Onboarding is your company’s moment to make a first impression, and there aren’t any do-overs. A new employee only gets one first day, first week, first month, first year.
That means the onboarding and training for new hires matters—a lot. Early training does more than say “welcome.” It sets the tone for your company culture, shows how departments interact, and covers the essentials from policies to workflows. The way you train new hires impacts how quickly they can ramp up in their role and influences retention.
And yet, despite the importance of this orientation period, only 12% of employees believe their companies have effective onboarding, according to Gallup. So as you bring on new employees, it’s worth examining your existing new hire training plan for areas of potential improvement—or setting one up.
In this blog post, we’ll dig into the merits of a new hire training schedule (hint: it can bolster retention). You’ll also get a step-by-step walkthrough of how to set up a training plan for new employees.
Why it’s important to have a new employee training plan
When new employees start, there’s much that’s unknown. It’s a little bit like being in the middle of the ocean, searching for landmarks. After all, it’s possible to accept a new job after only a few hours of conversation and interactions. The onboarding process provides valuable information, from setting up health insurance and getting an ID to understanding your company’s mission and role-based responsibilities.
A smooth and effective new hire training plan is valuable to employees—and to the company. Here’s why:
A solid training plan boosts retention
Hiring a new employee costs nearly $4,700 on average, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. So when someone comes on board, ideally they’ll stick around. But too often, the onboarding process fails to support that goal.
A survey from Paychex found that after onboarding, 32% of participants report finding it confusing, while 22% describe the experience as disorganized. And 52% (more than half) complete onboarding feeling undertrained. This has implications for employee output (more on that in a minute) and also can serve as a nudge to consider moving on to another role quickly. Data from an Indeed survey backs that up: 39% of people who quit a job within six months share that better new hire training would have kept them in the role longer.
Find out more about how to measure the impact of new hire onboarding
Training ensures new hires have key information
Onboarding is a great moment to share company policies and procedures, as well as any ethical guidelines. Specific departments within your company may want to have a touchpoint during this time. For instance, your IT department likely wants anyone with a company email to know the basics, like how to avoid a phishing scheme and follow email best practices.
New hire training also leads to more productive employees—faster
In early training, employees learn about the company’s mission and driving purpose. It helps them feel connected to the company and understand how their day-to-day work supports the bigger picture.
Training also provides important specifics: What tool do we use for X task? Who do you talk to so Y gets done?
Plus, training is a moment to provide details on exactly how to login and gain access to tools and systems.
During employee training, new hires will discover what it takes to succeed in their role—along with how success is measured. This gives them a roadmap to success as they gain knowledge and skills that directly impact their on-the-job performance and productivity. Training can also offer information on common mistakes and pitfalls along with methods to be avoided. It points employees to helpful resources so that when they have questions, they know where to look or who to ask.
Knowing what to do—along with what not to do—helps bolster employee confidence and performance. That increases job satisfaction and engagement (which, in turn, can improve retention and overall morale).
Developing effective onboarding
Too often, onboarding feels chaotic and confusing. Not only does that not give new hires the tools to ramp up quickly, but it can leave them with a negative feeling about the company. To develop effective onboarding, you’ll want to have a new employee training plan—not an ad hoc, last-minute operation.
Some key employee onboarding best practices are:
- It’s organized: New hires should know where to go and when, from online to in-person meetings, throughout the training process. A last-minute meeting where someone is asked to explain a work process is unlikely to impart the best information. You’ll likely want to start off with information about benefits and connecting with the IT department. Then dive into the big picture before honing in on the nitty-gritty responsibilities of the role.
- It’s broad: Your onboarding should offer new hires insight into the company’s goals, mission, and vision. During this phase, you may share details about the company history as well as an organizational chart. Highlight important company policies, too.
- It’s specific: New hires' training should prepare them for their specific roles. Share the necessary details on the tasks and responsibilities for a given role, along with details on how success is measured. Provide a list of commonly used tools (think project management software, servers, etc.), then give them access and training as needed. During onboarding, you’ll want to be sure that your new hire meets relevant team members and understands their roles clearly.
- It's gradual: If you want employees to stick around, plan an onboarding program that progressively builds on itself, rather than a single-day cramming session. You’ll also want to have regular check-in points in the employee’s first months on the role. That way, you can identify issues or areas of confusion early on and offer support.
- It has clearly defined outcomes: Before you begin any training program, identify the desired outcome. For instance, maybe you want every new hire to be able to clearly state the company’s mission and perform their role within ten days of starting. By having clear goals, you can assess the effectiveness of your training program and adjust it as needed.
- It leaves new employees feeling good: After a successful new hire training period, employees will feel energized and ready to engage in their role. They’ll feel positive about their team and the company as a whole.
The reason why new hire training so often falters or falls prey to common onboarding challenges is because it’s hard to create and maintain them. Plus, to be most effective, a new hire training plan needs to captivate employees, so they’ll stay engaged and retain information. Not to mention the need for speed—the faster new hires can be onboarded, the faster they can kick off work. That’s where Absorb LMS can be helpful, with software that caters to your schedule and specs, and training that feels less like a task and more like a win.
