34 Painful First Day Experiences

How to stuff up your employee onboarding experience? Learn from these painful first-day experiences.

Building a successful team requires more than getting the finest applicants for open jobs in your company. Onboarding new hires may be one of the most critical components in ensuring that newly acquired staff are productive and satisfied.

On the other hand, onboarding is frequently conflated with orientation in a few businesses. While employee orientation is required—paperwork and other regular duties must be completed—onboarding is a 90-day process that involves management and other workers.

What is Employee Onboarding?

Employee onboarding is the process of acquiring a new hire with the business’s regulations, position in the company, and culture. It also entails establishing an environment where employees feel comfortable enough to freely communicate with their coworkers and form social interactions in the office.

It entails completing the proper documentation for labor law conformity and providing employees with the necessary tools to accomplish their jobs. Employees learn what the company expects of them regarding abilities, communication quality, and manner during onboarding.

Consequences of a Bad Onboarding Process

With the focus on acquiring top talent and filling open jobs, it’s easy for businesses to overlook the value of an intense onboarding course for new hires. If a person has signed up to join your organization, they have been impressed by who they’ve met and how they’ve been treated thus far. Hiring managers will entice talent and alleviate their skills deficit. On the other hand, having a signed agreement and a new start date should not be the end of the candidate courting process.

New workers might be overwhelmed by knowledge or confused by a lack of it if they are not given a complete and comprehensive introduction to the company. Many employees say they were ignored initially, and a rough start frequently leads to unsteady personnel. Employees who are not adequately integrated into the organization or entrenched into their roles due to a poor onboarding process have a sense of disengagement, which can lead to early departure.

Top 8 Reasons Why Failing to Invest Time in New Staff is Detrimental for the Company

1. Labor churn is expensive

Many companies are hesitant to invest time in new personnel until they better understand the value they can offer. Consider the investment you’ve already made in the hiring process; this investment will be wasted if newcomers apply their ‘new job excitement’ without a solid foundation or guidance. Here’s a shocking statistic: the cost of failure may be up to 150 percent of an employee’s income when you include the time spent repeating interviews, the expense of advertising for the same position, and the time expended onboarding all over again. Aside from the financial implications, frequent personnel turnover has a detrimental influence on the entire team. As an example;

  • Employees may get demoralized and lose faith in management’s judgment.
  • Existing employees will have to take up the slack while you look for a successor, which will reduce productivity.
  • Personnel will struggle to build bonds with coworkers since they don’t know who will remain. This will have a significant influence on teamwork and employee relations.

2. Misinformation’s damaging effects

When a new member (or existing staff, for that matter) is out of sync and anticipates going right when the other group members are going left, it’s frustrating for everyone. Any organization suffers from miscommunication and disinformation. With an emphasis on the role and regular check-ins with supervisors, onboarding helps to keep everyone on the same page. As teams debate their targets and the future of their work relationship, this discourse will aid in developing group bonding. When it’s so simple to prevent, no firm should suffer from damaging misunderstanding.

3. Broken Communication Networks

The way a new employee interacts at work is affected by a poor orientation experience or no orientation. Meeting the team is one of new employee orientation’s most basic yet crucial aspects. Without it, new employees have no idea who their coworkers are, their titles, what departments they work in, or their tasks. They do not even know who to turn to for aid if they need it. This might stifle their ability to learn about the company and get started with the details of their job.

4. Employee disengagement harms productivity

“Clients don’t come first; workers do,” as Sir Richard Branson famously stated. It is simple to assume that a contented employee is productive, but how can you measure how they participate in corporate performance? An “engaged team” outshines other groups by a ratio of two. Dissatisfied and disengaged employees will accomplish the bare minimum rather than go further to make your organization exceptional. A well-executed onboarding program not only engages employees but also:

  • Strengthens the whole team’s connection.
  • Ensures employees are aware of and committed to the company’s goals and vision.
  • Use the fresh viewpoint of a new employee who effortlessly integrates into the workforce to instill excitement in existing teams.

5. Loss of Key Personnel

Recruiting new talent is the initial step in building a top-performing team. How do you intend to keep their skills if they’re entering a team shaken by earlier recruiting or retention failures? You should think about more than what a new member offers to your firm; you should start thinking about a career path early on since you can guarantee your new worker is already thinking about it. Onboarding can help them understand the difference between what they offer and what is required. New employees are more likely to stay if they have a positive initial impression of your company.

