How to Onboard New Care Employees

In the care industry, employees are expected to be on their toes in high-stress, high-responsibility environments. Hence, well-crafted onboarding can substantially raise levels of job satisfaction, performance, and most importantly retention rates. We have pulled together a  comprehensive guide to help you in developing an onboarding programme that sets your new care employees up for success.

1. Pre-Boarding: Set the tone before day one

An employee’s first impression of your service begins far before their first day on the job. Here are some ideas to help give them the best first impression possible:  

• Send out welcome packets with pertinent information about the company, its mission, values, and what their first day of work will look like.

• Ensure all relevant paperwork (e.g., contracts, tax forms, background checks) are in order so that time on day one is not spent bogged down doing paperwork.

• Share a detailed first-day agenda so that new hires are well-informed and know what to expect.

2. Introducing your company

When it comes to introducing your company to a new hire, it’s best practice to assume they know nothing about your service (though we do hope they’ve done a little bit of research beforehand)! But how do we provide them with a comprehensive introduction?

• Start with a detailed overview of the company, introducing its history, mission, and values.

• Provide a full tour to help them understand their new workplace.

• Organise some meet-and-greet sessions for early-stage relationship-building with key team members and department heads.

3. Building confidence with role-specific training

Do you remember the last time you started at a new company? Your first week is often overwhelming and can feel like you have been thrown in at the deep end without a life ring. So let’s take a look at a couple ways we can build confidence and ease new hires in.

• Provide clear and detailed job descriptions, including responsibilities, expectations, and performance metrics.

• Organise shadowing and mentorship support structures within the organisation for each new hire.

• Offer focused training in regard to critical skills and practices required for their job, such as patient care, what to do in case of an emergency, and how to operate care management software.

4. Compliance and safety training

Safety procedures can vary greatly from service to service, so ensuring all new employees receive full compliance safety training should be a crucial step in your onboarding process.

• Provide mandatory training on health and safety regulations, patient privacy (HIPAA), and organisation policies.

• Train all new employees on emergency procedures including fire drills, medical situations, and lockdown procedures.

• Schedule regular refresher courses so that they remain up to date with changes in regulations.

5. Cultural integration

Employee retention is a major hurdle for many care providers, but this can be mitigated by ensuring all new employees feel welcome and involved in the workplace culture. So how could you bring new hires into the fold?

• Reinforce the culture and values of the company through storytelling and examples.

• Organise team-building activities and social events that will enable the newly hired employees to blend in and build relationships with other employees.

• Schedule a one-to-one check-in at the end of your new hire’s first working week to see how they have settled in.

6. Monitoring progress and offering support

Onboarding new employees shouldn’t be a simple short term task but rather and ongoing process that should include the following key points.

• Regular check-ins should be scheduled with supervisors so as to discuss progress, address any concerns, and provide ongoing support.

• Develop customised development plans detailing the short-term and long-term goals of every individual with milestones to keep them on the right track.

• Facilitate continuous feedback from peers and supervisors in a way that eventually evolves into a culture of growth and improvement.

7. Continuous improvement of your onboarding process

Unsure of how your new onboarding process is performing? Who better to ask then your new employees! Their feedback can offer really helpful advice to help your service improve going forward.

• Conduct surveys with feedback from new employees after the onboarding process to seek out areas for improvement.

• Follow up on performance metrics by new hires and ascertain whether onboarding is working or not.

Good onboarding is not a singular event; it requires time, planning, and continued improvement. Investing the time into a comprehensive onboarding programme—where care providers will ensure new workers are well-prepared, confident, and integrated into the team—means better patient care and higher employee satisfaction.

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