Making a good start is a very important thing when it comes to any kind of business or employment opportunity. Just like you would want a client presentation to go well, you also want to make the perfect first representation of incoming new employees.
So, getting a well-defined and effective new hire onboarding plan is crucial, particularly when you are talking to Gen Z workers. They can pick up on unintended signals or just may not get the idea even if you meant to cover all bases. So, setting the right benchmarks and creating the right rapport will make a lot of difference in the short and long run.
Now, when it comes to making a new hire onboarding plan for Gen Z, you gotta cover many things. Knowing some Gen Z slang and getting some Gen Z memes might help too, but we will probably cover these in a future blog. For now, let’s focus on themes and understand what your new employees want from you so you can start on the right foot with them:
5 Tips to Help You Manage New Hire Onboarding for Gen Z Well
Don’t Drag It Out
Key Takeaways:
- Short and sweet does it best
- No need to pull everything together in one session
- Making a good first impression and getting everyone on it are the main goals.
The first and foremost thing you must put on your new hire onboarding checklist is that you should keep your presentation short. Gone are the days when onboarding could take 2 to 3 hours and people would put up with it. Now, you need to get your first onboarding session done in less than an hour and intersperse these sessions if needed throughout the rest of your onboarding phase.
The first part is easy to do once you have a new hire onboarding checklist. But the second part is harder since people will have their own opinions and may pose a challenge if they do not like things. So, it is important to understand how to curate the new employee experience and help them start with your company with the best outlook.
Keep it Purposeful
Key Takeaways:
- Gen Z wants meaningful – send them this message from the start!
- Make your communication more approachable using Gen Z slang and easy language.
- Give them a brief of all you will cover so they have the heads-up and feel fulfilled.
One of the most defining features of Gen Z is that they prefer to have meaningful work. This is not as easy as it may seem to be. ”Meaningful work” here means that they want to know how their roles and responsibilities will impact people and are particular about the actual impact and outcome. So, keeping a purpose-oriented approach to defining your employee engagement is a good idea.
Further, when you will be walking them through the new hire onboarding process, consider using things like Gen Z slang and Gen Z memes. Making the right connection is all about using the right language and relating your goals with real people. Consider making a new hire onboarding checklist and including key points like processes, goals, workplace diversity, employee engagement activities, etc. This will create a “Meaningful work” context for workers
Tell Them the Process Directly
Key Takeaways:
- Make a clear map for your process and place all your new recruits upon it.
- Create a communication environment where you can relax and take opinions comfortably.
- Prompting open communication with purpose-driven discussion from here is a good idea
The thing that comes closest to defining good communication after purpose is clarity. Your new hire onboarding process for Gen Z must follow the same process. Gen Z loves to know the entire picture and how they are going to be part of it. This helps them relate to your process directly and participate in it actively. This is a great way to get the rolling with you right from Day 1. And you may even see them actively volunteer for projects if you handle your process communications the right way. Take a cue from this McKinsey piece,
And make no mistake: young employees, or prospective employees, can tell when you’re just paying lip service to that kind of inclusivity—they expect the real deal from their managers.
Further, when you are orienting your new recruits into the process throwing up engagement activities like watercooler chats is a good idea. A new hire onboarding is in fact a watercooler chat and orienting towards Gen Z starts from here. If you can get them to engage in a group interaction from here, proceeding with future employee engagement processes will be much easier.
Feeling tired of reading? We got you! Check this video and find all the hot tips in this blog in less than 60 seconds!
Explain How it Matters
Key Takeaways:
- Defining the real-time impact of the work of your Gen Z workers.
- Create a broad view for them and help them understand their role in that system.
- Hint at additional factors like career development options and diversity/ecology impacts.
This is the segment where you are going to be defining the true “meaningfulness” of your new Gen Z workers’ value. This is where you can also unfold how you plan to help them gain more expertise through systematic learning. This is also the section where you can take opinions and ideas from them and help them position and understand how they want to contribute to the process. Understanding their approach via feedback can also help you understand how to funnel their individual ambitions more effectively.
Broadly speaking, Gen Z wants to see its businesses and leaders offer them some clear-cut value points. The biggest ones are demonstrating strong values in diversity and equity, personalizing career paths, providing extensive learning opportunities, and fostering a culture of calculated risk-taking. This was mentioned in this Forbes article as well as modes of hiring including campus recruitment. The key consideration here is that new hire onboarding must now be a personalized process rather than a generic script.
Give them a Baseline Plan
Key Takeaways:
- Mention how you plan to grow the business and require engagement from them.
- Introduce cross-team collaboration and mention virtual coffee chats
- Incentivize organization wide interactions to break down silos
This is the segment where you dive into the employee engagement and community growth element of your business. What are these people going to gain from joining and staying with your business? How do you see them growing in expertise and authority in your business? It doesn’t need to be highly precise, but just enough to give them a clear view of what they can expect in the future.
This is also a good place to develop their understanding of cross-team collaboration. As you explain growing job roles, making a case for cross-team collaboration and organic interaction becomes even more important. Using the prospect of job growth, you can prompt Gen Z workers to make direct connections or use virtual coffee chat options in your company to gain peer regard. This is a good way to incentivize Gen Z hires and enable them to move beyond their organizational silos.
Are You Read to Better Your New Hire Onboarding Process for Gen Z Workers?
New hire onboarding done right is a great start to a healthy and productive relationship that can last for years and maybe even decades. Getting it right from the start will help you and your Gen Z workers set realistic terms, understand each other better, and work better towards organizational goals. Get your new hire onboarding on point for Gen Z today! Also, consider getting an employee engagement app like LEAD.bot to bring your Gen Z workers closer!
LEAD.bot is a team engagement platform available on Slack and Teams. It is an all-in-one team development software with features like virtual coffee chats, buddy programs, birthday celebrations & work anniversary celebrations, new hire onboarding programs, and Pulse Surveys.
LEAD.bot also offers cutting-edge Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) for big enterprises and institutions. Executive to mid-level managers use ONA to gain highly actionable insights and build strong workplace connections. Using this app enables developing innovative employee engagement ideas to connect employees and foster better organizational health, employee retention, and overall performance with this simple app!
LEAD.bot is a product of LEAD.app and we also LEAD.bot’s sister app Sunrize which showcases workplace attendance by graphs right on Slack! Book a demo now!
