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An effective onboarding process is about far more than showing where the coffee machine is and ensuring IT access is in place. It is a strategic effort that involves several key players. In this article, you can read about how the first 90 days play a crucial role in the successful recruitment of your new key employee – and download a simple but effective checklist for successful onboarding.
Congratulations on your new employee - now the onboarding begins
It's a brilliant feeling to get ink on the contract with your company's next profile within finance, IT or legal. But if you sit back and consider the recruitment process complete once the contract is signed, you are making a big mistake. Because actually, this is where the most important work begins if your newest signing is to become value-creating – both for your new employee and for the company.
The first 90 days in a new position are crucial for both the employee's success and the likelihood that they will stay with the company long-term. Yet many companies overlook the importance of a structured onboarding process that extends beyond the first day of introduction.
The new employee typically comes from a position where they delivered strong results and were valued by both managers and colleagues. But now they are the new person in the class – without established relationships and without knowledge of systems, processes and workflows. They need to prove their worth anew, and in that position there is fragility. Because have they made the right decision? Will they succeed in the new job? Will they fit into the culture?
Executive search and recruitment
A structured onboarding creates tangible value
For these doubts to be quickly swept aside in favour of the feeling of having made the right choice, a structured onboarding process is absolutely crucial. It has a direct impact on faster productivity, higher engagement, better retention and stronger cultural adaptation. The new employee will reach full capacity more quickly, feel valued and invest more in the company. And equally important, the risk of early departure is significantly reduced.
Conversely, inadequate onboarding can lead to even the most promising candidate never fulfilling their potential – or worse still, leaving the company within the first year. And at a time when the battle for the best talent is intense, a well-thought-out onboarding process can be the difference between a short-term appointment and long-term success.
The line manager plays a crucial role in creating clarity about expectations and success criteria, ensuring regular feedback and follow-up, introducing key people and departments and gradually increasing the complexity of work tasks.
But the HR department should take responsibility for structuring the overall onboarding process, including ensuring practical elements, introducing the company's culture and values and regular follow-up on wellbeing and integration.
How the first 90 days become crucial
At Basico, we recommend an onboarding process that extends over the first 90 days and is divided into four phases:
Before the employee's start (week 0) it is important to ensure good preparation so that everything works when your new colleague walks through the door on the first day. For example, develop a focused introduction programme that ensures an overview of the first few days.
A good tip you as a manager can follow is to introduce yourself with a simple document: "How to work best with me."
Send this to your new employee before they even start. It need not be long – just honest and concrete. Describe how you prefer to communicate, what you value in collaboration, what good work looks like in your eyes, and where you yourself have your strengths and development areas. You can even encourage your employee to do the same.
Such approaches create security and clarity from the start. It helps the new employee understand you as a manager – and not least to find their feet more quickly.
In the first days (weeks 1-2) the focus is on welcome, introduction to immediate colleagues and team, review of role and expectations and establishing the first simple successes.
A particularly valuable component is establishing a buddy scheme, where the new employee is matched with a colleague who has started relatively recently themselves (e.g. within the last 12 months). This buddy can answer questions you might not want to ask your manager, provide informal insight into the company's culture and unwritten rules and act as a social bridge-builder to the rest of the organisation.
In the first weeks (weeks 3-6) there is a deeper introduction to systems and processes, gradual increase in responsibility and independence, regular check-ins with the line manager, informal meetings with key people across the organisation and the first formal feedback session.
In the first months (weeks 7-12) there is full integration into relevant projects and areas of responsibility, establishment of long-term goals and development plan, evaluation of the onboarding process, deeper cultural integration and a concluding 90-day conversation with concrete future plans.
Today, most HR systems have integrated solutions for a structured onboarding process, and your company probably already does most of what is necessary. But based on our many years of experience with successful recruitment and onboarding processes, we have created a checklist.
It can help your company structure an effective onboarding process that ensures your new talent gets off to a good start and quickly becomes productive, engaged employees.
You can download the checklist right here. (in danish)
Would you like us to help with recruitment and onboarding?
We help you with recruitment of specialists, managers and key employees for your support functions – from identifying your company's culture and needs, a tailored recruitment process that attracts the right candidates and comprehensive onboarding consultancy that ensures a successful start to structured follow-up in the first critical months.
