How to standardize your hiring and onboarding processes (with templates!)

Want to learn the secrets of running effective, productive meetings? Join us at our “Inside the Process” webinar next Wednesday, Sept. 27 at 9 a.m. PDT (12 p.m. EDT) as process improvement analyst Derek McLarty shares the EOS way of running meetings. (There might even be some never-before-seen templates in it for you. 👀) Register here.

Hot off the SMB press this week: 

• Using Trainual to streamline our own hiring and onboarding processes.
• Starting templates for the ultimate onboarding playbook.
• Why completing your Trainual profile is the easiest documentation win.
• How to build a company culture centered around your customers.

BEHIND THE SCENES

How Trainual uses Trainual for hiring and onboarding

It’s the best software for documentation and training.
We know because we use Trainual to document everything about our business. It keeps us organized and on top of training and development — that’s how we know it can do the same for other small businesses.

Of course, we’ve been using Trainual since its literal inception, and we’ve been improving our training and documentation processes since then. So, we’ve got an advantage — and we understand that for businesses starting Trainual (or even content documentation) for the first time, it can be tough knowing where to start.

So, we’re lifting the curtain.
At our annual customer conference Insider Summit, we outlined how we utilize our own software to standardize the hiring and onboarding processes we have for new employees — saving us time and helping us find and retain the right people for the right roles.

(Want the ultimate onboarding playbook for your own business? Check out the template group below. 👇)

Here’s how Trainual uses Trainual:

1. Introduce ourselves to job candidates.
When someone applies to a new company, they’re usually thinking about more than just the role they’re applying for. They’re thinking about benefits, the company culture, how they’ll be compensated — and most companies leave that research to the candidates.

Not us. We share a Trainual subject containing all our company info with candidates who’ve entered the interview stage of our hiring process (here’s an example you can use for yourself). That way, they have all the information they need to make the right decision for them and their families.

From an introduction from our CEO and founder and what Trainual is, to our core values and our health insurance plans, we share it all. And it’s gone out to thousands of job applicants — saving us from answering the same benefits question over and over again. We wrote up this subject once, tweak it every so often, and then simply send a public share link whenever a new candidate makes it to the interview stage. That’s a lot of time saved.

👉 Learn more about how we use Trainual.

STARTER PACK

Template (group) of the week: The ultimate onboarding playbook

One of the best ways you can get employees up to speed in a flash, answer all their new-hire questions without peeling away from your daily duties, and set them up for long-term success at your company: creating a killer onboarding experience. And when you do it in Trainual, you equip your HR team with the tools they need to onboard new hires, and provide resources they can go back to at any time. Plus, educate job candidates about all the reasons your company is one of the best places to work!

The best part? You only have to create your onboarding program one time, and it will last for years — you’ll just have to make tweaks every now and then when big things change. 

Meaning, you can onboard dozens of new hires over the course of several months without lifting a finger. (Okay, you lift your finger to click your mouse a couple of times, but we don’t think that counts.)

👉 Create an award-winning onboarding program with these three, fully-built templates: New Employee Onboarding Process, New Employee Post-offer & Pre-start Process Checklist, and Company Introduction for Job Candidates. These processes combined are the golden ticket to telling candidates everything they need to know about your company before they even start, and giving your HR team the inside scoop on all things onboarding at your company. 

You know the drill — just plug and play and send it out to your team (and job candidates using public share!). New to Trainual? Start with all three templates in your new account.

‍Want more templates to help you build your business playbook? Check out our entire template archive of free, multimedia-enhanced, and customizable policy, process, and role starters. New to Trainual? Try for free.

TRAINUAL TIPS

Foster team connection and outline responsibilities from day one

Want a quick documentation win? One that will automatically improve your org and role charts, strengthen your team’s connection, and set your new hires responsibilities from day one?

Then get every person on your team to update their Trainual profile. 

Here’s what a complete set of profiles can do for your business:

• Got a new hire joining the team? When everyone has their profile completed, your new employee can see every other employee in the people directory. With a face to the name and a fun bio, new coworkers feel less like strangers — fostering an immediate connection to the team. An empty directory with threadbare profiles feels pretty offputting in comparison.
• Every profile has space for roles and responsibilities. Once your leaders add role-based and individual responsibilities for the whole team, you never lose track of who’s responsible for what. Plus, see how everyone’s responsibilities are connected — you can access profiles straight from org and role charts.
• Need to contact one of your coworkers? Grab their email and phone number straight from their profile.

Getting your profile set up can be done in five minutes — so jump into your account and immediately make this hump day a productive one.

👉 New to Trainual? Try for free.

YOU COME FIRST

How to establish a customer-centric company culture

What does the customer have to do with company culture?
We’re talking about your customer service culture — which is arguably the very core of your SMB. After all, you could have an award-winning product or out-of-this-world services, but if your customer service flops, so will your business.

Chances are good your customer service “team” was just you in the early beginnings of your bitty biz. But as you’ve grown and added star players to your team, you’ve delegated more and more control over the essence of your customer service practices.

To make sure your team is collectively maintaining consistent, customer-first practices, you’ll want to document standard operating procedures (SOPs) for things like dealing with customer escalations, asking for customer referrals, and handling upsells. But it’s equally important to foster a culture that prioritizes customer satisfaction and the customer experience. 

Here are three company principles you’ll want to document that’ll help you establish a customer-centric culture:

1. Your culture’s purpose.
When your team is learning about your culture and values, they should be provided with a sentence or two about the overarching purpose of your customer-centric company culture. It should define your main business objective as well as the main expectations of every employee in your org. 

A perfect example of this is Mayo Clinic’s purpose: “The needs of the patient come first.” It’s succinct, clear, and applicable to every employee they hire — no matter their role.

👉 See the other two principles.