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How To Create An Effective Employee Onboarding Process

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Employee Onboarding Process|How To Create An Effective Employee Onboarding ProcessYour organization’s onboarding process is the perfect opportunity to make a lasting first impression on a new employee. This process should be all about making the new team member feel welcomed and valued in preparation for their role. You will want everything to go as smoothly as possible so that you can recruit and retain the right talent. Moreover, an employee onboarding process is often the first critical factor in building an engaged and motivated workforce. A strong onboarding experience can invoke a sense of loyalty among new hires, thus improving retention rates. Today we will cover some important strategies you can implement to optimize your employee onboarding plan.

Ensure Effective Contract Management

To make onboarding simpler, it is recommended that you implement a contract lifecycle management process. This will help you streamline the creation of contracts and simplify the collection of e-signatures. Pulpstream provides comprehensive guidance on the different stages of contract lifecycle management and how you can make contract execution more efficient with automation. As a result, you will ensure that everything is done in the same way every time by offering transparent and consistent communication. A new employee will receive custom onboarding, which will make a good impression on them even before their first day.

Create A Positive Employee Experience

You will want the new employee to feel excited and ready to dive into their new role. To ensure everything starts on a positive note, the employee onboarding process should begin right after the recruitment phase. It is important that HR sends a welcome email letter to allow the employee to learn more about the company’s culture. For example, it may be good to prepare information about orientation day activities, the first-day schedule, company dress code, and onboarding documents and forms. This will ensure they are prepared for their new role, as it will give them peace of mind and clarity.

Notify Other Team Members

Make sure you send an announcement to all employees prior to their first day, either in-person or via email. The announcement should include information about the new employee’s role and their previous experience. Encourage other team members to welcome and assist the new colleague as they familiarize themselves with the company policies and processes. When other employees are notified in advance, they will be more prepared to offer support and make the new employee feel more confident. Alongside this, it is important to coordinate with other departments as well to provide organizational belonging.

Make Their First Day Special

It is crucial to create a sense of belonging from their first day to make sure they stay committed to the organization’s goals. Take the time to plan out all activities and help them settle down by easing their worries and concerns. Prepare a formal employee orientation program and deliver presentations about the company’s history, mission, vision, and values. Answer any questions that might arise on the day and ensure they feel as comfortable as possible. You can also assign an onboarding mentor who can offer valuable insight into formal and informal strategies.

Organize A Team Lunch

One of the best ways to break the ice and allow the employee to get to know other colleagues in their immediate team is to arrange a team lunch meeting. Ideally, this can happen within their first week to ensure they have time to get used to all the new faces. There is no need to even leave the office, as you can simply ask your team to bring their lunches to a conference room. Take some time to get to know them outside of the interview process to make them feel appreciated personally and professionally.

Set Up Their Workstation

As a new employee, there is nothing worse than not having access to the tools and programs you need to be successful in your role. This is why it is important to prepare for your new arrival ahead of time and make sure everything is ready to go. For example, it may be useful to set up the employee’s computer, phone, and email address and order any necessary office supplies. Alongside this, a new employee should have access to software and electronic files before they begin. Disregarding this step can result in difficulties during the employee’s training.

Provide Personalized Training

The first few weeks with the employee should be focused on training to help them get started in their new role. Even if the new colleague has already performed the same job function elsewhere, there still may be some differences between organizations. Therefore, it is advisable to prepare a personalized training plan to bring them up to speed. Remember to include information about key processes, company rules, expectations, and procedures to fully know what the role entails. Training should also always be tailored to the employee’s individual requirements and goals.

Schedule Regular Check-Ins

Arranging check-in meetings with new employees is crucial to measuring how well they have settled into their new role. Although the exact check-in dates can be flexible depending on your company’s preferences, it is common for check-ins to be scheduled 30, 60, and 90 days after the first day. Be sure to keep these meetings informal and relaxed while still promoting active dialogue. It is essential to understand the new employee’s progress and their needs. Remember to review their performance and offer constructive feedback to help them identify areas for improvement. Ensure that they have the right support and resources to thrive in their role.

Follow Up And Request Feedback

Last but not least, it is important to meet with the employee even if you think they are doing well. After committing to a training plan and check-in meetings, you will need to find out how effective your onboarding process has been. Therefore, this is the perfect opportunity to learn more about the company’s strategy from an employee’s perspective. It may be beneficial to ask them what they found useful and what could be improved. Then you can make adjustments as you see fit and keep improving the onboarding experience for new employees in the future.

