Why org charts should be used in new hire onboarding?

Crisp clothes. New faces. Some Awkward. Others excited. Some chattering away. A few shying away. Yet all trying to make the most of their first impressions. 

No matter how many times you onboard new hires, you’ll never be done meeting new kinds of people and a whole lot of emotions they bring. However, the challenge in new hire onboarding remains the same – to swiftly assimilate an employee into the organization.


Studies says at least 69% of the employees will stick with the company for at least a minimum of three years if they experienced great onboarding.

Here are 5 ways in which Organizational charts lend a helping hand in achieving effective employee onboarding.

#1 There’s no faster way to introduce the organization‘s structure

Using organizational charts you can give your new hires a quick one-page view of the whole organization. Introduce them to the leaders at multiple levels, show them team structures and reporting relationships, help them see their own team members and what they do – all in a single org chart. There is simply no faster way to do it.

Here’s a quick peek into the Freshteam’s org chart:


The chart fleshes out to show you managers, teammates, and direct reports as you navigate through different employees.

#2 New hires can get to know their team and people before even before meeting them

As they navigate to their team on the chart, they get to spend a few minutes knowing every person in the team and what they do. Maybe, just maybe, if your new hires are present enough they’ll pick a detail or two about their colleagues for a conversation starter later in the evening.

Understanding people and the work they do also enables your new hires to reach out to the right people for different things right from day one. No more wasting time asking around or shooting emails to the wrong people.

#3 For your remote workers, it’s a visual org tour

Assimilating a new employee into the organization is hard enough. What’s harder is onboarding remote workers.

Organizational charts make the job easier for you. They help you introduce your company, leaders, and teams to remote workers irrespective of the different geographic locations, functions, or titles – not merely names, but some happy and excited faces.

Your remote folks can also look up any colleague’s contact information quickly as and when they need it.

You can handle the entire pre-onboarding process over Freshteam even before they join – send forms to fill, documents to sign, handbooks, culture videos, etc. This is not just for remote workers but for anyone. You can create a little checklist of things your team has to achieve as a part of the new hire onboarding and assign the different tasks to the concerned people.

#4 Inspires aspirations 

As early as day one, people want to know about the growth opportunities they have in the company – their career path or growth path. Most often this is brushed off assuming it has already been discussed in the interview.

But being able to get the hang of what their colleagues and leaders do, where they have been, and what they have done is a solid source of inspiration for newcomers. It naturally breeds aspirations.

Most new hires are trying to start afresh and are looking to learn, grow and make changes. So they are naturally thrilled but they don’t have an idea of what is expected of them on their jobs when they join or in the next few years.

In fact, a report by an international data corporation shows that employees in the U.S and UK cost businesses $37 billion because they don’t understand their jobs.

It’s one thing to describe their responsibilities on their job descriptions and an entirely different thing to point them to living references that they can look up to and learn from.

#5 Creates a sense of belonging from day one

When your new people see their own faces and profiles on the organization’s chart, it becomes a moment to define – it creates a real and subtle sense of belonging.

You can also get them to fill their own profiles. Ask for their favorite flavor of ice cream, t-shirt size, where they live, their hobbies, or anything that could be of use to you.

Freshteam Org charts

Freshteam auto-populates the org chart as and when you populate your new employee’s profiles in the system. It automatically creates an organizational chart from the reporting relationships of your employees.

It’s available to all your employees on desktop and mobile, which means they can look people up even while walking around in the office or any other place in the world. 

If you didn’t already notice, Freshteam’s org charts are also easy on your eyes and mind. 

One of our customers, SunPower by Hooked on Solar use Freshteam to complete their entire onboarding process in just 15 minutes. Read how:

SunPower case study - Freshteam

 

Ready to try the Freshteam org chart? Start with our 21-day free trial.

More about Freshteam : 

Freshteam is the perfect HR software for growing businesses. It helps handle the end-to-end applicant tracking, new hire onboarding, paid time off, and the central employee database all in one place and flow.