Steps to build an employee training plan
Don’t wait for an employee’s first day—or the evening before their start date—to begin crafting an employee training plan. You’ll want to start well in advance, so that you can smoothly execute the training.
Follow these steps below to develop an employee training plan for new hires:
1. Determine important information to share
First, you’ll want to know what information is essential for new hires. As a reminder, that can include both big-picture information (the company’s mission statement) and also the day-to-day details of the role and responsibilities.
This is also a good time to identify who will be involved in the new hire’s training, from colleagues in their department to team members throughout the company.
2. Set training objectives and methods
Based on the information you want new hires to walk away with, you can next establish training objectives.
Your objectives will vary depending on your organization, but some options to consider include that after training, the new hire will:
- Have a clear understanding of the company’s mission, organizational structure, and objectives.
- Gain access to internal portals for human resources and have the knowledge to do key tasks like track time, make retirement contributions, and pick health insurance.
- Meet team members and have a clear sense of the team’s role within the company.
- Understand key tasks and responsibilities on a day-to-day basis, as well as know how success is measured.
Whatever your objectives wind up being, you’ll want to be able to assess them at some point, since that’ll help pinpoint if your training is delivering the results you desire.
There are many training methods available. For just a few examples, you can have a video lesson (followed by a quiz, or not), a group class, a one-on-one training session (in person or remote), or a hands-on demonstration. For your new hire training, you can select one or a mix of these options. Be strategic: On someone’s first day, they might not yet have access to email or internal websites, so a training that requires a login will be more challenging to execute than an in-person conversation.
3. Evaluate the plan and seek feedback
Once you have a plan in place, step back. Imagine yourself as a new hire at the company: Does the plan have the right mix of information? Share it within your team, and request feedback. You can also seek feedback and sign-off from other stakeholders at this moment.
4. Create training materials
Once you’re feeling good about your new hire training plan (and key stakeholders are on board) it’s time to turn it into training materials. As a reminder, the training may consist of a few different types of sessions. Online self-guided training can be particularly helpful for exploring company policies, but in-person training may be preferable for role-related tasks, for instance.
5. Set up a timeline and schedule
Once all of your training materials are organized and in place, it’s time to set up a timeline and schedule. It can be tempting to speed through onboarding and training. After all, the faster new hires are oriented, the sooner they can get to work.
Speed isn’t always helpful, though. With too much information, new employees can become overwhelmed. You’ll want to pace the training so that they can take in information. Plus, be sure to build in check-in points for the months following the initial onboarding for additional support. There’s no single answer to the question of how many days of training are needed for a new job, but it may be more than you initially envision.
Example of a new hire training schedule
If you’re wondering how to create a training schedule for a new employee, try starting with this template:
In the weeks before the new hire’s start date:
- Share the start date with HR, IT, and other relevant departments.
- Confirm the new hire training plan is accurate and up to date (for instance, maybe your last new hire was a year ago, and roles and responsibilities have shifted).
- Set the start date; block off time on people’s calendars as needed.
First day:
- Send a welcome email, introducing the new team member. If it makes sense for your company, introduce them personally to team members in person, over calls, or with a welcome lunch.
- Ensure they have access to a workstation, computer, identification card, etc. For in-person hires, give a tour of the office.
- Set them up with access to any HR portals.
- Have new hires do any required training, such as compliance and cybersecurity sessions, as well as learning about company policies around harassment and other inappropriate behaviors.
- Share a company overview.
First week:
- Introduce them to key co-workers that they’ll work with closely.
- Review their role and responsibilities; begin training on any key job tasks.
- Establish what it means to be successful in this role.
- Begin the introduction to new projects.
- Ask for feedback—be sure to give new hires an opportunity to share feedback on the onboarding process.
First month:
- As time goes on, provide deeper knowledge about job-related tasks.
- Be sure to keep scheduling moments for new employees to share feedback and ask questions.
- Give feedback on performance.
- Set goals.
Second month and beyond:
- As more time passes, new employees will take on more tasks and to-dos.
- Assess goals and continue sharing feedback on performance. Part of the new hire training program was to establish markers for success in the role. Use those markers to assess the new hire’s performance.
- Consider formal check-in points at six months and a year. Seek out opportunities to continue engaging employees in learning and training to grow their skills.
Modify this sample new hire training plan schedule to suit your organization’s needs—your calendar may look different from the one above.
Pro tip: It’s very common to set new hires up with a 30-60-90-day plan. While it’s not required, this framework is a good way to set up milestones for where you expect new hires to be after one, two, and three months with the company. Often, companies may have a 90-day probationary period, so if the new employee isn’t meeting expectations, you’ll catch it, and work on an action plan.
Set the groundwork for employee and company success
A welcome email, a laptop, and some logins are a good start to the onboarding process. But a more in-depth new hire plan, with time devoted to meeting with key leaders and team members, learning about the company, and gaining essential knowledge to perform their role, will lead to productive, satisfied employees. But if the process of setting all this up feels overwhelming (we get it), Absorb LMS helps you speed up onboarding without skipping essential knowledge.
See how Absorb LMS helped reduce onboarding time by 40% in the Forrester TEI Study commissioned by Absorb LMS.
