When it comes to finding new talent, most of us focus on the specific stages of hiring. We don’t, however, think enough about how to bring all those new employees up to speed and ensure they have everything they need to thrive and be productive — in other words, the onboarding process. 

In the past few months, Encepta has experienced an unprecedented hiring spree, with dozens of new team members joining us every few weeks. While welcoming an occasional employee can be improvised, when you have a stream of hires coming in through the doors, you need to have a proper onboarding framework in place.

What Is Encepta’s Onboarding Process? 

To make sure new Enceptans (yes, that’s us) take all the necessary training, quickly get to know their coworkers and instantly feel like part of the company, we’ve introduced a detailed onboarding process.

We separated our onboarding into multiple parts. Every new employee receives a welcome kit, learns everything about the company at the Encepta Academy, meets their managers and peers, and gets added to a specific Slack channel along with other new hires from their batch. 

Our initial onboarding process usually lasts about five days and is customized for specific roles and departments. Since everyone’s training needs are different, we maintain precise checklists for every role using Notion to make sure nothing gets skipped or goes missing.

Here are five foundational items that ensure new Enceptans are set up for success.

Welcome Kits

We usually have new employees start on Monday. So the Friday before they get a welcome kit that contains everything they need to begin onboarding, from how to log in to our systems and the actual hardware they need to do that to some company swag they can show off.

We find that welcome kits give employees more independence and make them more proactive. They know what their onboarding week is going to look like and are ready to start strong. 

Encepta Academy

All the training at the company and departmental levels happens in the Encepta Academy — our interactive online school full of videos, PDFs, presentations, test quizzes and extra reading materials.

New employees quickly learn the story of Encepta, our mission and values, organizational structure, policies and tools we use. 

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Managers & Peers

Another important part of the onboarding process that we have found works well is assigning peers to new employees. These are people who have been with a company for a while and are able to answer any questions or explain any processes. We find that starting to socialize as soon as possible is one of the most important aspects of employee onboarding.

Given that we are hiring across different regions and a lot of people are working remotely, having a peer you can always talk to is working even better than tapping someone on the shoulder at the office used to.  

During the first few days, new employees will also meet with their managers as well as Lisa, Encepta’s COO. 

Shared Slack Channels

Every new batch of hires has their own channel on Slack. At first, we wondered if the idea would actually take off — and take off it did! 

We find people are excited to share their experience, meet new colleagues, express their feelings in emojis and GIFs, answer questions and so much more. A Slack channel is the perfect space for collective contribution.

Note: It’s important to create a separate channel for every batch to make people more comfortable, since everyone there would be at the same stage of their Encepta journey.

Continuous Improvement

For each new hire, we continue to provide a high level of support for 90 days, after which they proceed into an ongoing career development. 

The end of our onboarding experience is not only a new beginning for all the recent hires, it’s also a way for us to iterate and improve the process even further for all the future batches. 

To do that, we like to run a survey at the end of each onboarding week. The new findings, potential omissions and interesting suggestions get processed and possibly added to the onboarding steps in the future. 

In the end, our process for integrating employees into our company doesn’t only give them what they need to do their job. It creates strong social connections, provides valuable context about our company and … it’s actually quite a lot of fun!

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Ready to join our team? Experience our seamless onboarding process that will set you up for success in the workplace.