Achieve measurable success: Setting onboarding goals for new employees

Packaged release feature UI Goals Onboarding 1

3 mins, 8 secs read time

Most new hires have a lot to keep track of in the first 30 days of a new role. They’re beginning the next chapter of their career, getting immersed in a new company culture and building relationships with their new teammates and manager. On top of all that, they’re learning about their new role and responsibilities, completing compliance tasks and trying to stay on top of what’s expected of them as they ramp up. Sound familiar? We’ve all been there, whether we were starting our very first role or the dream role we’d been waiting for our whole career.

Managers have a critical role to play in the success of their new hires in these first 30 days. According to Gallup, employees are over three times more likely to feel like their onboarding experience was successful when their managers had an active role in the process.

With this in mind, the Harvard Business Review recently identified a few essential components of how managers can set new hires up for success, including setting clear and measurable onboarding goals. The importance of providing this kind of structure cannot be overstated – great onboarding can increase employee retention by as much as 82% and ensure new hires become productive teammates faster.

With the release of Goals for New Hires, Greenhouse Onboarding gives managers new tools for building a strong, success-oriented relationship with their new hires by assigning and tracking growth-related goals throughout the first 30 days of onboarding. In turn, new hires can now enjoy more structure, track their onboarding milestones and manage all their onboarding tasks in one place – all while actively building rapport with their new manager and driving more accountability overall.


Set measurable 30-day goals from day one

Now, when managers log in to Greenhouse Onboarding, they’ll see a 30-day goals tab on every new hire’s profile. There, they can select and set onboarding goals that provide clear structure and guidance for what success looks like throughout this initial ramping period. As part of a tightened integration with Greenhouse Recruiting, managers will also see success measures for the role in the Job kickoff form, which they can use to inform the specific goals they set for their new hires.

To ensure accountability and create efficiency in this process, managers and new hires will receive reminder emails throughout the first 30 days with a summary of progress and encouragement to update goals as they’re achieved. And, as new hires update goal statuses, managers can review their progress in 1:1 conversations, making them more active stakeholders in the process as new hires ramp up.



A clearer understanding for everyone

For new hires, it’s now much easier for them to clearly understand what success looks like and the expectations of their managers in these crucial first 30 days. Goals for New Hires allows them to prioritize the most important activities and recognize what they need to achieve to become productive teammates – and gain more structure to navigate the rigors of a new role and company.


With all these new features, managers no longer have to wonder whether their new hires are on track and how their new team members are progressing in their roles. And for new hires, it’s much clearer what their expectations are and how to ask for support as they ramp up. We can’t wait for you and your managers to discover a new way to track success and build more accountability into your onboarding process. Structured hiring, meet structured onboarding.


Looking to set your new hires up for success with a structured onboarding process? Learn more about Greenhouse Onboarding today.

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Ben McNelly

Ben McNelly

is a Product Marketing Manager at Greenhouse, where he works closely with our partnerships and product teams to deliver new features to customers. Prior to Greenhouse, Ben worked in K-12 education technology and nonprofit serving educators and students. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts, and can probably be found in the kitchen trying a new recipe when he’s not working. Connect with him on LinkedIn here.

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