The power of every presentation comes from enabling the audience to reach the conclusion that the presenter wants. In a sales context, that means buying the product, service or idea. In a management presentation, it means becoming loyal to the culture and strategy.

Onboarding effectively is more important than ever for two reasons:

• In a virtual job situation, the new employee lacks the opportunity to ask a “neighboring” employee to demonstrate a solution that spontaneously arose
• The initial experiences of working in a company, including support, friendliness, and helpfulness, set the tone for cultural expectations. 

The right onboarding process can lead to greater employee retention and less turnover, which can lead to greater productivity and profitability. Nate Nead, in The Secrets Behind Successful Employee Onboarding, suggests a number of things your company can do to improve the onboarding process:

• Assign a new-hire buddy who will create greet impression of the kind of culture you want
• Streamline the paperwork. Since paperwork is inevitable, keeping it manageable again sets the cultural tone of the company. 
• Promote the positive features of the culture, providing useful communication with a minimum of jargon
• Make the company feel she/he belongs and adopts pride in being a member of the team

One final suggestion is to provide regular check-ins as frequently as needed.  His recommendation is to use the scheduling system similar to the one used by Accountable4Success (A4S). For the first week I have daily check-ins to make sure everything is fine. When all appears fine, reduce it to every week for a while and then drop to every two weeks, etc. throughout the onboarding period. A4S recommends the same process be used every time a job description changes, to ensure that the employee is in full control of the new job performance, culture and leadership responsibilities.

Following this advice should lead to stronger retention – and that’s good for longer-term company success.