The first day of work isn’t just a chance for new team members to make a first impression. It’s a chance for your company to make one, too.
Orientation goes a long way toward fostering a sense of belonging and reducing employee turnover. Gallup found that an effective employee onboarding process leads to workers who are three times more likely to say they have the best job.
Learn how you can create an exceptional new hire orientation experience using best practices and tools like Loom to help your employees feel welcome and ready to succeed.
What is new hire orientation?
Orientation is a vital process that welcomes new employees and familiarizes them with your company. Through new hire orientation, employees learn your company’s mission, vision, and values, as well as how those show up in day-to-day tasks and decisions.
The orientation process also informs employees on how their new roles and responsibilities fit into the company structure, including the business goals they can influence through their work.
Orientation vs. onboarding
Though they’re similar, new hire orientation and onboarding are different. Orientation is actually a step in the onboarding process. While both orientation and onboarding can be time-consuming and intensive, they set your new employees off on the right foot.
Orientation
New hire orientation typically lasts one to five days and includes tasks like:
Meeting teams
Learning company policies
Completing new hire paperwork, like tax forms
Enrolling in benefits and perks programs
Taking an office tour if work is on-site
Onboarding
Onboarding is a longer, more immersive process that involves on-the-job training and team bonding. It typically lasts anywhere from three months to a year and involves activities like:
Building connections with coworkers, cross-functional team members, and leadership
Completing small assignments to develop on-the-job skills and measure competency
More frequent performance check-ins to course correct if necessary
Orientation and onboarding processes should prepare employees for their new work environment.
Learn more: Orientation and onboarding build a foundation of trust for new hires. Learn how to continue building trust and grow successful remote teams in a podcast episode featuring venture capitalist Harry Stebbings and Loom’s CEO and co-founder Joe Thomas.
Why is new employee orientation important?
Your new employee orientation program is an essential component of the onboarding process. It helps employees grasp the bigger picture of their role in the company.
A bad onboarding experience has compounding effects on employee productivity and job satisfaction. A survey by Paychex found that poor onboarding led to 52% of employees feeling undertrained—and 80% of those employees planned to leave their current company. These employees also felt disoriented, let down, and devalued.
Orientation and onboarding both create connections between new employees and the rest of the company, increasing overall engagement. Employee engagement is an excellent way to gauge whether employees understand on-the-job expectations and the connection between the company’s mission and their role.
In February 2024, Gallup found that only 30% of employees strongly believe that there’s a connection between their job and the mission of their company, while 44% strongly agree that they know what’s expected of them at work. These numbers reveal opportunities to create a thoughtful orientation and onboarding process that promotes your employees’ well-being.
What to include in your new hire orientation program
An employee orientation program helps you check all the boxes, driving employee preparedness and confidence. Most orientation checklists cover the following information.
1. Paperwork
Your new hire needs to read, fill out, and sign these documents to make their new employment status official:
The contract or offer of employment
Employment and tax forms such as W-4, I-9, direct deposit, and more
The employee handbook and information on general expectations, workplace safety, and conflict resolution
Benefits information and selection paperwork
Clear expectations about requesting time off and PTO policies
Avoid an avalanche of paperwork by recording videos explaining key documents. For example, invite leadership to use Loom’s screen recorder to explain the company’s vision and values, how they came to be, and how everyone at the company exhibits those values daily.
2. Introductions
Introduce your new coworker to their team, either in a group setting or in one-on-one meetings. If their team can gather in person, a team lunch is a great way for everyone to get to know each other on a more personal level.
Managers should also invite their new direct reports to recurring one-on-ones to field questions, restate expectations, and provide feedback. This sets employees up for success, and 72% of employees noted that manager 1:1s are a vital part of the onboarding process.
Provide new employees with contact information for their coworkers, mentor, leadership, benefits team, and IT. Share any workplace communication expectations so they feel comfortable sending a Slack instead of an email, or vice versa.
Support new remote workers: Is your new hire also new to working remotely? Help them develop a healthy, productive routine with these remote work resources and tips for remote worker success.
3. Technology and tools
Both in-office and remote employees need access to equipment and software to do their jobs efficiently. Tools like laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and messaging apps improve employees’ quality of life.
Digital tools can also positively impact BIPOC employees. Black employees spend an average of two minutes more overthinking their online interactions compared with their white coworkers. Tools like Loom can help employees avoid misunderstandings and reduce the burden of over-explanation by adding context, facial expressions, and tone of voice to each message.
Asynchronous communication tools and cloud storage for team documentation can remove barriers, level the playing field, and ensure your new hires are ready to make meaningful contributions.
Get employees ready for their new job with access to:
Company laptop and accessories like a keyboard, mouse, and monitor
Company email account
Communication tools like Loom, Slack, and Zoom
Cloud storage and documents
Payroll and HR platforms
Required security software, like antivirus or a virtual private network
Specialty tools like project management apps, productivity tools, and CRM platforms
Not everyone is immediately comfortable using new tech. Create short training videos that walk new hires through the ins and outs of essential tools. This documentation and knowledge sharing are essential forms of communication for distributed teams.
