light crews welcome you aboard planes. Newsletters welcome you to their mailing lists. Food-truck proprietors welcome you under their awnings.
Naturally, companies need to welcome their new team members, and they need to do it in ways that are at least ten times more thoughtful, more memorable, and more impactful than any other welcome. (You want your new hire to appreciate you more than the person who makes their favorite sandwich, right?)
Pardon the cheesiness, but your employees’ first days and weeks are to their careers what a rocket’s launch is to a mission. Botch the launch and never reach the stars. Botch a new employee’s welcome and they might never reach their full potential at your company. On the flip side, a memorable employee welcome message can launch them to long-term success. You could inspire them for years.
Just look at this example: An Instagrammer posted a picture of their Apple welcome letter along with the caption, “I’ve had this taped to my dresser for two years. Words to live by.”Now that’s inspirational!
What Are The Benefits Of Welcoming A New Employee To Your Team?
- Commitment. A good first impression will motivate new hires to stick around. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, your employee welcoming and onboarding efforts will likely boost your retention rates.
- Motivation. An employee’s welcome experience usually reflects their overall experience at your company. A structured, comprehensive, and warm welcome can motivate them to long-term success.
- Company culture. An employee’s early days — those days between the job offer and new hire orientation — create prime time for demonstrating what being part of the team means at your workplace. Show the newbies what your culture is all about, including how you treat one another, how you approach work, and how you convey appreciation with events and custom treats and swag, like these welcome kits from Caroo.
- Engagement. Don’t think of your thoughtful welcome aboard message as just a letter or an email. Think of it as a valuable asset for communication, for showing new employees they made the right decision. The right message will tell employees they picked the right place to work — a place deserving of all their talent, engagement, and effort.
- Connection. The new employee welcome sets the tone for the kind of workplace relationships the employee can expect. A good welcome message will help the new employee feel immediately connected to their new colleagues, empowering them to deepen existing bonds and also create more.
The welcome letter templates, tips, quotes, and email ideas below will help you seize the transformative moment that is your new hire’s first day, first week, and first month. Give them a proper launch. Give them a greeting that provides the information, support, and motivation they need to reach their goals.
New Employee Welcome Message & Letters
Consider the new employee welcome letter another touchpoint for improving your new hire’s experience.
These messages have a huge potential impact because you usually send them before the first day — before the excitement, distraction, and occasional overwhelm of taking on a new job kicks in.
Use these messages to get employees excited, to help them feel like part of the team, and to make sure they have all the essential top-level information and details, such as a first-week itinerary, standard start times, office addresses, and key contacts.
Pro-Tip: You and your entire team can welcome a new employee with a dedicated digital message board using Caroo’s new CareCards program.
Recognize the end of your new employee’s first week with a colorful compilation of heartfelt messages from their fellow colleagues.
New Employee Welcome Email & Notes
Welcome emails may be similar to the letters above, but they usually have a slightly more casual tone and they provide the opportunity to include more information without being overwhelming thanks to the magic of linking.
For example, in an email, you can link to documents detailing first assignments, your company communications tools (such as your Slack channel) work management hubs, key policies (such as dress codes), and your digital employee handbook.
More importantly, the email format allows you to easily invite the new hire to reply and ask questions. Just having this option, and also knowing you’re open to hearing from them, will make the new employee feel properly cared for and supported.
Pro-Tip: Make your message utterly personal and utterly unforgettable by sending it with a fabulous welcome kit, such as any of these options from Caroo. Looking to build your own welcome kit? Take this short quiz to get personalized results.
New Employee Welcome Introduction
These LinkedIn introductions are hybrids of the employee welcome letter and a social media post. They bring new employees all the good vibes of a formal announcement but they also open up the floodgates for compliments, congratulations, and welcomes from connections and future teammates who see the post.
LinkedIn Example 1: The Shared Excitement Announcement
Why we like this introduction: In this post, both the new hire and the employer get to share their excitement. The use of an official quote creates an authentic, conversational feel that lets readers know the excitement is genuine on both sides.
LinkedIn Example 2: The “Here’s to the Future” Announcement
Why we like this introduction: It’s short and sweet, yet it manages to get across a perfectly specific compliment. The poster relays the excitement of the interview process and then closes with open-ended optimism that nods to a fruitful future relationship.
LinkedIn Example 3: The Warmest Welcome
Why we like this introduction: This message is brimming with personal warmth and enthusiasm. The poster gushes about the new hire; she never once has to say she’s excited because it’s apparent through her tone and word choice.
