Team Building: How to hire and onboard with Homebase

When you’re a new business, team building is more than taking employees to a pottery class or happy hour—it’s about hiring and onboarding the right people to build your business.

We know: finding the right people to help you run your business may feel daunting. But with Homebase in your corner, we promise it doesn’t have to be. 

Let’s dig into how Homebase can help you streamline your hiring and onboarding processes so you can find the best candidates for your new business.

Building—and hiring—the team of your dreams.

You’re starting a new business, and it’s an exciting time. You’ve secured a location, started to buy inventory, and now you’re faced with hiring a team. But it can be hard to know where to go next.

Effective recruiting and onboarding processes can help boost employee morale and performance. If your hiring and onboarding process runs smoothly and is executed well, your employees will feel valued from the first day they meet you—and that’s important. You’ll have team members who feel confident handling their day-to-day responsibilities and can adapt well to change.

We all know how important a first impression can be, so make a good one with the proper hiring and onboarding tools and processes. 

Take the guesswork out of job postings.

A well-written job posting is one of the most effective ways to attract qualified candidates. A good job posting goes beyond outlining the role, responsibilities, and essential requirements or qualifications. It should cover how the job fits in with the rest of your business, some of the goals the successful candidate will be working towards, the pay range, and the general company culture they can expect. 

When done well, a job posting should provide potential candidates with important information so they can quickly evaluate the position to see if it meets their needs. It also helps to ensure that your applicants are qualified for the position, saving you a lot of time, and more than a few awkward interviews.

Crafting the perfect job posting is a skill that new business owners like yourself will spend time developing. But if it’s your first time hiring a team, Homebase can help you take the guesswork out of job postings.

With Homebase employee hiring and onboarding, you can access our library of pre-written, customized job descriptions. Find a job description that works best for your role and change it to fit your exact needs, making it easier—and faster—to get your posting live.

Once your job posting is ready, Homebase lets you post your job for free to the top online job boards—Glassdoor, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and more—without ever leaving the platform. 

Learn more about writing a job description that works in The Homebase Hiring Guide. 

Put the hassle of hiring in your rearview.

When hiring your first employee, managing and organizing all the emails, forms, and interviews can be a lot. And if you’re hiring multiple roles at once, you’re juggling even more paperwork. You need to establish an organizational system that works for you. The most effective systems integrate all the moving pieces of hiring a team.

With Homebase, you get just that—a homebase for all your hiring needs. 

From creating your job posting to evaluating applications to scheduling interviews, the Homebase hiring dashboard lets you keep track of everything in one place. No matter what job site job seekers applied through, you’ll see every applicant in Homebase thanks to our applicant tracking system. 

You can then send out screener questions directly from Homebase to help qualify your applicants even further. Once submitted, their responses will be automatically added to their profile in your hiring dashboard.  

When you’re ready to move forward with interviews, you can message and schedule interviews with candidates through Homebase. It’s your one-stop shop for hiring the perfect candidates for your open positions. 

Automate onboarding

There are so many ways that automation can make life easier for business owners. And though you may not have immediately thought of the onboarding process as something that can be automated, self-onboarding with Homebase just does that.

Self-onboarding is easy and fast, making the process seamless for new hires. Because you conducted your hiring process through Homebase, the successful candidate is automatically added to your employee roster, and the self-onboarding process begins. 

Here’s a look at a typical self-onboarding process with Homebase: 

• New hires get a packet that includes every U.S. federal and state new hire form required by law, including W-4, W-9, and I-9 forms and direct deposit forms. 
• You can add your documents to the welcome packet, including employee handbooks, policies, training manuals, etc. 
• New hires can then fill out their information and securely sign all documents before their start date. 
• All documents are stored securely in Homebase so they are accessible to those who need them. 

With the self-onboarding process, Homebase helps make sure that your new hires arrive on their first day ready to jump into a job shadowing shift or their first in-person training. 

Hiring your first employee? Check out our New Hire Training Checklist and Onboarding Guide. 

Ditch the new hire paperwork.

Hiring a team involves a lot of paperwork. And when you spend countless hours printing, filling in, and organizing applications, W-4 forms, training manuals, and more, you’re taking yourself away from other important tasks that need your attention (you are trying to run a successful business, after all).

Luckily, we take the hiring and onboarding process and makes it completely paperless. All onboarding paperwork is sent through Homebase and is easily signed and submitted through the platform. 

You’ll always have easy access to all new hire paperwork and can rest assured that it is stored securely with Homebase. 

Welcome new hires with open arms

Part of effectively onboarding new hires to your team is making sure they feel welcome from their first day. Whether they’re employee #5 or your very first hire, you want to make them comfortable, as well as ensuring their time is well-spent. This is often done through formal and informal team building activities—it could be anything from a first-day lunch with the new hire to coffee chats to more formal team events like going on a team hike. 

These activities where employees can socialize have improved how a team communicates by 50%. 

Building connections at work is another essential part of a positive company culture and improving employee retention and satisfaction. In fact, over 77% of employees consider workplace connection important or very important to building a great company culture. 

Homebase helps you build that connection from day one. When you hire a new employee, they’re added to your team on Homebase. You can introduce new hires to the whole team through the built-in Homebase messenger tool—the whole team will be aware they’re starting and able to help welcome them to the company.

The Homebase messenger tool also allows team members to give each other shout-outs for a job well done. This is great for everyday praise and can be an effective tool to help encourage new hires during their first few shifts. 

Find and onboard new hires with Homebase

When looking for employee onboarding software for new businesses, you want a solution that seamlessly integrates with your hiring solution. Streamlining your hiring and onboarding processes saves you time and helps make sure you’re getting the best candidates possible. 

And that’s exactly what Homebase does. It combines the tools you need to effortlessly move from posting a job to interviewing candidates to hiring to onboarding new employees—all in one place. 

Homebase is the employee hiring and onboarding tool for new businesses.