaction/knowledge building

One onboarding task I wholly recommend is to give your new hires a list of key people from different departments throughout your organization that they should speak with to gain a better understanding of your business and its workflows. At Jostle, we have new hires familiarize themselves with our People directory so they can get a better grasp of who does what. Then, as they locate each person on their list, they can initiate a Direct Message with them to set up a time for a one-on-one video or in-person chat. 

Not only does this introduce them to another aspect of our platform, it helps them break down silo walls between departments before they’ve barely had time to form.

 

7. Recognition/values introduction

And finally, you gotta give new hires some love and recognition! Any kind of public acknowledgement can do the trick, but at Jostle, we find that Shout-Outs in our Activity feed are the perfect way for us to let everyone know that our new hires have completed their onboarding. That way, everyone can instantly react by showing their “likes” and sharing the love, right there in the feed. It’s a great way for someone new to see what it’s like to work here and see our culture and values in action, too.

And nothing helps someone in a new environment feel like they belong more than some well-deserved praise and recognition from their peers!

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Read more by
Vince Forrington

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