Enhance Your Bottom Line with These 5 Employee Engagement Strategies

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Employee Engagement Strategy|Enhance Your Bottom Line with These 5 Employee Engagement StrategiesEmployee engagement is vital to the success of your company. Engaged employees work harder, stay with your company longer, and produce better results. It might cost you a little more money to create an environment that encourages strong employee engagement, but it’s well worth it in terms of the benefits it can have for your company culture and, yes, your bottom line.

But what exactly does it take to boost employee engagement in a meaningful way? You need to make sure you foster strong work-life balance among your employees, give them the tools they need to succeed in your company and in their careers, and give the recognition employees need to feel seen and heard.

1) Make Time Off Mandatory – And Give More of It

You might think that having employees at their work stations more often would result in more and better work. But the opposite is the case. Employees who slog through weeks and months without any time off get burnt out, and lose their enthusiasm for the work. That’s why it’s so important to make sure your employees have time for rest and self-care.

When employees have time to recharge, they’re 31 percent more productive at work and make 37 percent more sales. Revenues and creative output triple when employees are well-rested. That’s reason enough to make time off mandatory and give employees plenty of it – above and beyond the 10 days that the average employee gets. Work hours have been increasing over the past three decades, with many professionals feeling increasingly pinched for time in which to take vacations, handle family emergencies, attend to their mental health, and so on. Mandatory time off gives employees a much-needed sense of time affluence, and can ease feelings of burnout.

2) Recognize Achievements, Anniversaries, and Milestones

Who doesn’t want to be congratulated when they do well, or when they have an important milestone happen in their lives – including a work anniversary? Employee anniversary recognition helps employees feel seen, especially when deployed in connection with proud recognition of everything else an employee does to make the company a success. Recognizing employee achievements, anniversaries, and milestones (like births, marriages, or graduations) and employment anniversaries motivates your top employees and injects a fresh sense of engagement into the workforce as a whole.

3) Give Employees the Tools and Support They Need to Succeed

You can’t expect your employees to succeed at their tasks without the right tools and resources. In fact, if you don’t give employees what they need to do their jobs, they’re going to become resentful quickly. Engagement will plummet, and turnover will soar.

Your employees need modern, up-to-date software and hardware to do their jobs, and they need access to resources that will make their jobs easier – everything from office supplies to company cars and phones. Do your best to remove obstacles that might get in the way of employees’ ability to move agilely when doing their jobs. No one wants to navigate a complicated bureaucracy with lots of red tape in order to get something done at work.

4) Offer Some Scheduling Flexibility

Besides giving plenty of mandatory time off, you need to offer employees some scheduling flexibility to help them maintain a healthy sense of work-life balance. In the post-COVID world, maybe it’s appropriate to move to a work-from-home model, or a hybrid model in which employees spend some days at the office and some days at home.

Whether employees are working from the office or from home, give employees the option to flex their schedules so they can attend to family responsibilities, run important errands that can only take place during the day, care for their health, and so on.

5) Give Each Employee Individual Attention

Each of your employees needs individual attention from management to feel seen and heard. That means taking the time to check in with employees regularly – once a week or so, check in to see how their work is going, whether they need anything, and whether they have any complaints. You should also put the work into getting to know your employees as people. Take them out to lunch once in a while. Grab happy hour drinks together on a Friday. Ask about their families and pets. Employees will feel more loyal and committed when they feel like they have personal connections at work.

Are you looking for ways to make your company thrive? You need to encourage more employee engagement. You’ll be surprised at how much better everyone can do when they’re committed to doing the best job possible.

How to Prosper in Business as a Second-Language Speaker

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Second Language Speaker|How to Prosper in Business as a Second-Language SpeakerFor many people, learning a second language is a difficult task. However, for those looking to prosper in business, learning a second language is essential. English is the most commonly spoken language in the business world, so you will be at a disadvantage if you are not fluent in it. This blog post will discuss some tips that will help you succeed in business as a second-language speaker!

Improve Your Language Skills

The first step to prospering in business as a second-language speaker is to improve your language skills through language training. If you are not confident in your abilities, it won’t be easy to succeed. There are many ways to improve your language skills, such as taking a class or practicing with a native speaker. In addition, invest in phonics reading books to help with your pronunciation and grammar. Finally, one of the best ways to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it. This means surrounding yourself with the language as much as possible. You can do this by watching English movies and TV shows, listening to English music, and reading books in English.

