Employee onboarding
Employee onboarding is the planned process of bringing a new hire into the team, from the first day to the point where the person works independently at the expected level.
What it is
Hiring someone is only half the job. The other half is getting that person to work well, and that rarely happens by itself. Onboarding covers access and tools, product knowledge, rules, scripts, the first real conversations and regular feedback. In sales and service teams it is usually measured in days and weeks, not months.
How it looks in practice
An illustrative plan for a chat sales rep: day one for access, rules and the product; days two and three for listening to real conversations of the best people; from day four, live chats with a mentor reviewing every reply; by the end of the second week, a normal workload with daily short feedback.
Useful numbers: time to productivity (when the newcomer reaches the team’s standard), the share of hires who leave during the first month and the quality score of their first conversations.
Why it matters
Every new person costs money long before bringing any: hiring time, salary, the mentor’s hours and the clients handled badly at the start. Good onboarding shortens that period. It also decides whether people stay, because the first weeks shape their opinion of the company more than any interview.
The typical mistake
“Here is your phone, the clients are in the chat, ask if you have questions.” The newcomer learns by trial and error on real clients, makes expensive mistakes and often leaves. Another mistake is an onboarding that is all theory and no practice. Write a simple plan for the first two weeks, assign a mentor, give access only to what is needed, review the first conversations closely and hold short check-ins every few days.
More in Signals
- How to hire a salesperson who sells in chatA salesperson who will sell in chat is judged by how they write, not by their résumé: a short practical task in chat before the interview shows speed, spelling, how they handle an objection and whether they set a next step. Then comes an interview about real cases and a 2–4 week probation with a mentor, chat reviews and criteria known from day one. The new rep writes to clients from a company work number starting on the first day.
- Sales rep performance review: how to judge the conversation, not the personReview a rep’s work with a scorecard of five to seven criteria and a simple yes, partly, no scale, on a small sample of conversations: a few per person each week, some random and some that matter. Reviewers regularly compare their scores with each other, and the result is discussed one on one: a good example first, a question instead of a verdict, one thing to improve. You judge the conversation, not the person, and the team knows the criteria in advance.