6. Employee turnover hurts morale

When you lose personnel, one of the first things you’ll notice is a drop in staff morale. As more workers depart, the remaining employees may have lost significant coworkers, which is more important than you believe.

According to research by Office Vibe, having a buddy is an essential aspect of an excellent work-life for 70% of personnel. Furthermore, 50% of employees with a work-best buddy report feeling a better connection to their company. As a result, if one of your workers departs, your remaining personnel’s culture and dedication to the company and their position in it may suffer.

7. Workplace Culture and Employee Loyalty

Inadequate onboarding and the resulting increase in turnover indicate that a company has not developed a work culture. Creating a brand among employees and fostering pride can only be accomplished when personnel stay with an organization long. There aren’t enough ‘role models’ for new workers to look up to when turnover is equally high across departments.

This may appear to be a catch-22 scenario since loyal workers are required to create a work culture, yet such a culture can only be made if adequate, reliable employees exist. Building a work culture from the top down is the best way to go. To achieve a company-wide improvement in dependability and employer brand perception, managers must be encouraged to adopt better work routines among their employees and improve onboarding processes at the team level.

8. New employees who aren’t linked don’t perform well

Have you ever been instructed to “sink or swim” after being tossed into the deep end? It’s a nice story at the dinner table but not good for the company or the new employee. Dropping a procedure document on their desks and ordering them to get to work is unlikely to inspire brilliance. Even self-starters and go-getters require guidance to understand your procedures and software thoroughly.

Executives must plan and implement onboarding with similar enthusiasm to product launches and sales pitches. Next time, take some time to consider your existing procedure and how it may be improved. Rather than focusing on what you can’t afford, consider what you can’t afford to lose.

34 Painful First-Day Experiences

Oversights and disparities between the knowledge and appreciation that employees require and the time and effort the organization puts into delivering what it believes new personnel need are common onboarding blunders. However, this gap between expectations and reality may be bridged with some careful planning.

Here are 34 painful first-day-at-work experiences of some employees.

