This no doubt has happened to you at least once in your career:

You interview for a position and you accept and let your hiring manager know your start date. Everyone is happy; hearty good cheer all around.

You give notice at your current employer. You e-mail your future employer and, once again, happy words are spoken.

And then? It’s so quiet from your future employer – you hear nothing at all about your start date other than your start time – that you can hear crickets in the background.

You arrive for your first day at work. Your new boss welcomes you warmly, and then apologizes profusely because your desk/office isn’t ready, your phone line still isn’t in, your company cellphone isn’t there, HR isn’t ready for you to file some papers, and your e-mail address isn’t ready for a week or more!

Not a great start is it? If this happened to you, it probably affected your opinion of your new employer for days, weeks, months – maybe as long as you worked there – didn’t it?

Don’t let your company be that kind of employer when it comes to welcoming new employees.

In fact, the Aberdeen Group has reported that almost 90 percent (86 percent) of new hires make the decision to leave a company within a half year of joining. But almost 70 percent of new workers are apt to stay longer than three years if they experienced a welcoming, well-thought-out onboarding.

Social media tools can help make the onboarding process go smoothly. Imagine offering your new hire access to your internal social media sites even before he or she starts working with you. The new hire can get to know new colleagues, learn the lay of the land, talk to current employees and make new connections – days before even setting foot in our office on his or her first day.

Once your new hire has access to your internal social media mechanism, he or she will be able to communicate with people who are working on the same types of problems the new hire will come across once at work. The new hire could access any of your company’s wikis, collaborative documents, project status messages, etc.

What’s more, your social media tools can help with the onboarding process itself. Imagine giving the new employee a description of benefits plans, getting him or her signed up the orientation program days ahead of time, providing your facility’s manager of the need for a phone line, office/desk space, e-mail access, etc.

If you need help sourcing great people to work in your Redlands or Ontario company, call upon the recruiting experts at Arrow Staffing. We look forward to hearing from you.