Onboarding new hires usually entails easing them into the organization’s day-to-day processes and their job responsibilities. Your new employees need all the help they can get during the onboarding process to make sure they can accomplish the goals laid out for them.

But one thing frequently overlooked when ramping up incoming team members is teaching them how to use or produce branded assets correctly. Introducing style guidelines to new hires during the onboarding process reduces the odds of them misusing the elements of your brand identity.

We’re going to explain how you can help people coming into your company familiarize themselves with your brand so they start on the right foot.

A good foundation starts with your company style guide

Having your design documentation in one place and easily accessible to your team, whether in-house or remote, means they won’t have to wonder what colors to use or where the logo should go. Your company’s style guide helps fresh hires get up to speed on your brand identity because they have something concrete to refer to.

At a minimum, most businesses have at least one set of guidelines, but depending on the company, there can be more. We’ve helped startups and well-established organizations create style guidelines so the company’s designers—and non-designers—have a point of reference.

Your brand guidelines and other elements help make sure anyone in the company, whether it’s a new marketing manager or an intern, updates a presentation and that the changes they make to the text don’t go against the style guide’s standards. Instead, they help keep your organization’s marketing and sales materials, website, and other promotional channels streamlined and consistent.

So, where should you keep your brand assets?

To start, if you have a larger company with an intranet portal, your brand elements would be accessible to your entire company. However, if you have a smaller business without an intranet, file-hosting software like Google Drive or Dropbox works just as well.

Centralized asset libraries keep everything in one place

Disorganization within your organization leads to inefficiencies in workflow. Think about how many steps it takes to access your company’s logo. If more than three, then you’ve got a problem.
It’s hard enough for people starting a new role and even harder when they have to search through dozens of unorganized folders.

Having a centralized asset library with a hierarchical naming system will give new employees easy access to logos, templates, and other internal documents, which becomes especially important with teams spread across the globe. In addition, this library of assets helps reduce the back and forth that comes with requests for them because people can get what they need at the push of a button.

As part of your onboarding checklist, you can direct new hires to where the brand elements are stored in your asset library so they’ll have easy access wherever they are.

Give new hires templates for faster turnarounds

Templates are a timesaver for recently hired team members. Instead of starting from scratch, templates give your new employees and contractors a preexisting model to work on and from. They standardize forms, designs, and other components so people in your organization can plug and play without breaking what already exists.

From social media post images to company letterhead and PowerPoint presentations, templating these business and marketing materials helps ensure there isn’t a huge learning curve to switch out the text here or an image there.

Less supervision, more focus

Effective onboarding frees up your time so you don’t feel the urge to micromanage new people coming into the organization. You can make sure they can hit the ground running by giving them all the tools they need to do their jobs and maintain brand integrity.

When new team members come into the organization, they can quickly get the hang of the company’s brand identity so they aren’t scratching their heads when it’s time to create a new asset.

When your team has what they need to succeed, they’ll be more engaged and determined and feel more satisfaction as a new employee. Partnering with a branding and design agency gives you the guidance and creative know-how necessary to create style guides that are easy to follow.