LinkedIn Example 4: The Short and Sweet Announcement
Why we like this introduction: It’s short and sweet, yet still decidedly celebratory. It’s thoughtful, yet generic enough to serve as a template for companies and startups doing so much hiring that they just don’t have time to get super specific about each new person.
LinkedIn Example 5: The Family Style Welcome
Why we like this introduction: The list of fun facts about the new employee is delightfully skimmable and interesting. It also shows the company sees their newest family member as a rich, nuanced human being they’re looking forward to getting to know.
New Employee Welcome Quotes
New employee welcome quotes capture, in a few beautifully concise words, all the possibilities the future holds. Few things go further than an epic quote in helping employees frame their idea of success around their new role. Quotes quickly inspire anyone to plan, anticipate, and straight-up daydream about what’s coming and what might be.
To summarize, a powerful employee welcome quote is a fuss-free way to get new employees excited about their future adventures with you.
1) The Strong Start Quote
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.” — Henry David Thoreau
2) The Define Your Own Success Quote
“Fulfillment isn’t found over the rainbow — it’s found in the here and now. Today I define success by the fluidity with which I transcend emotional landmines and choose joy and gratitude instead.” — RuPaul
3) The Aspirational Quote
“To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.” — Kahlil Gibran
4) The Reality of Success Quote
“I would visualize things coming to me. It would just make me feel better. Visualization works if you work hard. That’s the thing. You can’t just visualize and go eat a sandwich.” — Jim Carrey
5) The Don’t Be Afraid to Fail Quote
“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” — Joseph Campbell
Pro-Tip: These are just the tip of the new employee iceberg. Quotes can be very effective for rewarding, recognizing, and communicating with employees at your company. If you are looking for more, you can find even more motivational quotes you love [Here].
How To Welcome A New Employee At Work
A comprehensive welcome experience should satisfy all the criteria employees need to feel happy in their roles.
Trying to “make employees happy” isn’t a specific enough direction for designing your welcome experience. But by framing your welcome objectives around the basic psychological needs theory, you can pull out specific, evidence-based direction.
Your welcome should help new team members meet these basic needs:
- Autonomy: They have enough information to make decisions in the best interests of themselves and of the company.
- Competence: They understand how they can be effective in their roles.
- Relatedness: They know and feel connected to their co-workers.
Tip 1: Get To Know Them
By getting to know your new employees (and also helping them get to know everyone else), you can fulfill their need for relatedness and connection.
Invite them to dedicated events and happy hours, or even do something as simple as starting all your meetings with an icebreaker question, icebreaker game, or icebreaker joke to add a little get-to-know-you fun wherever and whenever you can.
Tip 2: Recognize Early Success
To feel satisfied, autonomous, and also competent in their early days, employees need to quickly develop a top-level sense of their short- and long-term expectations. They need to frame what success means in the context of their new role.
Help them cultivate this sense by giving them a significant assignment and then celebrating their success. Offer plenty of praise and make the moment memorable with a celebratory welcome kit from Caroo. Making this first recognition point memorable will solidify the employee’s motivation while showing them how much your team appreciates hard work.
Pro-Tip: Obviously, employee recognition shouldn’t be restricted to the first six months or the annual review. If you haven’t yet found a tool for running an efficient and effective long-term employee recognition program, then you’ve gotta meet Nectar. It will help you make ongoing recognition part of your cultural DNA.
Tip 3: Answer Their Questions
Satisfy their need for autonomy by providing enough information for key decisions. While offering training, orientation, and plenty of reading materials covers some of this, companies should also provide a platform and an opportunity for new employees to ask all their specific individual questions.
In addition to empowering them with crucial knowledge, dedicating time for this will help employees feel less awkward about interrupting their busy new co-workers and managers with tons of questions.
Tip 4: Have Fun
Deepen that sense of relatedness you started in tip #1 by hosting a big blow-out event that brings everyone together to celebrate new hires who’ve come on board in the last few months.
Employees will never forget the powerful memory of togetherness and the connection they made during this epic event.
Best of all, planning the event doesn’t have to be complicated or stressful. Outback Team Building offers expertly planned and executed in-person and virtual events for groups of all sizes, such as murder mysteries, office Olympics, amazing chases, picnic parties, and so much more.
Tip 5: Check Off Every Onboarding Step
Further, satisfy new employees’ need for autonomy and competence by giving them a comprehensive and enriching onboarding process. Use an onboarding checklist to make sure you cover all the key points, from baseline essentials like office equipment to actualizing extras like individual growth plans.
Pro-Tip: Rest assured your employee onboarding experience will be perfectly optimized by outsourcing some help from the human resources experts at Bambee HR.
