The seven steps to onboard new joiners with ADKAR and Google Workspace

Onboarding new employees is crucial in setting them up for success within your organisation. It helps them understand their role, responsibilities, and culture while fostering a sense of belonging. In this blog post, you’ll explore how you can create an engaging and enjoyable onboarding experience for new hires, by leveraging the ADKAR model and the powerful suite of tools offered by Google Workspace.

The ADKAR model

The ADKAR model is a change management framework that helps organisations successfully implement change. It stands for Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement. Use this model to guide the onboarding process and ensure that new employees are successful. Here is how you apply the five ADKAR stages to onboard by leveraging the Google Workspace tools:

Awareness

During the awareness stage, new employees should be made aware of your mission, values, and goals. Give them an overview of their new role and responsibilities.

For onboarding new employees, Gmail will be your starting point for a warm welcome and a central hub for all communications. Here are some pro tips to optimise the onboarding process using Gmail:

• Create a dedicated onboarding email (ex: Welcome.new.talent@yourcompany.com) or label to manage all communication related to onboarding.
• Pre-configure a welcome email template to send a warm and enthusiastic welcome message to new hires. Include essential information, such as their team, a brief introduction, and links to relevant resources or documentation.

Google Calendar is an invaluable tool for coordinating schedules and managing appointments. Leverage it during the onboarding process by

Coordinate with Google Calendar 

• Creating a shared onboarding calendar to schedule meetings, training sessions, and introductions with team members.
• Use Google Calendar’s event invitations to ensure all necessary participants are aware of and attend onboarding activities.
• Set all-day events as reminders for key onboarding milestones, ensuring new employees stay on track and don’t miss important sessions.

Desire

The desired stage is about getting new employees excited about their new job and the organisation. Provide opportunities to meet their new colleagues, learn about the organisation’s culture, and get involved in its activities.

Communicate with Google Chat

Google Chat enables real-time communication or synchronous communication, promoting collaboration and quick information sharing. Create a dedicated Google Chat Space for new hires to ask questions, seek guidance, or simply socialise with their peers. Encourage using GIFs, stickers, and emojis to add a fun and lighthearted touch to conversations.

Pro tip: welcome new hires via a Google Chat (Announcement)-Space. They will feel immediately welcomed by their new colleagues.

Knowledge

The knowledge stage provides new employees with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in their roles. Google Classroom offers a structured learning environment, making it ideal for onboarding new employees. Create dedicated “classrooms” for onboarding, where you can share training materials, interactive quizzes, and assignments. Use the discussion feed to encourage questions and facilitate conversations among new hires.

Ability

The ability stage ensures new employees have the resources and support they need to succeed. Google Drive provides a hub for storing and sharing files. Make sure you also use it for storing onboarding materials such as company policies, training materials, and helpful resources. To make the onboarding material more visual and create an easy to navigate through for the new joiners you can also rely on Google Sites.

Reinforcement

The reinforcement stage is about rewarding and recognizing new employees for their accomplishments. This keeps them motivated and engaged in their new role.

So, track progress with Google Sheets!

Use Google Sheets to create onboarding checklists or trackers. This allows new hires to visualise their progress, ensuring they complete all necessary tasks and training modules. 

Rely on smart chips within Google Sheets but also checkboxes, data validation, the timeline feature, and many others.

Celebrate milestones and achievements by sharing a company-wide shout-out via Google Chat when a new hire completes their onboarding journey.

Going for the extra mile?

Improve thanks to Google Forms!

With Google Forms gathering feedback was never so easy, and you can ask new hires about their onboarding experience. This is vital for continuous improvement. Use Google Forms to create anonymous surveys and collect insights on the effectiveness of your onboarding process. Ask specific questions about their experience, clarity of instructions, training materials, and overall satisfaction. Analyse the feedback received and make adjustments to optimise the onboarding process until you get new feedback from new hires 😉.

How to go through all these steps faster? Create a Google Group for new employees and make sure that the Google Group has access to the Shared Drives, the Calendars, the Google Chat Spaces, etc. This way a new joiner has access to everything needed for his onboarding by default.

The ADKAR model and the Google Workspace tools are at your disposal

You can transform the onboarding process of new hires into an engaging and enjoyable experience. By leveraging Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Classroom (read here how The Good Care Group leverages Google Classroom for training and onboarding), Google Chat, Google Sheets, and Google Forms, you can create a comprehensive and interactive onboarding program. By utilising Google Workspace effectively, companies can set their employees up for success.