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Office of Organizational Learning and Development

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Onboarding Your New Employee

Onboarding is the process of welcoming and supporting a new employee as they start their role and join the broader university community. It includes orientations, essential training to help them succeed in their job, and opportunities to connect with colleagues, build relationships, and learn about the university’s culture, systems, and priorities. Onboarding isn’t a one-time event—it’s a longer journey that can take six months to a year to be successful. Most of it happens in the unit, where the manager plays a key role in creating a detailed plan to help the employee feel supported and connected from the start.

The Manager’s Guide to Onboarding is a detailed manual designed to help managers effectively onboard new team members. It is strongly recommended that managers use the guide to help them plan their new employee's onboarding process.

All new employees should participate in the below campus-wide onboarding programs in addition to the onboarding related to their specific role and unit.

  • Starting Strong at UM:

    • An online orientation course offered through Canvas that provides essential information and resources and should be completed within the first week of employment. 

  • We Are UM:

    • A monthly in-person orientation session that introduces new hires to our UM community, mission, and priorities.

  • That's So Griz:

    • An experiential onboarding program designed to immerse new and current employees in the breadth of incredible work happening across the university.

In progress: Job-specific training will be offered to help employees learn about UM specific systems and processes commonly used by employees.

If you are interested in creating training for employees to help them learn your system, process, or policy, contact the OOLD team!

Manager's Guide for Onboarding New Employees

Much of the work of onboarding is accomplished by the employee’s manager. To help managers through the planning and process of onboarding a new employee, this comprehensive guide includes checklists, templates, resources, links, and recommendations - everything managers need to help make the onboarding process successful for both the new employee and manager. 

Questions? Contact Zoë Phelan, Associate Director, Organizational Learning and Development

Preboarding: logins and email created

Some of the work to get your new employee set up for their first day of work begins as soon as they accept their offer.

In order to ensure new employees are ready with email accounts, UM logins, and system access to start their work effectively from the first day, a number of consecutive steps must be completed in advance. For guidance about this process you can review the preboarding website, which contains a general overview of the steps involved and who to contact with questions.

This process is overseen by Human Resource Services. If you have issues or questions about helping your new employee get set up for their first day, please contact Bonnie Tucker, Onboarding Technician, HRS.

Training for New Employees

Required Training

An overview of trainings that all new employees need to complete are included in the Starting Strong online orientation, so your new employee should be directly instructed to complete them.  

Managers need to follow up and confirm that new employees complete all required trainings within a timely manner upon beginning their position.  

Job specific training

Managers are encouraged to consider what kind of trainings would be of use to their new employee. The OOLD training website provides information about: 

Additionally, all UM employees (except student employees) have free access to LinkedIn Learning’s vast library of courses. LinkedIn Learning courses can help you customize training for your new employee on specific topics of interest to your employee. 

New employees are also encouraged to participate in OOLD’s professional development series. This is a great way to not only learn more, but to connect with colleagues from across campus. 

Information about all these available training opportunities are also included in the Starting Strong online orientation, so your new employee should also have heard of them already.  

We are currently working with subject matter experts to create and offer a wide range of on-demand custom training content on UM systems and processes to be hosted in the new human resources information system—NEOED Learn. Contact OOLD if you are interested in creating one of these trainings to add to the library and help train new (and current employees)! 

If you have questions about training, please contact Zoe Dansie, Onboarding Specialist.