With companies balancing rehiring new team members and bringing back furloughed team members, there are many menial tasks that can fall to the bottom of the priority list. One such task can be the onboarding and integration of new team members, however, neglecting to properly onboard new members can create more trouble down the road. 

Whenever a new team member joins, it’s a great opportunity for a team reboot. We’ve put together a 5 step onboarding agenda that can take the team a few hours to start the new members off right and increase retention and workplace happiness. 

1. Create opportunities for personal connections

Start the team meeting by asking everyone to share a more personal fact about themselves to help foster connections beyond job duties. A few questions you can ask are, “what do you enjoy doing during your time off?” or “what is a hidden talent you have?” or even “what do you do to recharge?”

We often get caught up with only focusing on work in the workplace and while that is of course important, research shows that high-performing teams spent 25% more time discussing non-work topics and meeting socially with team members. 

Team members can be a huge reason why workers enjoy coming to work every day and staying long-term at a job, so encouraging and creating the space for those connections to happen will pay off in the long run. 

2. Clarify the team purpose 

This may seem like an obvious thing and you’re thinking something like our housekeeping team is there to make sure the property is clean, but think more along these lines:

• What are the key objectives that help direct the team?
• How does that team support the broader organization’s goals? 
• Why was the team created? 

3. Talk about each person’s strengths and weaknesses (in an informational way)

For the team to be as successful and efficient as possible everyone should be aware of the complete range of capabilities of each member. This is not to judge someone for not being able to perform a specific task, but more so to know who can help train others on specific tasks or skills, or fill in if a team member needs help. 

4. Set a team dynamic 

Setting a code of conduct for your team as an extension of the company code of conduct will help team members understand each other’s intentions, build trust and hopefully decrease any potential team politics. 

Have the team collectively pick three or four agreements on how the team will work together, typically these relate to communication, decision making and task management. Also, specify what actions are needed for the agreements. For example, if the team agrees to all be present for team meetings, does that mean everyone needs to take notes? Or if the meeting is virtual that might mean everyone has their cameras on. 

If the team already has these set, make sure to explain them in detail to the new team members, as well as give a refresher to current team members. 

5. Ask each member what they need

Leave some time to give each team member the chance to ask the team what they need  help with right now or offer what support they can give to other team members. This will help set the precedence of asking for/offering help and also allow new team members to get started successfully with help for team members they need.