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The New Employee's First Month to First Year
The New Employee's First Month to First Year
The New Employee's First Month to First Year
Now let’s jump forward 1 month, 3 months, 1 year. How are you connecting with that employee over time? Onboarding shouldn’t stop after week one. Setting your employees up for success overtime requires clear goals, objectives, and succession planning. This is where your role as a manager is key. Continuing to offer learning opportunities, connect with your employee and create a space for them to ask questions. Be sure to follow the probation process, as well as performance management to align expectations, create goals and give feedback to your new employee as they embark on their first year in the role.
Best Practices for the New Employee’s First Month to First Year
Share Cascading Goals & Set Clear Priorities
Connect your employee in with our performance management programs. Share priorities for your department, Institutional Operating Plans, and our vision and values. Communicate early how a new employee's goals are aligned to College priorities. New employees will gain a greater understanding of their impact and enable them to make more informed decision making in the first critical months.
Reinforce Key Teams, Stakeholders & Book in Regular Chats
Building lasting relationships is key for retention, so get the new employee to meet as many people as possible in their direct orbit. Plan how to re-introduce key people, remembering that the first introduction will be one of many in their first few months.
PRO TIP: Bonus points if you can introduce senior leaders & the President. Reducing the silos and barriers between leaders and teams is critical to creating a positive workplace culture.
Maintain The Buddy System
In the first month, be sure to check-in with the buddy and new hire for compatibility and connection. Allow flexibility for the buddy relationship to expand as needed. Be sure to provide additional support as needed, and to give feedback to the buddy on their leadership in the experience. As the buddy system period comes to an end, capture feedback on the experience.
Inspire New Employees
Think about your employee journey – as a leader just starting out, did you have someone you looked to for inspiration and career advice? Sharing career development plans and required skill sets for senior roles demonstrates that the business is interested and supportive of their development. This information can help new employees have an informed discussion with managers about learning and development.
Build A Cadence of Connecting
Develop a rhythm of ongoing conversations with your new employee. This creates a space for feedback, coaching and development with your new employee.
Plan For Probation Management
A common mistake when managing probations is leaving them to People and Culture to oversee completely. Be sure to understand the relevant probation process for your new employee. Be sure to schedule probation meetings and connect this feedback with that in your ongoing management conversations.
Celebrate First Year Anniversary
The best onboarding process takes the experience right through till the employees' first anniversary. The first anniversary is a great time to reflect on achievements, plan for future and of course, celebrate! Teams who focus energy on ensuring employees are happy, challenged, being heard, and have development opportunities foster a positive experience and greater likelihood that the employees will want to stay with the business. Keep track of anniversaries in a shared team calendar and notify team leaders/managers a few days before to provide sufficient time to prepare an appropriate celebration with the team.
Manager Checklist - Actions on the New Employee’s First Month to First Year
Connecting to the best practices, here are the actions as a manager you need to take for the first month and beyond.
Check in with new employee on their experience over the first month.
Description | Timeline | Action |
|---|---|---|
Discuss employee's initial experiences and whether they match what the employee expected coming into the role. Build rapport and acknowledge that transitioning into a new role takes time and offer support and guidance, as necessary. Get feedback on their experience to date. | End of first 30 days. | Schedule a one-on-one meeting with your new employee. |
Ensure completion of required training and onboarding tasks.
Description | Timeline | Action |
|---|---|---|
Check in with your new employee on required training and assigned onboarding tasks to ensure they are complete. | End of first 30 days. | Review assigned training and onboarding tasks in Cornerstone with new employee. |
Review progress on first month goals and set future goals.
Description | Timeline | Action |
|---|---|---|
Check in and review your employee’s progress in the first month. Set goals and priorities with them for the future. This is a perfect time to align employees with our performance management cycles and programs. | End of first 30 days. |
Provide additional health and safety training.
Description | Timeline | Action |
|---|---|---|
Identify training requirements, in addition to mandatory training, based on work activities, hazards and risks. Some health safety and wellness training courses are available on GBCommunity. There may be other specific topics that are unique to the work and will need to be identified and provided by your department. Examples include:
Explore the physical and virtual Occupational Health and Safety Board, and let your team member know who the joint health and safety committee members are.
| End of first 30 days and ongoing. | Identify additional training and support new employee to complete training. Share resources on physical and virtual Occupational Health and Safety Board, and let your team member know who the joint health and safety committee members are. |
Conduct a probationary review with new employee.
Description | Timeline | Action |
|---|---|---|
Set-up and have a probationary review conversation with your new employee, specifically for support staff. For Support staff, this is done at 3 and 5 months. | 3 months and 5 months. | Use the Support Staff Probationary Review form (MS Word file). |
Have ongoing conversations and have a mid-year check in.
Description | Timeline | Action |
|---|---|---|
As the year progresses, build your check in cadence with your new employee. As part of performance management, have a check in mid-year to discuss goals, give feedback and realign. | 6 months. |
Have a year in review performance conversation.
Description | Timeline | Action |
|---|---|---|
Have a year in review performance conversation with your employee, focused on goals achieved, feedback and coaching. Use the relevant process based on employment type. | One year or in line with performance management cycle. |
Celebrate one-year anniversary.
Description | Timeline | Action |
|---|---|---|
Celebrate the one-year anniversary of your new employee. Honor the milestone and celebrate with the team. | One year. | Check in with your employee. |
Encourage and check in on health, safety and wellness.
Description | Timeline | Action |
|---|---|---|
Encourage ongoing feedback and participation in health and safety. Keep records of health and safety information shared with your team member, training completed, and future training requirements. | Ongoing. | Continue to connect with your new employee on health and safety in their role. |
Manager Toolkit - New Employee’s First Month to First Year
That's a lot to take in! Don’t worry, we got you covered. You can download the checklist and tools mentioned above to help put this into action:
(Download here button)
