Successful Onboarding: How My New Employer Welcomed Me Into My New Role

“I feel more motivated, inspired, and comfortable than I ever have in a new nursing role – which makes me a more useful and effective member of the team.”

Starting in a new role is a daunting time for nurses of all levels, but it doesn’t have to be! Using her experience of moving from a ward to palliative care, Amy shares what employers can do to welcome nurses successfully.

I started a new job in palliative care just over a month ago. Coming from an NHS ward, I was unsure of what to expect but knew that I had become disillusioned by the lack of positive feedback and development opportunity in my last role.

Why Did Find A New Employer?

I’ll talk again about how important feedback is but in our industry, unlike others, we don’t have monetary or incentives and many of us do the job we do because it’s a passion. Because of this, we thrive on positive feedback and being told something has been well done, and this often goes a lot further for job satisfaction than some financial rewards (don’t get me wrong - it’s nice to pay the bills but it isn’t the only contributor to happiness at work.)

There is a huge amount of patient feedback schemes in the NHS and in my last ward, the good was never filtered down. Regular negative feedback about shifts that had immense staffing pressures, life threatening emergencies, faulty clinical equipment, and physically aggressive patients had a huge impact on morale for us as individuals and as a team. It was understandably time for me to move on to something new.

I had seen a job opportunity advertised and had been uncertain about applying as it was a step up into a more specialist role in palliative care. I had some previous experiential experience, and the pandemic was certainly a baptism of fire into providing good quality end of life and palliative support, but I hadn’t been sure whether I would be a suitable candidate. I decided to apply and was granted an interview date and then the position!

I’ve had a great start in the organisation and overall, my first month has left me with a few reflections on how we should all be welcoming new starters that I am keen to share.

Make People Feel Valued

I have been made to feel welcome from the very start of the recruitment process. I am new to the specialty of palliative care, but everyone has taken the time to understand my previous experiences and skills. I have been included in discussions and asked about my opinions.

We forget that formal nursing work isn’t the only source of experience in this career. The Newly Qualified Nurse might have been caring for a relative with a complex neurological disease or may have been a Healthcare Assistant for years with invaluable knowledge and skills. The covid-19 pandemic gave a lot of us a (traumatic) but invaluable crash course in palliative and end of life nursing care with limited resources.

For my new role, I felt that my experiences were validated in my interview, and when I received the telephone call with the job offer, I was given the impression that I was wanted and could make an impact to the organisation. This has not changed as the weeks have gone by!

Give Them Some Structure

My first 6 weeks were meticulously planned out to give me a rotation before I get started in my new role. I was given a schedule which tells me each day who I am shadowing or what training I am doing. This has helped me feel orientated.

We have all experienced starting jobs where we have ended up hanging around, trying to pull people to sign off competencies, chasing for log ins we weren’t aware we even needed. I was given all the information in my first week, along with competency packs and I was allocated time with Senior Sisters to get skills signed off so I could get started in being useful!

This allocated time for signs offs is a game changer. It supports the new starter’s orientation and allows them to start contributing to care, which makes them feel useful and therefore valued by the team!

I feel more motivated, inspired, and comfortable than I ever have in a new nursing role – which makes me a more useful and effective member of the team.

Show Them Who’s Who

During my scheduled induction I’ve had time planned in to introduce myself and chat to the executive team and various clinical teams. This is a great way to understand the “who’s who”, and to get a feel of the organisation.

Everyone’s been so interested in little old me and what I’ve been doing, but I’ve been even more interested finding out how people got into their roles and what future training and growth could look like for me.

Give Positive Feedback

This week I received an email saying, “I think you are a brilliant addition to the organisation”. We could all use a boost about what we are doing well, and to hear good feedback so early on made me feel that the interactions and work I’ve already done are being valued by other people.

My colleagues have also already passed on positive comments they have received from patients or their loved ones. I can feel a tangible measure of having contributed to care and having done it well.

To follow on from what I was saying earlier, in my last job, I received excellent feedback from a ward consultant on my very final day… but to have heard that same feedback a few months previously could have made a difference when I was feeling burnt out and invisible.

I have made sure to comment and praise everyone involved in my excellent first few weeks to keep this cycle of positivity flowing. (But really, we need to be better at doing this for each other in general!)

These Small Actions Have A Huge Impact

The small actions I described above don’t take up additional more time or resources but have made a huge impact on my first months in a new job.

I feel more motivated, inspired, and comfortable than I ever have in a new nursing role – which makes me a more useful and effective member of the team.

What could you be doing to look after your new starters?