Preparing for a New Employee: Colorado SCORE Presentation

I love helping small businesses. Most of my career was spent in the corporate world. However, my husband went off and started a CPA firm, at that time he started working with small businesses. Next thing I knew, he was telling his clients that I was a Human Resources professional. His small business clients started filtering their HR questions through him to me. As the questions became more and more, we spent our dinners and evenings talking about HR while finding ways to help his clients. That's when we found a gap. Small businesses have been left behind in the world of human resources.

Now that we have launched HR Branches, walking in and seeing the positive changes that our clients have been able to make from when they start working with has just been incredible. I never thought I would find such excitement in my career as I have today.

I started a new job, years and years and years ago. When I showed up for my first day I didn't have a computer and I had a cubicle full of boxes. When my new boss arrived, she asked if I would just sit there for about an hour or so because she needed to figure out what to do with me. Keep in mind, she was an HR professional. In that moment, I thought to myself- "Oh my gosh, what did I get myself into? Should I just walk out of the door right now?" And then I centered myself and I realized what my first task was... Fix this.

When you prepare for a new employee, it is a little different from onboard. Generally, people remember to (somewhat) on board, but they forget to prepare the basics.

In most cases, small businesses are the biggest culprit of lack of preparation for a new employee. They expect the employee to show up and make all this magic happen.

When you are preparing for a new employee, think about where are they going to sit? Does it make sense to the workflow? If their office is way over there and I sit over here, but I need to talk to them every 10 minutes. Does that really work out? Do they have furniture? Not having the basics in place makes it really hard for a new employee to hit the ground running.

In addition to office planning, make sure that they've got their IT needs met. Have the appropriate hardware and their software, email, phone, and passwords to accounts available to them on their first day.

Also, create a training plan. This is where that really good onboarding comes into place, right? Plan what you talk with them about. Make sure that review the job description and set expectations on day one. It is also helpful to review internal processes and expected behaviors. While creating your training plan include important introductions and get coworkers involved in the training. This is a great way to develop a cohesive working environment from the get-go. Last but not least, introduce new employees to clients, industry experts, and important stakeholders. Get all of that lined out so they know exactly what they're doing that first day through that first week.

A Negative Onboarding Experience Results in New Hires Being 2x More Likely to Look for Other Opportunities...

I'm just going to let you soak this statistic in... because this one's huge. I almost went and looked for another job because of this. And a lot of small business aren't retaining new employees because of this. People are a company's greatest asset, yet people are a company's greatest risk.

We have many mechanisms in place to manage a company's money, processes, procedures, product marketing. But, many companies do not value the ability to manage their people, which is the largest attribute of any business.

It is our goal to make HR affordable and accessible to all small businesses. We've been successful in intermingling technology and personalized consultation into something very beneficial to small businesses. Here are HR Branches, we strive to help all small businesses see the value in their people and really see their investment in people come to life.

^{Disclaimer: HR Branches provides general information about Human Resources. Please note that the information provided, while reliable, is not legal advice. Please seek legal assistance, or assistance from State, Federal, or International governmental resources, to make sure your legal interpretation and decisions are correct for your location and circumstances. The purpose of this information is for guidance, ideas, and assistance on general HR matters.}