Building a perfect relationship with your new employees starts at the door. New members of staff need to feel from the beginning that your company is a place they want to work. This relationship begins with your welcoming strategy—this would be your welcome email.
In most cases, the welcome email is not the same as the onboarding/employment letter. While the latter is more instructional, the email takes a more soothing and welcoming approach, and it helps to streamline the entire onboarding process.
So how do you go about writing the perfect welcome email to your new employees? The tips mentioned here make up the comprehensive guide you’ll need to make this happen.
Personalize the email
Making the email personal is a no-brainer. It is a tactic that works beyond writing a new employee welcome email. Make sure that you personalize your email as much as you can. Address them by their first name and use it consistently — but not too many times — throughout the email.
Using a surname may put them on edge and will feel too professional. Using a generic ‘Sir,’ ‘Ma,’ ‘Mr’ or ‘Mrs’ will come off as generic and uncaring. While using their first name is recommended, you can sometimes use the ‘you’ pronoun instead. Using ‘I’ or ‘We’ puts the focus on you instead of the new employee, and that’s not a corner you want to trap yourself in.
Write in a positive tone
Avoid any words or phrases that explicitly or implicitly connote anything negative. This is your first email to your new employee, and, understandably, they might be a little nervous to read it. Start with a light-hearted ‘Welcome to the family’ or ‘Congratulations Sarah.’ Then ensure to maintain a positive tone throughout the mail.
Your writing should convey how excited you are to welcome the new employee. It should show that you see them as an asset and are confident in their ability to deliver on their job responsibility. Add a little bit of humor too if it works for your particular situation and company culture, but make sure it is not over-applied. The key is to find the sweet spot between being friendly and professional.
Encourage them to voice any concerns they may have
Automatically generated emails usually do not allow replies, so make sure that your welcome email to your new employee does not sound as such. Your email should not only allow for your new employee to respond, but it should also encourage it. So make sure to include as much contact information as you can in the email so they can reach you conveniently. Encourage them to ask questions and voice their concerns about anything they don’t understand or stuff that makes them uncomfortable.
Sometimes, they may even have questions that are not company-related. It could be anything from school recommendations in the area for their kids, to the best markets for discount shopping. Be ready to answer these questions or assign them to someone who can.
Share your personal experience with the company
At one point, you were a new hire as well, so you likely know what it feels like to be in their shoes. While your welcome email to the new employee should focus on them, it helps to include a little bit about yourself as it concerns the company. You can share something about your first day in the company and how you’ve grown to your current position. This approach helps them feel more at home and confident that they made the right decision to join your company. Your personal experience should only take up a few sentences and that it paints the company in a positive light.
Walk them through their first-day itinerary
New hires are apprehensive when their first day comes around, and they have no idea how the day is supposed to pan out. You should avoid creating uncertainty in their mind. Give them the full details of their first day, so they know what to expect before the day comes. Let them know if they’ll spend the day filling out paperwork, meeting the other members of the team or a particular staff member, sitting through an orientation session, or anything else. You should want your new employee to succeed on their first day. Adding this information ensures that they do.
Leverage writing tools & services
“Having an extra set of eyes on your writing project can easily be understated in terms of its benefits. But its impact is obvious to those that swear by this tactic,” says Tiffany Porter, Chief Writer at Online Writers Rating, a writing review service.
She couldn’t have stated it any better. If you’re at a loss for words as to how to craft the perfect new employee welcome email, you can enlist the help of any premium writing service or use a writing recommendation service to find the perfect one for your email writing.
If you want to write the email yourself, make sure to use tools like Grammarly, Scribens, and more to make sure your grammar, formatting, and structure are on point. You do not want your new employee grimacing while reading your email — no one wants that as a first impression, and neither should you.
Don’t use overwhelming formatting & communicate efficiently
While you want your email to send all the right signals and to include all the relevant information your new staff needs to prepare themselves for their first day, you must remember, you are not writing a thesis. Make sure your email is comprehensive but not wordy. Address all that you need to in short, concise sentences and paragraphs.
An excellent tactic to keep it short, sweet, and straightforward would also be to incorporate numbered lists and bullet points to point out all the essential information. This tactic not only helps to keep your welcome email brief, but it also makes it easier to skim through and still grab all the salient factors.
The tips above will help you to write the perfect welcome email. You must remember though that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. This is especially true because your new employees will likely all have slightly different needs. So while you should tailor your emails to each employee, it doesn’t hurt to work off an email template. You can google ‘sample welcome email to new employee’ and choose the best template that will work best for your company.