Social media is a building block of successful businesses—and not just for marketing.
You can also use social media for employee onboarding to help you create a positive experience for new hires. Why is this important?
Employees who go through effective onboarding are 18 times more committed to their place of work. A positive onboarding experience can boost employee retention by a whopping 82%.
Today, we’re taking a closer look at three best practices for incorporating social media into your onboarding processes.
Social media platforms can benefit your onboarding in several ways:
Social media when incorporated into your onboarding process can enhance employee engagement with their comment, like, retweet features, among other things. Thanks to these features, new hires can also easily connect with their peers and superiors.
Who are the best people to help new hires adjust to the workplace? Your current employees and their bosses, of course.
When you use social media for employee onboarding, you don’t just earn Instagram followers, Facebook likes, or retweets. You also provide an informal space where new hires can learn.
Social media managers can direct new employees to relevant articles and online training videos about different company processes. These are resources new employees can consume at their own pace outside a structured environment, free from any pressure.
Since informal learning is learner-centered, the new hires can have good knowledge retention. This is knowledge they can use to help their team and, subsequently the company, achieve their goals.
New employees can gain insights into your company’s culture through your social media channels. They can learn about your company’s mission and vision, how you interact with customers, and the type of content you post. When they know all these from the get-go, they can be better prepared for their new workplace.
But that’s not all. When you use social media to showcase your company culture, you can attract top talent you can onboard easily. With the right PR services, after all, you can boost your employer brand, making you the best company to work with in the eyes of job-seekers.
Here are three tried-and-tested best practices for incorporating social media into your onboarding process:
An online community is a collaborative space where current employees can connect with each other and share information. This social community could be a relaxed space to ‘hang out’ and discuss interests and hobbies or work-related tasks.
As part of your onboarding program, ask new hires to join your online community so they can learn new skills. If you don’t have an online community just yet, create a private group on LinkedIn, which caters specifically to professionals.
To create one, just:
Navigate to your Groups homepage and click Create Group. Then, provide the information asked:
Once you’ve created your group, invite your new and current employees. Your group administrators should also start posting company content, onboarding documents, and tips for the new employees to help them adapt to the workplace.
We already know social media plays an important role in any organization. But businesses don’t only use it for onboarding. Around 77% of businesses use social media to reach customers. Then there’s the fact that there are 4.8 billion social media users worldwide, including your employees.
Based on these, you need to make sure new hires know how to use social media. They should also know what they can and cannot post on their personal social media accounts about the company.
That’s why hands-on social media training is important. Before you announce the conduct of your sessions, come up with a social media training plan:
Monitor the learning progress of the new hires based on your previously-established learning goals and outcomes. If they’re not on track to achieving them, you can make tweaks to your plan as you go along.
Encourage new hires to connect with management through social networks and vice versa. This helps you build a transparent working environment where employees feel comfortable with their managers and supervisors. This way, they can also easily ask their superiors for guidance, instructions, or advice on work-related topics.
If you want to be sure this policy is followed, in the onboarding email to new hires, include the electronic business card of each manager in the email signature. Once the new hires scan the code, the social media details of that specific manager are automatically saved on their phones.
But it’s not enough for managers and new employees to be connected on social media. They should also interact with each other.
For this, institutionalize an open-door policy in the workplace. Inform the new hires from the get-go that managers are available for any concerns, not just in the office, but via social media as well if they’re too shy to approach them personally. Management, on the other hand, should be informed that addressing these new hires’ concerns is a must. After all, it will help them adjust immediately to the workplace.
The result? They’ll eventually contribute to meeting company goals.
Social media is a powerful tool for ensuring an effective onboarding process. It’s where new hires can get to know company values. Social channels can also serve as effective platforms for learning and can connect new employees with management who can guide them.
Follow the three best practices discussed to use social media for employee onboarding effectively. You won’t just help newly-hired talented people adjust quickly to the workplace. You’ll also make them feel valued and encourage them to stay with the company for the long haul. Good luck!