  1. A new hire contacted the HR manager to report that he was outside the office, and nobody from the client answered the door. When the new employee spoke with the customer, he mentioned they usually open a little late—a detail not disclosed to the new employee.
  2. A workstation, laptop, and other essential office supplies were not delivered to the new Marketing Manager. The new Marketing Manager presented his resignation and left after spending almost a week in the conference room.
  3. Another employer in Missouri had a bad onboarding experience. No one recalled that the new employee was supposed to start when she arrived. It turned out that the individual she had previously dealt with was on vacation. They merely had her browse a packet of corporate documents because nobody had time to onboard her.
  4. To begin with, the employment procedure was bizarre and took months to complete. Nobody contacted him for months after the new employee had his final interview with Company A. He accepted an offer from Company B. Still, Company A contacted him during his two-week wind-down period, so he just transferred to Company B.
  5. When the new Building Supervisor arrived for work, the office lacked a desk. HR discovered a space he could use but didn’t have a computer. They eventually located an old one that no one was using and gave it to him. It was a dreadful machine, most likely one of those wholesale discount devices. They didn’t have a monitor at the time. He had to wait all day for them to locate an old CRT constantly flickering.
  6. The new manager was left with nothing to do for a week. The materials for managers were printed and placed on his desk for him to review. He insisted on working, but they were unsure what project to assign to him.
  7. The new hire’s boss was notorious for arriving late, taking a lengthy lunch, and leaving early. During the new employee’s months at work, he also traveled on multiple work trips. He never gave her anything to carry out, and the only instance he spoke to her was to tell her how much of a Spiderman fan he was and how Marvel had failed to do Venom justice.
  8. For a long time, IT refused to recognize the computer request, and other departments could not assist or assign tasks to the new employee due to internal politics.
  9. He arrived on the first day with nothing to do since the boss was still on vacation, and he missed informing the team of the new hire’s arrival.
  10. Skipping to their office, all flashy but having trouble locating it because no one told the new hire about the back laneway’s secret lair entrance.
  11. Because the crew spent the day running from meeting to meeting, the new hire was left alone for 7 hours.
  12. The new employee spent the first day in a different facility without Internet, then the following five months waiting for the software he needed for work. There were no onboarding, design, specifications, or requirements: only code to read.
  13. The new manager was given a laptop and an out-of-date onboarding paper, which he updated in the following few weeks.
  14. A new employee sat in a huge paint bucket for the first day. He was instructed to utilize their program for a few days before working on issues. His supervisor was a “self-taught developer” who just knew the fundamentals. He meant that he was a self-taught coder who had devoted some period in access. He felt threatened by individuals who had been appropriately taught; therefore, he attempted to create a harsh climate where new employees would be pushed out.
  15. He didn’t get to pick any personalization choices because he signed the contract just a few days before day one. He also acquired a little side desk in a room near the exit.
  16. There was no other option, so it was just a regular desk with a standard chair, albeit a little snug in that area. She started in December when half of the crew had already left for the holidays, but she was given a few little chores and reading assignments, including a 100-page employee manual.
  17. When she arrived at the office, her supervisor informed her that she would have to travel to another location inside the same building to see HR and obtain her benefits papers.
  18. They didn’t have the new employee’s name on file when she came to the HR office, so they gave her a generic paperwork package and urged her to fill it out over two weeks. She requested that they sit down with her and discuss her alternatives because it was her first professional work with benefits. They were irritated and told her they couldn’t provide suggestions since it was against the law. No one else in her department seemed to have any further information.
  19. The manager made it a point to be absent from the new employee’s first day. When his employer began shouting at him for a condition report, the new worker had no idea where he was seated. He’d just started his first day at the newspaper and had no clue what a condition report was.
  20. The new hire’s manager greeted him at the doorstep and just dropped him off at his table without showing him around or introducing him to anybody. He had to seek assistance in finding the bathrooms. When his supervisor left off a file for him to work on without instruction on what he should do with it, he did not have a minute’s worth of training.
  21. The company’s owner welcomed the new employee into his office at 9:00 in the morning on her first day and spoke for several hours. He referred to it as ‘training,’ yet there was no instruction. He chatted for eight hours about himself, how brilliant he was, and how cunning he was to achieve this, that, and the other.
  22. He didn’t hear from anybody for two weeks after accepting the job. He followed up with the HR Executive in an unpleasant manner, and she had no idea who he was.
  23. Her new boss had given her a pleasant welcome message and a coffee cup in the mail before she started. It had been used before her; therefore, it had to be a decent mug.
  24. The first orientation day began at 8:00 a.m. and lasted until 6:00 p.m. They didn’t take any breaks during the day since they had lunch delivered. The new employees thought like they were being held. In the evening, they had the assignment to complete.
  25. She was escorted to her desk on her first day, and the former employee’s nameplate was still displayed on the door.
  26. The first day was fantastic. On the other hand, everyone, including her manager, was too preoccupied to meet with her on the second day at work.
  27. When her firm had her business cards ready for her, the new hire was blown away. Until she realized they were for Carl, not Carla.
  28. He accepted a job that required him to be interviewed at Headquarters, but the position was at a satellite office. When he arrived, his name wasn’t on the building security register, and no one knew he was coming. He sat in the lobby for three hours, waiting for somebody to take him up.
  29. For six weeks, the new worker didn’t have access to all the systems he required to do his work due to bureaucracy and many red tape.
  30. On her first day at work at a high-end fashion magazine, a new hire was given a detailed reprimand by her new supervisor for a minor blunder.
  31. The company does not invest time and money in training new staff. Instead, they believe that immersing a baby in the pool’s deep end is the most excellent method to teach it to swim.
  32. The organization has no defined procedure or workflow, and no employees want to share information about their daily jobs. This isn’t a brand-new firm (like a startup), but rather one that has been around for a long time.
  33. The new personnel was not informed whom he was expected to report or where he was meant to report. The position did not correspond to the job description and was not what had been mentioned during the interview.
  34. When the new employee arrived on his first day, HR was entirely unprepared. The laptop for the new employee has yet to come, the desk space has yet to be assigned or cleared away, and the employee’s card is still being processed.

Conclusion

A new employee cannot learn about the company’s passion and culture through a guidebook; they must experience it firsthand. They can understand the ropes in a connected, practical setting with proper onboarding. Gradual independence should be promoted, and the introduction will make it much simpler to let them work independently.

The most excellent method to welcome and keep new staff is to create a solid onboarding process. Effective onboarding requires forethought and consideration of your new employee’s perspective. It doesn’t start and finish on the first day of your new hire’s employment with you. It begins at the start of your hiring procedure and concludes when your new hire is thoroughly established in their new position.