Tweeting Your Way Through Employee Onboarding

Twitter is a tool that does a very good job at the one thing it is designed for - pointing people toward other resources. If you expect tweeting to take the place of a corporate blog, website, email, or professional networking forum, you will most likely be disappointed. However, many employers are finding this application very useful as a way to communicate briefly, effectively, and continually with their workforce.

That type of constant contact is especially useful during a new hire’s acculturation onboarding experience. It gives HR staff, trainers, and department managers a way to stay in touch with employees and ensure they have the information they need to thrive. Here are just a couple of the ways you might use Twitter as an onboarding, orientation, and integration instrument:

Training and Orientation

Colleges are starting to use Twitter as a classroom tool; you can apply the same principles in employee learning environments. Send tweeted reminders about orientation class times, locations, or a brief description of what new hires will be learning in their next training session.

Having trouble getting new employees to follow your tweets? Tell them you will be sending out relevant test questions about their training materials via Twitter throughout the week of orientation. Let them know there will be a small prize awarded to the first 3 people to reply with the correct answer to each tweeted question.

Ongoing Acculturation Tweeting

Once people get hooked on following your Twitter feed, keep it interesting. Mix serious policy announcements with helpful advice, inspirational quotes, or links to other useful resources. These don’t all have to be directly related to work. They can be health & wellness news, money saving tips, or info about local cultural events employees can attend at low cost. If you have a company blog, invite employees to come read your latest posts and join in the conversation in the comments section.

Think Twice, Tweet Once

Before you start tweeting, you need to have a good grasp of what a sensible technology policy looks like. Your employees must sign an acknowledgement of your company’s social networking agreement as part of their new hire package. With our universal onboarding applications, this doesn’t add more paperwork. Employees can electronically sign this acknowledgment along with all your other digital forms.