Creating a comprehensive training document: 13 ways to make onboarding easy
Onboarding can be challenging for both the new employee and the person tasked with completing the onboarding process. Creating a training document to aid onboarding can be invaluable to ensure that the new starter has the best beginning to their time with your company. It is essential to prepare properly in advance of the new employee beginning work.
Creating a comprehensive training document can be invaluable to help a new starter find their feet. It can also be a document that can be used again and again as the business takes on new people. Here are some of the crucial things to include in a training document and how to ensure an easy, effective onboarding process.
Be Concise
The training document should be concise and to the point. It is important not to overload a new starter with information. The onboarding training document should give new starters an overview of the company, the various areas of the business and how the different roles fit into the bigger picture of the business. Being handed a document hundreds of pages long will likely intimidate a new starter and make them unlikely to retain the most critical information.
Include All Areas of the Business
Regardless of where the new starter will be working, your onboarding training document must have information on all areas of the business. This will allow a new hire to understand how the different parts of the company operate and interact with one another. It may help to make a few different onboarding training documents that focus on the various teams in your company so that there will be a suitable document for all future new starters.
Have a Clear Table o Contents
The document should have a clear table of contents to allow the new starter to quickly and easily find the information they need. Creating the table of contents first can be a great way to ensure the document includes all the information required.
Add a Video
Including a video in the training document can be a fantastic way to present the information in a more easily digestible form. It is important to use appropriate video equipment to make the video easy to watch and hear.
Leaving a new starter to watch a welcome video can be a great way to ease them into their first day and ensure that whoever is onboarding them has time to get the documentation and information they need together. Any video should be scripted, rehearsed and reviewed before being shown to a new starter.
Include Information on Accessing Emails and Logins
The document should include information on how the new starter can access the different platforms your company uses. It should never include passwords or sensitive information but direct the employee where to find out logins and other important details. This should be regularly reviewed to ensure it is up to date.
Ask Teams to Create the Own Sections
It can be beneficial to ask each department and team to write their own section for the training document. Whoever is compiling the document should read and review the submissions to ensure uniformity.
Give the various teams a specification for their part, including a rough word count to achieve and any relevant information they should include. Once you have the various parts of the training document, you can merge your PDFs into one guide so the new employee can find everything in one place.
Create an Assessment
It can be beneficial to include an assessment in the training document to ascertain how well the new starter has absorbed their training. This should not be something that the business uses to assess the employee’s performance, but a tool for the new starter to help them digest their information. The assessment could be a short list of questions asking the employee to identify various ways to find information or other tasks relevant to their role.
Ask For Feedback
After onboarding is complete, ensure you ask the employee for feedback on the usefulness of the document. This could be in the form of a feedback questionnaire. Ensure that there is an opportunity for the new starter to give recommendations for how the document could be improved for future users. Ask for feedback after the employee has been working there for a week or two, as this will have given them time to identify any information they needed that might not have been included.
Remember Your Own First Day
Be mindful of your own first day when crafting an onboarding document. Consider the information that may have been most beneficial to you on your first days and weeks. It is vital to put yourself into the shoes of the person the document is aimed towards. This can ensure that they get all the information they could need without overwhelming them.
Include Employees In Onboarding
Other employees should be included in the onboarding process. This gives the new starter opportunity to meet some of their new colleagues and start forming bonds straight away. At a minimum, the employees should be introduced to the different people in their team. It may be beneficial to provide everyone with name tags for the new starter’s first day to allow them time to learn everyone’s names.
Have All Paperwork Ready
It is good to prepare the different paperwork for the new starter in advance of their first day. This should include contracts, payroll forms and important company policies they should be aware of. Having all of this documentation ready for their first day can ensure a smooth onboarding process and ensure that not too much time is taken up getting the practicalities out of the way.
Another good way to reduce the amount of time spent on paperwork could be to digitally send the new starter their contract and other forms. This will allow you and them to focus solely on getting them ready for their role during their onboarding.
Discuss The Content
Once the new starter has read over the onboarding training document, it is a good idea to discuss the content. Ask the employee if they have any questions and highlight some of the more important information contained within. Again, this should not feel like a quiz or interrogation for the employee but an informative discussion of the content provided to them.
Review The Document Regularly
The onboarding document must be reviewed regularly. Practices, policies, and technical information can change quickly in any business, so the document should be carefully reviewed before it is used. Ensure that any changes are made quickly to avoid providing new starters with incorrect or outdated information. It may help to ask different team members to review the document each time to review it with fresh eyes each time.
Conclusion
Creating an onboarding training document can be a lengthy process, but the benefits will be well worth the hard work. You must include all of the information a new starter may need without overwhelming them with too much content. A training document should consist of all of the essential information a new starter may need and an overview of the company and the different teams within it. Seeking feedback each time it is used can be an excellent way to ensure the document is valuable and effective at helping new employees find their feet in a business.