Make A Point Of It To Speak English As Often As Possible

Another way to prosper in business as a second-language speaker is to speak English as often as possible. This will help you to become more confident and fluent in the language. When you are around other people who speak your native language, try to speak English as much as possible. If you are not comfortable speaking in front of others, you can practice by yourself. You can use many resources to practice speaking English, such as online forums, chat rooms, and language exchange websites.

Don’t Be Afraid To Make Mistakes

One of the most significant barriers for second-language speakers is the fear of making mistakes. However, it is essential to remember that everyone makes mistakes when learning a new language. Do not be afraid to make mistakes, as this is the only way that you will learn and improve. If you make a mistake, try to correct yourself and move on.

Ask For Clarification On Your Perception of the Matter

If you are unsure about something, do not be afraid to ask for clarification. This is a common mistake that second-language speakers make, as they try to avoid asking questions for fear of looking stupid. However, it is essential to remember that there is no shame in asking for help. If you are unsure about something, ask a native speaker or another second-language speaker for clarification.

Increase Engagement With Colleagues

To prosper in business as a second-language speaker, increasing your engagement with colleagues is vital. This means participating in meetings and networking events and being an active team member. Also, do not be afraid to share your ideas, as this will help you stand out from the crowd.

By following these tips, you will be well on your way to prospering in business as a second-language speaker! However, do not be discouraged if you are not fluent in the language, as there are many resources that you can use to improve your skills. With dedication and hard work, you can succeed in any business venture!

Why Do Businesses Opt for White Label Services?

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |White Label Services|Why Do Businesses Opt for White Label Services?Anyone with any experience developing or running a business knows how many tasks need juggling.

From marketing to recruitment, there are a seemingly endless number of different aspects to running a business, each of which requires a high level of expertise and commitment. White label services can help with managing this load, lending a business their expertise without diluting the legitimacy of the brand.

We take a closer look at how white label services can help businesses, and why businesses opt to use them.

What are white label services?

White label services are those which provide custom services or products, which a business can then apply their brand to and use to their benefit. White label services are varied, and include marketing, an array of physical goods, and content production. It’s similar to ghostwriting, just applied to a wide variety of different niches.
How do white label services provide value?

The value that white label services can provide to businesses is incredibly varied, as shown in the breakdown below:

Focus on what matters

One of the main reasons that businesses opt for white label services is that it means they can focus more resources on their core offering, the reason they started the business in the first place. Having to spread your energy over the many different aspects of running the business can lead to an inferior service, in turn affecting the reputation of your brand.

Tap into expertise

White label services often offer assistance with complex tasks, which can take years to master on your own. For example, to take care of your business’s digital marketing would require an in-depth appreciation of SEO practices, social media marketing, web design, and a whole host of other technicalities. Hiring a white label SEO team to take care of it for you means that you can tap into their skillset, most probably saving time and money.

Hit the ground running

For new businesses, it can be important to hit the ground running. It’s possible that your product is ready to be offered to consumers, but it could take years to get the rest of your business up to speed. With white label services, you can skip a lot of the issues that arise from trial and error, starting your business with minimal complications. You can then try to take over those responsibilities at a later date, as you have more free time and resources, or just continue to hire the white label service.

Brand consistency

While it might seem counterintuitive, using external white label services can actually help with brand consistency. They will be able to tailor their product to your fit your brand identity, and then continue to offer that product or service at an equally high level for as long as you require. Brand consistency is incredibly important for the success of any business in the long term, so any service that can help achieve it is certainly worth a look at.

5 Ways to Eliminate Comment Spam and Boost Real Conversations

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, 5 Ways to Eliminate Comment Spam and Boost Real Conversations

Blogging is one of the best marketing tools for businesses and influencers. It’s a great way to share one’s knowledge, expertise and opinions. It’s also a great way to build a community of like-minded people.

The only way you can really create that sense of community though, is to boost real conversations among your readers.

Not only do comments make many bloggers feel good, knowing their work has been seen and appreciated, but it’s also a really great way to connect with your audience on a more human level. It allows people to ask questions and get answers, to offer their support, to express their opinions and even build new friendships.

Which is why it’s important to make your blog’s comment section an inviting space.

1. Eliminate Comment Spam

As many bloggers and blog readers know, comment spam is just a part of life online. The bigger your blog grows, the more comment spam there is. It’s never ending, but that doesn’t mean you have to give in.

What is Comment Spam?

So, what is comment spam? Well, comment spam is a term used to describe a broad range of comments that are unwelcome. Often, these are comments left by people advertising products or trying to get people to click on whatever link they’ve left.

