5 common onboarding mistakes employers make

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The onboarding process should be a positive and productive experience for new employees. Employers who succeed during this process benefit in the short-term and long-term with satisfied employees who can help achieve company goals. However, if onboarding is done incorrectly, new hires won’t likely be effective for companies. Wesley Higbee, President of Full City Tech Co., shares five common onboarding mistakes made by employers.

“1. Treating everybody the same. It’s important to have a process or checklist. Just don’t try to standardize it. Tailor what you do to the candidates you’re hiring. If new hires have accolades in sales, don’t put them through a sales training program.

2. Waiting periods for benefits. There’s nothing to gain by withholding vacation days, health care, etc. Waiting periods connote cheapskate and/or creates mistrust. If you don’t trust new employees enough to give them benefits on day one, why are you hiring them?

3. Not training new employees. Just throwing them to the wolves and of course, firing them when they don’t perform up to your expectations. The same expectations you never made clear.

4. Not including new hires in the process of assessing what they want/need to learn. Force feeding training and then throwing employees to the wolves.

5. Not learning from new hires. Assuming learning is a one-way road. There are plenty of candidates you might hire that have more to teach you, than you have to teach them.”

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Wesley Higbee, President of Full City Tech Co.

Wes Higbee helps organizations make the leap from today to tomorrow. Wes’s career has been a journey. He started out in software development helping organizations tackle business opportunities. In working closely with customers as a consultant, he realized there are many needs beyond the software itself that nobody was taking care of. Those are the needs he addresses today, whether or not technology is involved.

Along the journey, Wes has had a passion for sharing knowledge. He’s been a speaker at countless local groups, community organizations, webinars, and conferences. He speaks professionally to help organizations improve.