Four Ways to Make New Employees Feel Welcome from the First Day
At Blue Whale Media, we’ve had an incredibly busy couple of months. From gaining new clients, we’ve experienced the need to grow and expand our small company to maintain our ever-changing demeanour throughout the year. As a recently employed team member, I’ve been incorporated into the Blue Whale Media family smoothly and understand how hard they work to welcome new members of staff.
The importance of integrating your new staff members from their very first day is imperative to their overall perception of your team and the business. If you’re not already taking the appropriate steps to welcome your new team members in style, here’s how!
Create a Welcoming Environment
The first thing you should consider when welcoming a new addition to your team is giving them the right first impression. At Blue Whale Media, we create a new space for them to work, buy the necessary desk space and even jostle around our seating plans to fit them in! We do all this because we know how intimidating it can be to start a new job and having your own space to settle down relieves some of that initial pressure.
We also give them an induction session, where we show them around the office and introduce them to the entire team. We will give them a detailed tour, showing them where they kind find anything they need and who to reach out to if they need anything. This breaks down that barrier of nervous energy and allows them to feel comfortable within our space.
Allow Room to Grow
All members of staff at Blue Whale Media are encouraged to voice their opinion on aspects that affect everyone within the office. For example, during our weekly Friday meetings, we are asked to bring at least one point we want to address within the meeting that could be corresponding to any aspect of the business. If the idea isn’t taken up, it is at least listened to and considered.
Because we’re a business that is forever growing and changing, there is more opportunity for a role to develop over time. This includes promotions and other role changing news! Blue Whale Media likes to encourage these types of changes as it is what shapes their future and nurtures each individual team member.
Encourage an Open-Door Policy
Another way to make new employees feel included within the team from their first day is to encourage an open-door policy. This means that if they have any questions, small or large, they can be answered! It’s just that simple. It’s silly to feel like they will know exactly what they’re doing from the first day, and in installing this open-door policy ensures that they won’t feel uncomfortable or lost throughout their first few weeks.
This also creates a great rapport with the new employee and everyone else in the team as it encourages them to ask questions and get to know people that they might not have communicated with. At Blue Whale Media, team building is another way we like to bond with all new employee’s, which gives them a great opportunity to integrate into the team.
Team Building Exercises
As I just mentioned, we find team building exercises to be an important aspect of our team and company. It allows people to get to know each other and discuss topics that aren’t related to work. This means that they will feel a lot more comfortable with everyone they work with and make it easier to discuss work during office hours.
The use of our weekly team meeting also incorporates this mindset, as we allow everyone to gather once a week to discuss anything and everything that they might have to find difficult throughout the week.
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