5 tips for onboarding your first employees using G Suite

Hiring your business’s first employees is a big step—but it can also be a bit scary. There’s the time you spend on training and orientation, not to mention setting people up to be productive right away. On top of all that, you still need to run your business and keep customers happy. 

If you’re worried about adding “human resources manager” to the many hats you wear, don’t be. From employee 1 to 1,000, G Suite’s easy-to-use tools can help you quickly hire and onboard new employees without adding too many more tasks to your already busy schedule. 

Here’s your to-do list for onboarding new employees—once you’re done, find more onboarding tips here.

1. Create a business email address. 
You’ll want your new hires to start emailing right away—but using their work email accounts, not their personal ones. It’s important to avoid having employees work from their personal accounts since it will be challenging to recover files. It also makes it harder to keep track of who has access to your company’s information.

When you’re ready, create email addresses in Gmail with a custom domain in order to project a professional image and show that you and your new hires are a team. It’s easy to do this using G Suite’s Admin console.

2. Share calendars. 
Of course, you’ll need to coordinate schedules with your employees. Instead of sending emails back and forth to book meetings or to log out-of-office times, add the employees to a shared Google Calendar. In a shared Google Calendar, you can keep track of the entire team’s schedule, not just an individual. Since calendar changes and additions are instantly displayed to all employees, it’s an easy way to make sure that you and your new hires are on the same page right from the start.

3. Reduce paperwork clutter by creating shared folders online. 
Keeping track of paper forms is a headache. Try moving routine forms and employee handbooks to a template in a digital document and storing those forms in a shared Drive folder for access by your new hires. Also, create online checklists in Google Keep or Docs so that your new team members can get up to speed on their jobs quickly. Your checklists could include orientation meetings for new employees or a list of forms to fill out for health coverage.

4. Create a training hub. 
Your first hires are hopefully just the initial step in building out a bigger (potentially global) team. To prepare for the future, begin building orientation materials and storing them in your shared Drive. For example, you can use Slides to create a slide presentation on policies for handling cash or how to process customer orders.

As you build out your orientation materials, think about creating a mini-onboarding portal in Google Sites to store them. Don’t worry, you don’t need to be a coding expert to build a website in Sites—you’ll find tips here for getting started.

5. Chat about business even when you’re on the go. 
If you aren’t working in the same space as your new colleagues all day—maybe you both work from home, or you’re on the road a lot—chat and video meetings can help you quickly solve problems.  It’s also a great way to keep your Gmail from filling up with low-priority emails. 

You can set up Hangouts Chat on desktop computers, tablets, and phones so you’re always ready to send and receive messages. It’s also possible to search previous conversations for information, and start video meetings directly from chats.

If you’re considering adding more employees, you may be ready to take your human resources up a notch. Check out this article on the G Suite Learning Center for advice on how to create job descriptions, keep track of candidates, and interview by video.