There is a lot of focus and effort on the employee onboarding process, but an often overlooked and vital step to employee retention is the inboarding process. At the manager and organizational level, a lot of time and effort is spent to successfully onboard an employee. Once that is complete, it is still important to give your more tenured employees professional and growth opportunities, skill-building training, and recognition. By creating a process in which the company provides their more established employees with more opportunities, you can improve retention, create better job knowledge for the employee and can improve productivity and efficiency.
Inboarding Programs in Employee Development
A part of the inboarding process can be as simple as communicating what is available for employees. When an employee is new to the organization, they are focused on learning about their job and about the organization. Once the employee has become established in their role and in the organization, it is vital to keep them motivated. As a manager, it’s important to check in with the employee about their career desires and ask them if they know what is available at the organization and if they are interested in pursuing these opportunities or creating a development plan to work towards. A more established employee is often more comfortable looking into what is available on their own. Once the employee has come back to you with a plan or an area they would like to focus on, then you can help guide them in making progress towards their plan.
Creating a more formal inboarding process can include a variety of training available to employees. Training can accomplish many goals. One area is general skills building available to all employees regardless of tenure, role and area. This type of training helps develop the skills the organization believes to be important, or can consist of training for skills that’s been requested by employees. By providing this type of training, employees are learning skills that help improve productivity and efficiency in their roles.
Other types of training can be focused towards specific job functions. This could be as simple as refresher training the manager or organization feels employees need. For example, refresher training in a nursing unit can go over treatment procedures or patient care techniques. This type helps improve job knowledge, creates confidence in the role, and can improve efficiency and productivity.
Employee Retention and Inboarding
The last type of training is that which is related to professional development. With this type, managers can offer it to employees who have communicated a desire to grow and develop in a certain area and can include cross-training opportunities with other job roles or in other departments. An example of this type of training is if an employee has expressed an interest in management, they can job shadow their own manager or another. Perhaps an employee is interested in moving to a different area of the hospital. Allowing them to sit in on training offered in that area, or job shadow another employee gives them the opportunity to learn about they are interested in, and potentially giving them the opening to transfer roles into another area in the hospital.
Recognition is an important part to the inboarding process and can be easily accomplished. Your more established employees are often the ones you have to worry about the least. They are the ones that understand what is expected of them and how to accomplish it. As a manager, you know how important it is to have a team you can trust to get their job done without involvement from you. This is something to recognize; they are helping make your job easier, they are helping the department accomplish its goals, and ultimately they are helping the organization. Recognition is a skill that needs to be practiced. A simple thank you goes a long way. Recognize an employee for a job well done or when you know an employee has worked an especially hard day. Recognition can always include formalized recognition programs where employees are nominated by management or peers. These types of programs can be motivating for employees to work towards. When thinking about recognition, put yourself in the position of the employee. How do you feel you are recognized for a job well done? You feel good, you want to continue to do a good job and be recognized, and so do your employees.
Creating another process can be daunting. You already have a lot of work, and adding this to your workload seems scary. Think about the value of what an inboarding process brings the organization, and ultimately, your area. Motivating staff, recognizing staff, providing training and career opportunities – this all involves them in their work and in the organization. These things help engage and retain your employees.
