Once an employee has made it through the recruitment process, Golin director of creative and agency resourcing Tiasha Stevenson's has a few tips on how to make the onboarding process successful.

"If you have the opportunity," she says, "get as much of your paperwork done before you start. There's going to be lots of videos, and codes of conduct, and as much as you can possibly do before you start to hit the ground running, go ahead and do that."

The next thing is to go on what she calls a "listening tour." Stevenson says that when she starts a new job, "I want to hear from everyone that I'll be working with, whether that's in my current role, the creative team, or some of the senior leaders, or even peers at the agency."

Now that the office water-cooler conversation is pretty much a thing of the past, she says that employees are finding new ways to familiarize themselves with a work environment. "At the height of the pandemic, there were happy hours happening on Zoom, and things like that can still happen."

But whether employees meet up virtually or in person, she says it's a good idea to leave some time "to just do the type of talking you would have done around bagels in the kitchen. We just have to take an extra step to build stronger relationships with our colleagues and co-workers."

She also stresses the need for new employees to get know people from all parts of a company. "I think if you're a manager of people, think about the functional parts of the job but then also take one additional step to think about what would make it better or how it would have looked if we were sitting together."

Another key to creating connections, she says is "asking a lot of questions"—both about your new role in the company and the roles of the people you're working with. "People get really jazzed when you're finding out how they do their work and how their work connects to yours or connects to the company even if it doesn't touch yours."

It's also important to make your unique communications style work for you in a new job environment. "I think there's such an opportunity in our new ways of working to sort of respect different communication styles and to really pull out the value that each person is bringing to the table."

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