Top Ten Tips for Successful Onboarding
At-a-glance: Onboarding Your New Employee
What is Onboarding?
Onboarding is the process of:
- Welcoming new employees to the university and their department,
- Helping them understand job expectations and how their position aligns with the university’s mission, and
- Quickly equipping them with the knowledge, skills and key relationships to be successful in their new job.
At SUNY Oswego, the onboarding process begins during recruitment and continues through the first year of employment. Successful onboarding requires a partnership between the hiring manager, senior management in your area and SUNY Oswego Human Resources team. These resources will focus specifically on the supervisor’s role during the first 90 days of employment.
Why is Onboarding Important?
- Helps employees build a strong sense of belonging and engagement from the beginning of their employment.
- Helps new employees fully contribute more quickly.
- Improves overall job satisfaction.
- Builds a more cohesive team and raises team productivity.
- Helps increase new employee retention.
- Reduces high turnover costs.
What is the Supervisor’s Role in Onboarding?
Best practices and survey data demonstrate supervisors play a critical role in a new employee’s experience and success. Your role as a supervisor is to facilitate the process from start to finish. You will find tools and best practices below to help you:
- Prepare and plan for the first 90 days of your new employee’s experience at SUNY Oswego.
- Bring your newly hired employee up to speed with the policies, processes, culture, key relationships, expectations, and day-to-day responsibilities of your department.
- Ensure new employees feel welcomed and engaged confirm why they joined your department and SUNY Oswego.
Processes:
The State University of New York at Oswego recognizes that employees are its most valuable asset, and that the people we hire will have a direct impact on students, faculty, staff, alumni, external customers, and neighboring communities. The University’s ability to achieve its mission rests, in part, on the recruitment and retention of qualified, skilled faculty and staff.
Review the resources provided below, and contact Human Resources with any questions.
Unclassified Recruitment Process
Strong work relationships depend on regular performance feedback. Performance evaluations are an important responsibility for all supervisors within SUNY Oswego.
The performance management process is an ongoing, proactive effort designed to align employee responsibilities with the mission and goals of the College and their department. Employees must have a clear understanding of expected results, receive coaching and feedback, be included in a structured, recurrent performance review, be recognized for meeting expectations, and develop capability when deficiencies exist.
UUP Professional Performance Management
Classified Annual Performance Management
*NEW*- Electronic Performance Review Module
Other Performance Management Tips for Supervisors:
- Engage in frequent informal conversations around performance throughout the year, whether through your regular workload meetings or stand-alone sessions. These informal interactions pave the way for formal, documented performance reviews, and ensure that there are no surprises for the employee when it comes time for the annual performance evaluation.
- Communicate expectations clearly and collaborate on goals. Aligning expectations and ensuring understanding is key to strengthening individual engagement and team success. Collaborating on the development of goals will assist employees in feeling ownership of their professional development.
- Address performance challenges early and often. Ignoring the problem is not an effective solution. Consult with HR early and often when you have an employee who is struggling.
For more information regarding the faculty review process and universal personnel dates, visit the Office of the Provost webpage for more information.
(UUP, MC, Temps, GA’s)
Electronic Unclassified Service Appointment Forms: The electronic unclassified service appointment form is in the Hirezon/Interview Exchange system.
Step 1: Once the form is submitted in Hirezon/Interview Exchange, it goes through the appropriate approval process that is set up in the task routing.
Step 2: HR is the last to receive the appointment form in the system. HR reviews/approves.
Step 3: HR will process the appointment in payroll and generate an electronic contract letter through Hirezon/Interview Exchange and new hire packet (if applicable).
Contract Letters: The contract letters are only generated after having an approved electronic unclassified service appointment form. Each year a temporary, term, Appendix A (depending on if they have reached their 5 year appointments) must receive a contract letter every year. If an Appendix A employee has been granted the 5 year appointment then they should receive a renewed contract letter every 5 years with the appropriate dates indicated.
Time & Attendance Guide
Supervisors can follow along with this instruction guide that shows you how to review and approve/deny employee requests through SUNY HR: Time and Attendance System-Supervisor Role.
Accruals
Employees earn time each month. Annual leave is equivalent to vacation time and is earned only by non-academic employees and twelve-month faculty. Sick time may be used either for personal illness, family illness, or medical appointments. You may not use benefit time before you have earned it. CSEA members accrue time in hours and may use time in as small as ¼ hour increments. All other employees accrue time in days and may use time in as small as ¼ day increments. Supervisors approve biweekly (CSEA, PBA, and overtime –eligible UUP) or monthly (everyone else) time sheets AND leave requests.
Additional Resources
For questions and assistance contact the Payroll Office at payroll@oswego.edu.