Smoothing the Transition: Nonprofit Employee Onboarding Tips

You’re ready to launch your new nonprofit. You have a mission, funding, and a plan—all you need are employees to get the job done. But as many nonprofits know, simply telling employees to fulfill your mission and giving them the training and confidence they need to do so are two different things.

While your hiring process should help you find employees right for the job, an onboarding process is still essential for getting them up to speed. In this guide, we’ll explore how to improve your onboarding experience so all employees, regardless of their skill level or background, can smoothly transition into their new roles at your nonprofit.

Onboarding processes go over a lot of vital information, often very quickly. With so much to share, it’s normal to miss something—whether it’s your team having to cut some details or employees forgetting something in the rush.

Ensure both your managers and employees have written documentation to fall back on by preparing an employee handbook ahead of time. Large nonprofits might encourage specific departments to create handbooks relevant to their specific teams that go over roles and expectations in more detail, but all organizations, regardless of size, should create a general guide for all employees.

This handbook should include sections on your:

• Organizational overview. Provide a short summary of your nonprofit, its goals, and values. At a minimum, this should include your mission statement and employment policies, such as your commitment to non-discrimination and equal-opportunity employment.
• Legally required policies. If there are any federal, state, or local policies or procedures that your employer or industry must follow, your employee handbook should list them out and provide relevant details.
• Code of conduct. Your nonprofit is a professional environment, and you should communicate how you expect employees to behave as representatives of your organization. This may include your workplace values, as well as your dress code, confidentiality policies, and social media posting guidelines.
• Compensation and benefits. Employees will want to know, in detail, how and when they will be compensated. Provide an overview of your employee compensation and benefits policies so employees have all the information they need and can reference it at any time.
• Work calendar. State when employees are expected to work, such as expected arrival and departure times. Include information about company holidays. Additionally, provide details for what employees should do if they need to take a day off.
• Safety guidelines. List out all safety protocols and any steps employees should take in the event of an emergency situation.

The length and exact details of each of these sections will vary depending on your nonprofit. For instance, an organization dedicated to constructing new homes will likely have a much more detailed safety guidelines section, while a nonprofit advocacy group may focus more on detailing its precise code of conduct.

Employees feel motivated when they understand what they should be doing at your nonprofit and why their work is meaningful. Your onboarding process should answer these questions by establishing your expectations. You can do this by:

• Explaining your mission. Not properly clarifying your mission is a common mistake many nonprofits make that results in donors and employees alike faltering in their support of your cause. Provide a concise explanation of your mission, but also be prepared to go into depth about the types of projects you complete and why, with examples.
• Providing insight into other teams. Let employees see what other teams at your nonprofit do. This lets them understand how their work fits into your mission as a whole and better appreciate their fellow employees.
• Accepting employee questions. The onboarding process should include conversations in which employees are invited to ask questions about your organization. Individual managers and your leadership as a whole should prompt new hires to share any questions they might have so you can understand and address both their curiosities and concerns.

Additionally, expectations are a two-way street. Establish what your nonprofit owes employees and what employees should expect in return. This will lay the foundation for all future conversations related to performance and compensation.

With many nonprofits concerned about overhead and staff expenses, it’s an all too common occurrence to rush employees into their roles before confirming their training is over. However, this often causes more problems than it solves, as improperly trained employees make errors, need more help, and will have to ask the same questions they normally would during training while on the job.

Set a designated onboarding window that gives employees time to familiarize themselves with your nonprofit and their expected roles. To confirm that employees are properly progressing through their training, you might implement skill checks or tests they must complete before moving forward. For instance, you might have employees complete a quiz about confidentiality and ethics before engaging with stakeholders, or you have them take external courses to earn certifications, like lifeguard training or food handling.

There’s a common saying that employees don’t leave bad jobs; they leave bad managers. As such, improving your onboarding process often starts by improving your managers’ ability to train and help new employees.

Remember that your managers are more likely to succeed at training when they have proper support. Astron Solutions’ guide to employee recruitment and retention dispels the myth that supervisors, alone, are the problem: “Supervisors today on average have more staff reporting to them than in the past, yet the amount of training provided to supervisors is minimal. The root issue of underperforming supervisors may rest more with the organization than the supervisors themselves.”

You can help your managers by:

• Allowing adequate preparation time. Let managers know as far in advance as possible when new employees will be joining your nonprofit. This enables them to plan out their own schedules and prepare any training materials.
• Systemizing onboarding. The onboarding process should be as streamlined and consistent as possible. This ensures that each employee receives equivalent training and that managers aren’t left to reinvent the wheel every time someone new comes on board.
• Establishing peer mentors. Help managers out by having other employees take on various onboarding roles, such as mentorships. Peer mentors can help new employees by answering small, day-to-day questions about their new role and making them feel welcome at your organization.

New employees can make your nonprofit run smoother once they’re up to speed, but remember that onboarding is a stressful time for everyone involved. Give managers the time and resources needed to handle both their own usual responsibilities and onboarding.

When onboarding wraps up, ask employees to fill out a survey assessing their experiences. This will help you identify any holes in your onboarding process or discover resources and strategies that really seem to make a difference in employee performance.

Double the Donation’s employee engagement strategies guide advises organizations to weigh the pros and cons of making these surveys anonymous or not, as both approaches have their benefits.

When surveys are anonymous, employees are likely to be more honest, which can help you identify issues and improve your onboarding program overall. In contrast, when employee names are connected to their surveys, you can reach out to them to resolve their specific concerns. This can help you alleviate problems individual employees are facing, improving their unique situations.

Nonprofits have many challenges to navigate, but onboarding doesn’t have to be one of them. Work with your managers to standardize your training process and establish employee expectations. Then, ensure your handbook has all the details employees may need written down for future reference.