Did you have a really good onboarding experience? Care to share

[allgoodnamestaken]

I'm doing some work on onboarding and trying to see what would make our current process better for new recruits. It's quite patchy and the people managers don't always make the best choices.
Would really appreciate if anyone could share their positive experiences and any little touches that made a big difference.
I've asked the question to ChatGPT but always better to hear from humans....

I liked:
Regular one-to-ones with my line manager
Clear objectives
An Excel of useful links and filepaths etc.
No unfair pressure around getting to grips with things, so I felt I had enough time to do background reading etc.
Line manager support re different logins etc.

I think my onboarding was really well actually (it all went a bit weird 6 months later, but the start was great).

/ went really well

Named contact for every day for the first few weeks (probably unnecessary if line manager is around in same office)

Clear expectations around what training has to be done by when.

Encouragement to do things like explore the intranet and the building. Have a coffee and get to know people.

That's a good point @RidingMyBike - DH's last onboarding included a remote meeting to meet each team member separately. With hindsight, this would have been good for me as well. A few happened organically, but not one for everyone.

I had an experienced mentor and I met with him weekly for the first few months. He was amazing and I'm still in touch with him even though this was 11 years ago and he has retired now.

My first week involved lots of introductions to different people to understand what their area did. It was good at that point to be learning about how the area concerned benefitted the customer, rather than focussing on details of processes. Then, separate to that, being provided with lots of information about useful things with links, like HR processes, how to fill in timesheets, booking annual leave, IT systems, health and safety, etc. And, people being kind about the fact that you're unlikely to absorb everything instantly and might need some reminding - but that's also where the company having good, easy to find documents really helps.

Having meetings already scheduled with key people for the first few weeks.
Having the tech, place to work etc all sorted and not a scramble
Someone to explain the basics eg booking leave, sick leave, where hr policies are, where the shared folders are

Is onboarding induction, or induction and beyond?

I think that onboarding is the getting you set up and equipped and can be a general process. Induction is more role specific and should be handled by the people manager