Onboarding new hires should not have to be boring; moreover, it has to be a cause for celebration. You can get as innovative as you can and make new employees feel excited about their new roles. Making new hire announcements to your current employees and introducing your company culture makes them feel welcome.
A study shows that new hires who had negative onboarding experience are twice likely to change the job in the first six months. So, it’s pretty much your responsibility to make them feel great because you hired them, and they are going to work for you for years to come.
Moreover, a creative onboarding can boost your employer brand as happy new hires are likely to share their experience with their friends on social networks. No or less interesting employee introductions won’t take you so far in this modern era. Here are the most creative ways to make employee announcements for new hires in 2021. Luckily, the below tips help you to plan both in-office and remote employee announcements memorable.
9 Creative Employee Onboarding Ideas your New Employees will Love
1. Prepare Them in Advance
Let’s start with the basic onboarding formalities that make the day not-so-exciting. Let’s face it, but with some excitement. Prepare your new employees about the formalities in advance and let them know what to expect on their first day. At the same time, introduce the new hire to your employees so that they feel welcome.
Assign a mentor for the new employee and provide a schedule so that they don’t feel unattended.
2. Be Ready with a Welcome Kit
To make the employee announcement memorable for the new hires, you need to get creative. A fun and useful welcome kit, say, office stationery with a coffee mug, bottle, and a t-shirt, can take you a long way. You can always go the extra mile and impress new hires with some personalization. Print their photo on the coffee mug on one side and your brand logo on the other side. You can follow the same idea for a t-shirt. This way, they remember the onboarding experience, and you promote your brand, a win-win. Isn’t it? You can offer this welcome kit at their desk or courier it to them if they’re working remotely.
3. Write Quirky Emails
It’s essential to make the new employees a part of the team. This only happens when the team knows who the new guys are, their role, interests, etc. So, send employee announcement emails to all your employees or the team in which the new hires will join and keep them in cc. Yes, this sounds a little traditional and boring. So, add some fun to it, add a short bio of the new employees, a couple of fun facts about him such as “he is an athlete” or “she is a pet lover and has two dogs named Buffy and Bear.” This helps the current employees know beyond the names of their future best friends.
Additionally, ask your employees to join you in welcoming them and also drop by their desks’ and say hi. You can also try sending the employee announcement email from your CEO’s email address to make it even memorable.
4. Make Use of Social Tools
It is equally important to make each one of your team welcome the new hires joining your team. As everybody may not check the emails regularly, update the news on all your social channels. Inspire all your team members to welcome the new hires. This makes the new employees feel valued, and they stick to the company for longer for what you’ve done. You can share the welcome post on Slack, LinkedIn, or any other channels your employees engage with you to make the welcome grand and memorable (to both new and existing employees).
5. Organize a Meeting
Organize a meeting with your team that sounds like a get-together to help the new hires learn about the existing employees, their job, and vice versa. This also allows them to make a few friends who they can go for silly needs. The formal or informal get-togethers help them understand the tricky or shortcuts to get the job done, what to do on the company premises, what not to do, and many other essential things which an HR can’t share.
6. Start a Buddy Program
This is one of the other exciting things you can do for your new hires. Partner the new employees with existing employees from the same or different team. The motto of the buddy program is to make the new hires feel accompanied by someone familiar with office culture. Most importantly, they don’t feel alone at the office or while working remotely. They will always have someone to talk to about the work and how they feel working there.
7. Post a Casual Picture
Remote work has changed how we work and how employees interact. Most remote employees have become accountable friends without even meeting once. The only thing that assures there is a real person behind the screen is the picture of that person. So, ask your new employees to share their casual pictures so that people feel real and connected during these work-from-home times.
Share a casual picture in employee announcement emails if your company’s casual too.
All the above tips are great ways to make employee announcements for new hires (in-office and remote) fun and memorable.
8. Organize Fun Games
Make the new employees feel more welcome, engaged, and valued by giving some time for the interaction. If you have multiple new joiners, you can make the onboarding more exciting by organizing some fun games. Play something like two truths and one lie or create quizzes related to company policies. These help them know the policies and rules of the company having fun.
You can also play “rookie cookie,” where the new hire has to bring some cookies to his desk one day. Employees can visit their desks and have some chat while having cookies.
9. Organize a Coffee Chat
Whether it is pre-pandemic or remote onboarding, you can always take some time for the new bees and make them feel part of the team. Organize a coffee chat directly or virtually where your new and existing employees can talk about their work experience, education, expectations, and office matters and become a strong team.
Finally, ask new hires for feedback on the onboarding to make it even better for future hires. Try out the above tips to make your new employee announcement fun and memorable because your employees love it that way.
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