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#BestFirstDays: Meet Alan from Flare

Alan is all about how day one can set you up for the rest of your career…

My first day at Flare was amazing. I was a little bit nervous, as as you are when you’re at a new job, going down the elevator and kind of walking back and forth in front of the office half an hour early.

I didn’t want to be late, but I didn’t want to be too eager! And while I was trying to decide what to do, my team-mate Josh opened the front door and welcomed me into my new home and shook my hand.

I’ve been on Joshua’s team for the past two years and we work super close, so kicking off like that was perfect. A really nice way to be welcomed into the family. And following that introduction, I met with Steph, who’s our Director of financial well-being and got to know her, and I got invited out to lunch by my new co-worker Matt and by Dan Cohen who’s the co-founder and CEO of Flare. They took me out for a bite and we had a burrito which I’d mentioned was my favourite food, and it was a really, really nice touch.

When I got shown to my desk, I had everything there waiting for me. I had my phone, I had my laptop, I had my favourite coffee, my cappuccino, I even had my favourite brownie waiting on my desk. It was so warm, and just really different to what I’ve ever been exposed to at another job. I came back for day two, so itt was great.

I’ve been working at Flare for just about two years. Time has gone by really quickly. It’s been one of the most exciting roles I’ve ever had and one of the most exciting, businesses I’ve ever been part of. And I’m really looking forward to the next six months.

I’ve been working within the sales team, but the best part about the role is the fact that I get to be involved in many different discussions, including implementation and development, and I even get to be involved in product management. I love the chance to be in a room full of people who are way smarter than me.

“I believe the first day of any job is critical. It’s the first impression that the people in the organisation make on you and take from you. It’s where you first understand the culture and the values, and it sets you up to keep coming back for week two, month two and year two. The first day is the opportunity to really make people believe in what they’re doing. And the only way to do that is for people to practice what they preach. It starts on day one. That definitely had an effect on me, and it’s the reason I’m still at Flare.


You can use our onboarding guide to reinvent and perfect your own onboarding in time for the summer!

Best First Days: Summer Onboarding 2019

It might be winter now, but summer is around the corner…

For any business in hospitality or retail, the summer onboarding sprint is going to be a major period of productivity. The HR staff have more to do than any other time of the year. When you’re responsible for bringing on new staff in the hundreds or even thousands, it’s crucial that you’re able to do it efficiently, quickly and with as little friction as possible!

We’ve found that our companies know exactly when they need to power up their hiring and bring on fresh talent, and it starts right about now. With the lead time you’ll need to advertise, interview, hire, onboard, train and deploy your new superstars, summer onboarding kicks off in July, every year. 

This summer, we’re all about #BestFirstDays

We all remember when we started our first jobs, and how it set us up for our working lives!

It’s a breath of independence, the moment we could make our own choices. Make our own lives.  Start our own journeys. That brief moment before we started hating iphone alarms. 

We took a huge step into the world, on that day. And it opened so many doors. 

For decades, generations of young people have faced that coming of age as a part of growing up. It’s shaped who they are. As adults. As coworkers. 

For the rest of their lives, they’ll follow their dreams, and they’ll meet new challenges. They’ll go further, work smarter, and take on careers that reflect their values and where they want to be.

Through their work with you, they’ll pay their first rent and book their next trip overseas. It all starts on that first day.

At Flare, we think a lot about firsts. We think about how they set the stage for everything that comes next.

When you onboard new staff for the first time, you have the chance to give them the best first day of their careers. Their best first experience of a new job. It can do so much for the way they’ll work, how they’ll interact with customers, and what it’ll mean for your company culture. 

How do you do it right? The onboarding piece is crucial to your success throughout the summer period…

From compliance to cohesion, you’re going to be thanking yourself if you have an oboarding process in place that gives every single person the headstart they need, in a way that’s efficient and streamlined.

We’re not going to lie – the single best way to do that is with an integrated onboarding tool and platform like Flare that can take your people through the onboarding in a few clicks, and reduce your own admin time.

 For the Flare champions at Glue and JD Sports, having that onboarding tool in place has set the baseline for success:


Flare has helped centralize employee data and streamline the onboarding process. Now instead of the manual process, the HR department needs only click one button and everyone gets their welcome email and the accompanying documentation. Once the employee completes their details, an email is sent to the payroll department with all the details of the new hire. The payroll manager no longer needs to print out the documents as it’s all compact, simplified and well formatted. 

Flare has a degree of flexibility that made it easier to customize features to align with the HR team’s objectives. In particular, the email alert sent to the payroll department after onboarding had to have all the requisite information since incomplete data would render the email useless. Flare’s development team working together with the HR and tech departments ensured the email that payroll received had all the information needed so they didn’t have to manually refer to the employee’s folder.

JODIE HEARNEHR MANAGER – GLUE STORE / JD SPORTS

“It really made a huge difference to the process, because a lot of the time the people weren’t returning their paperwork. It just eliminated the need for the back and forth and the chasing up.”

You can use our onboarding guide to reinvent and perfect your own onboarding in time for the summer!

Onboarding Guide On iPad
  • Plan how your company onboards new employees and set up the processes and systems that are going to keep it streamlined, efficient, reliable and impactful.
  • Design an experience that introduces new employees to your company culture and values, ensuring that new starters can fit in and acclimatise.
  • Learn how to get everyone in the company involved in the onboarding process, with buy in from every department, so that everyone’s first day is always a big deal.
  • Benchmark your onboarding against some of the top companies in the retail and hospitality industries and see where you can get better!
  • DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE NOW!

We’ll be sharing our own #BestFirstDays in the lead up to the summer, along with the top onboarding tips, resources and articles!

Stay tuned for everything coming next, and don’t forget to give us a shout out or an email if you’d like to share your own #BestFirstDay with us!

For any business in hospitality or retail, the summer onboarding sprint is going to be a major period of productivity for the HR staff. When you’re responsible for bringing on new staff in the hundreds or even thousands, it’s crucial that you’re able to do it efficiently, quickly and with as little friction as possible!