Comment spam doesn’t add any value and needs to be eliminated if you want to boost real conversations.

Why You Need to Eliminate Comment Spam

Comment spam is a big deal. It’s not just annoying, but it has a few negative effects on your blog and your reputation.

First of all, if you allow comment spam to sit around, Google will punish your domain by ranking you lower on search engine results. Google sees comment spam as a bad thing, too. Even if you just have spam links in your comment section, Google might assume you have it on other places on your website and can greatly affect your pageviews. Just check your analytics and you’ll see.

Comment spam actually puts your readers in danger. You want your website to be a safe place that people can trust. If a reader clicks on a link left in your comments that directs them to a malware site, their computer could be infected with spyware. That reader won’t feel safe on your site again and likely won’t come back.

Leaving comment spam makes you look like you don’t care. You should be taking the time to clean out any unwelcome comments, which could be links to anything from advertisements to even porn sites or viruses. People won’t want to leave a comment if it looks like you don’t take the time to look through them.

How to Eliminate Comment Spam

Now that you know why it’s necessary to eliminate comment spam, you need to know how to do it.

There are five main ways to eliminate comment spam on your blog:

  1. Configure WordPress to minimize comment spam. Do this by setting it so comments must be manually approved before they are posted. If you’re still new to WordPress, you can read up on the basics here that’ll guide you through how to set your site up.
  2. Install an anti-spam plugin.
  3. Use a third-party comment-hosting platform.
  4. Shift the conversation to social media.
  5. Remove comments from your blog completely.

It might seem easier to just get rid of comments altogether, but allowing comments on your blog is a great way to continue the conversation.

So assuming you don’t want to remove comments from your blog or shift the conversation to social media, you should focus on the first three steps.

Interested in learning how to boost real conversation in your comment section? Keep reading.

2. Make It Easy

Some blogs make it incredibly difficult to leave a comment. Some require you to fill out robot tests, others require you to sign into Facebook, or even require you to share your email address. If it’s too much work, though, people aren’t going to bother leaving a comment at all.

There are a number of commenting systems that make leaving comments a lot easier. Even better, some commenting systems make it easier to keep track of comments you’ve left on other blogs so you can reply easier and continue the conversation.

Most people aren’t going to go back to the blogs they’ve commented on to see if they got a reply, so having a commenting system would really help.

Commenting systems also make it easier to moderate comments, fight spam, notify commenters of replies, offers lead generation, and more. They’re also easy to install on any WordPress blog no matter what hosting you have.

3. Write Compelling Content

If you want people to leave comments you need to give them a reason to. Quality content that’s thought-provoking and interesting will make it more likely that people will leave meaningful comments.

Surprisingly, one of the best techniques to really take your content to the next level and inspire people to comment is emotion. Add emotion into your blog posts and you’re much more likely to receive more comments.

There are a number of emotions you can try to provoke. It can be inspirational, it can be sad, or exciting, or it can even be upsetting. If you get someone to feel something, they’ll likely want to express it.

In fact, blog posts that discuss controversial topics are much more likely to get more comments that boost real conversations among people.

4. Ask Questions

A lot of bloggers now ask at least one question at the end of every blog post in hopes it will inspire their readers to answer it in the comment section. For many of these bloggers, the closing paragraph is often something like, “What would you add to this list?” But that’s not going to get people to comment.

If you really want to increase reader engagement you should ask questions throughout your blog post that actually gets people to think.

According to ProBlogger there are seven types of questions you should ask. These questions include:

  • What do you think?
  • How do you feel?
  • What will you do?
  • What is your opinion?
  • What is your story?
  • What is your experience?
  • What have you been working on?

So, for example, if you’re writing a blog post about a book you read, you can ask your readers if they have read it, what they thought of it, how it made them feel, or even if they would recommend it to someone and why. Always ask open-ended questions to guarantee a response.

5. Reply to All Comments

Any time you do get a comment you should reply to it right away. A lot of people comment for a reason. They might want to elaborate on what you said, ask a question, share their own experience related to the topic, or even thank you for sharing. So if you’re really interested in boosting real conversations in your comment section, keep the conversation going by replying to comments.

If people come across your blog and see you don’t take the time to reply, they won’t want to comment at all.

Keep the Conversation Going

Now that you know how to eliminate comment spam and boost real conversations, it’s time to head over to your blog and implement these ideas. Once they’re implemented, start your own email marketing campaign to ensure your audience stays up to date with your content and boost your conversations even further.