By the end of the first week, new employees generally know whether they feel comfortable joining your organization or not. A new employee is an opportunity to develop an enthusiastic member of your team. Of course, the opportunity is not only one for the new employee, but for you as well; so how do you make sure they want to continue working with you? For example, negative comments about the company might frighten them or cause them to rethink their decision to take the job. This course demonstrates a communication strategy for getting a new employee started. Learn how to onboard an employee by talking with them, not at them. This course walks you through some simple guidelines to follow for talking with a new employee, and if you follow these rules, you greatly reduce the number of hours it will take to train a new hire, and also ensure they maintain their enthusiasm for the job.

This course is part of the Team Building When series on workplace communication. Use the courses in this series to help solve specific workplace issues, whether you are a manager remediating a situation or an individual trying to deal with a problem. These short vignettes present common communication dilemmas in the workplace. Human Resource expert Hugh Murray shares communication strategies and tactics for navigating these situations.

Each vignette features narrative examples for employees to see the wrong and right way to handle a problem, and ends with a short assessment to measure learner comprehension. Each course also includes a leader guide and a downloadable “key points” document to help you remember the communication strategy. These courses make for great training on their own, or used as a series.