4. Role-specific training
Introduce employees to their new role with a quick overview of their responsibilities. This includes expectations for the next 30, 60, and 90 days, and a definition of success. Include essential details like:
Their role, responsibilities, and expectations, including soft skills
An overview of their team and reporting structure
Growth opportunities and career paths
How their manager evaluates performance for their role
Future training requirements
While your employees can always check the documentation they received during orientation, leaving room for a conversation may help them better understand expectations, opportunities, and requirements. Openness to discussion also helps them feel supported.
New hire orientation best practices
Create a welcoming new hire orientation process that bolsters your employee retention strategy with these best practices:
Before the first day
Answer common questions
Reduce first-day anxiety by sending a welcome email that answers common questions like:
When their first day starts and ends
A detailed agenda covering where to go and when for their first week
Dress code expectations
Parking information
Where to find required HR paperwork
What they need to bring from home
Send a welcome video message
Recording a welcome message with Loom’s screen recording tool can foster immediate feelings of connection. Use Loom to show new hires how to navigate your company wiki and HR portal, and where to find important documents.
Gather essential information in one place
If you haven’t already, create a folder specifically for your new hire, grant them access, and save any future paperwork, screen recordings, and training documents there.
Orientation day
Balance work with play
Avoid overwhelming new employees by balancing their schedule between necessary first-day training and less intense activities like a team lunch. This makes their first day memorable and engaging.
For new hires attending a virtual orientation, give them an Uber Eats or Grubhub voucher so they can order lunch, hop into a Zoom room, and chat with their new coworkers while they eat.
Plan for downtime
Consider ways to reduce meeting fatigue, especially for remote new hires. Sitting in front of a webcam can be more exhausting than attending in-person sessions, so schedule breaks between video calls so your employees can get some fresh air away from their screens.
Share a roadmap for the next 90 days
Show new employees how to succeed during their first 30, 60, and 90 days on the job. A roadmap detailing the tasks they need to complete, including onboarding activities and job-related projects, helps them ramp up their productivity in a healthy way that leaves them feeling confident.
Post-onboarding
Assign them a mentor
Mentors are a great way to help new employees get to know the company. It also empowers them to ask questions without worrying they’ll bother their manager.
Mentors can help new hires feel less isolated. This is especially important for hybrid and remote workers who may feel lonely sitting in their home office.
Mentorship is also a great opportunity for tenured employees to develop leadership skills.
Provide feedback
Regular feedback lets new hires know they’re on the right track—and if they’re not, it helps them course correct. Let new employees know whether they’re meeting current expectations or need to improve specific skills. Provide training opportunities and ways to strengthen any areas that are lacking, and make a plan to revisit their performance at a later date.
If your team collaborates asynchronously, tools like Loom help you deliver feedback without losing vital context. Loom captures your facial expressions, tone of voice, and on-screen information so your employee gets the full story and doesn’t need to interpret the meaning behind your Slack message or email.
Request feedback
Feedback should go both ways. Not only should you regularly provide new hires with feedback, but you should also request their feedback on the orientation and onboarding program. This helps you discover what’s working well and what needs improvement.
How to make new hire orientation fun
Avoid first-day overwhelm by including some of these fun elements in your orientation.
Personalize it
Orientation is about the new employee, and personalizing their experience makes them feel more welcome. To do this, get to know them by sending a short survey before their first day. Ask questions like:
What’s your favorite food?
How do you prefer to receive praise?
What’s your dream vacation?
When you’re not at work, what are you doing?
Do you have any children or pets?
Their answers can inspire new ways to make onboarding personal, including team-building events like first-day lunch, the swag you send them, and even whether you give them praise publicly or privately.
Use icebreakers and games
Games are a powerful employee development tool that increases engagement and promotes employee learning through interactive tasks. Even if you don’t play to train, games build stronger relationships among teammates and help everyone get to know each other.
Icebreakers like Two Truths and a Lie are a great way to reduce awkwardness, help teams relax, and get everyone chatting.
Foster belonging
Ninety-four percent of employees said the workplace is a place they need to feel like they belong. You can begin building a strong community that includes your new hire from day one by:
Encouraging communication, both casual and professional
Providing growth opportunities
Encouraging cross-team collaboration
Sharing resources and knowledge
Bringing teams together outside of the office
Actively including new hires in decision-making
Even the most well-intentioned team can unintentionally diminish employees’ sense of belonging. Adopting an intentional approach to inclusion is important. Culture Amp recommends asking yourself, “Am I making others feel like they belong where we are?” to assess how you might influence others’ sense of belonging.
Give useful swag
Not all company swag is useful to new hires. Instead of the usual branded pens and stickers, try these ideas:
Tumblers and water bottles
Jackets and fleece—especially if your office is on the cold side
Luggage and laptop cases
T-shirts, polos, and hoodies
Portable chargers
If your budget allows for it, consider giving high-quality products as swag. According to a Reddit thread, some of the most popular swag brands are The North Face, Patagonia, YETI, Nike, Under Armour, and Hydro Flask.
Make your new hire orientation fun and flexible with Loom
Creating an engaging and supportive new hire orientation process improves employee productivity and performance. Whether your team is fully remote, hybrid, or in the office, Loom makes it easy to document important new hire information and welcome new employees to the team.
Use Loom’s screen recordings to build team alignment from day one, reduce meeting fatigue, and set new hires up for success with clear communication.