Hiring a new employee offers a range of challenges to businesses, as they aim to bring new hires up to speed as quickly as possible in order for them to become productive. In the past, this was usually done via quick inductions that contained an introduction to the company before the employee was set to work.
However, in recent times there has been a trend towards a more holistic approach that is aimed towards fully ingratiating the new hire into the company while also ensuring that the business itself offers everything that the employee expected when he or she accepted the job.
This is known as onboarding and it is a process that tends to be carried out over a number of months, or even for as long as a year. It aims to counter the issue of employee turnover, which often occurs when new hires become disenfranchised with their new roles within the first few weeks, or months, of taking them, by offering a comprehensive approach to employee integration that helps people to become productive members of the teams that they have joined.
Why Is It Important?
Effective onboarding can prevent you from having to deal with high employee turnover, which affects productivity and costs your business a lot of money. Some sources claim that employees are 60% more likely to still be with a company after three years if they experienced good onboarding, so the success of the concept can’t really be denied.
As for why this retention is important, the stats speak for themselves. The cost of replacing a newly-hired employee usually falls within the 20% range of that employee’s salary. Organizationally-speaking, the cost is even higher, with some estimates claiming that the cost of employee turnover can be up to 300% of that employee’s salary.
They’re scary numbers and companies can ill-afford to keep churning through employees in this manner, thus making an effective onboarding process even more important.
Thinking Ahead
From that description you may believe that the onboarding process starts from the first day that a new employee is welcomed into the fold. However, this is not the case, at least if you want to make the absolute most out of the technique.
Onboarding should begin before you have even made contact with the potential employee. Your reputation in the eyes of the masses, developed through your branding, news reports about your company, the information on your website and through many other avenues, all play a part in forming a future employee’s first impressions about you.
Recent studies have found that 35% of “best-in-class” companies begin their onboarding before the first day. As such, it is important that you essentially manage your brand in the eyes of potential hires, much like you manage it in the eyes of consumers. Often referred to as “preboarding”, this early stage of the onboarding process helps job applicants form their first impressions of your company and creates a desire to work for you before any applications are even sent.
The First Day
Once you have created a good initial impression, which will hopefully have been supplemented during the interview process, you need to pay special attention to the first day for the new hire.
This is when you start to deliver on the promises that you have made to your new employee through your branding and company message. You also need to demonstrate the level of professionalism at your company that your new hire expects.
As such, it is crucial that you have all of the details nailed down. Make sure that emails are sent to all of your staff to inform them about the arrival of the new hire and prepare anything that may be needed, such as I.D. cards, any tech that is needed, telephones and email accounts. All of this should be ready and waiting for the new employee on the first day, even if the induction lasts so long that they don’t end up getting used.
You also need to make sure that employees have all of the information that they need in terms of health and safety protocols, fire evacuation and any other important details that will be needed just to operate in the building.
A lot of companies also make it a point to send out welcome packs prior to the first day, again as part of the “preboarding” process, to inform the new hire of anything that they may need to bring with them. Such packs can also expand on the company message and talk more about the values that the company has.
In essence, the first day needs to act as an induction. You will be delivering a lot of information to the new hire so you need to strike something of a balance between automation and human delivery. You should start ingratiating the employee into the fold as quickly as possible by making them feel welcome and delivering in terms of professionalism.
As a nice last touch, try to make it a point to celebrate the arrival in some way. Make announcements on the company intranet, if you have one, and consider creating a small reception with snacks that will allow the new hire to meet the team in a less formal capacity.
The First Week
With all of the introductory stuff out of the way, this is when you really start to implement your onboarding plan. Hopefully you have made a good first impression, so now you need to ensure that the new hire is made to feel as comfortable as possible as quickly as possible.
Ensure that communication is open and that your team and any managers overseeing the new hire are available if questions need to be asked. You should also be clear about what you expect from your new employee, while also understanding that it can take a while for people to adjust to new roles. Don’t expect that all in one week, but make sure you start laying the foundations in terms of bringing the employee up to speed.
The first week should essentially be all about the new employee learning more about the people and various departments in the company, which would all have been covered very lightly during the induction day. Some businesses even go so far as to have their inductions spread over the whole of the first week in an effort to focus the new hire’s learning. Choose whichever is best for your company based on the resources available to you.
Most importantly, you also need to start setting goals and milestones for your new employee. After all, you’ve made the decision to hire this person for a reason and so you need to keep the employee as focused as possible on how they can deliver what is needed by the business. Be careful in creating goals and milestones, as you need to account for the adjustment period, but make sure that your new hire knows how you want them to slot into the team. After all, talented employees tend to flourish when they are given responsibility early on and you don’t want to run the risk of having somebody with skill become so bored in the role that they start to contemplate other jobs.
The First Month
By this point your new hire should be getting more comfortable with their surroundings. They will hopefully be building relationships with their team members and have started to develop a keener understanding of their roles within the company.
Many companies make the mistake of thinking their work with onboarding is done at this point. However, it is important to remember that the average employee takes around eight months to fully embed into a company. Furthermore, 20% of employee turnover occurs within the first forty-five days of employment, so you have to stay focused and understand that you are still in the process of making your extended first impression.
You aims once you reach the end of the first month should be twofold:
- Maintain the values and ideas that the new hire had about your company upon being hired. Remember that concept of “preboarding”? By this point your new hire should be able to see that what you are in public is what you put into action behind the scenes. Disillusionment will start to occur if your company is claiming one thing and delivering something completely different to staff, so maintain transparency and live up to your company values.
- Start gathering feedback, both from the new hire and the people around that person. Some go so far as to assign a specific manager to the new employee who can act both as a point of contact and as a source of feedback. Communication is key, so maintain it with the new hire and team members to understand any challenges that need to be overcome.
This will all play into your onboarding strategy through the rest of the year.
The First Year
By the end of the first year your new hire should no longer feel new. They should be fully integrated into the team and completely comfortable within the role. If they aren’t, you may have some serious issues to deal with, either in regards to your onboarding plans or in terms of the suitability of the employee for the role.
You may feel that focusing on onboarding for a full year is not needed. That certainly seems to be the opinion held by many companies, as there are only 37% that extend their efforts beyond the first month. However, this disregards the fact that 23% of all employee turnover occurs before the first anniversary, which shows it is more than possible for new hires to become disenfranchised after that first month.
Consistency in what you deliver is key here. Going all out for a month and then offering nothing to the employee makes your efforts seem like a masquerade. Ensure communication is maintained and start delivering on some of the claims you made about the company during the hiring process. For example, if you talked about opportunities for development and career enhancement during the hiring process, you need to start offering training courses and other opportunities within that first year.
Allowing the employee to fall into a completely monotonous routine very quickly can sap morale. By this point the feedback you have received should give you a better idea of how to make the most use out of the employee’s skills and this should be reflected in the tasks that the new hire is given. You need to stay observant and watch how the new hire performs on various projects to figure out what skills they have and how you can ensure these talents come to the fore. It is quite rare for people to be doing what they were doing during the first month by the end of the first year, without any changes.
By the end of that first year, you should have an employee that has reached maximum productivity.
The Final Word
There is no fool-proof plan for effective onboarding, so you need to keep adjusting your own plans until you find something that works for both you and your new employees. Once it is all boiled down though, your onboarding needs to accomplish the following:
- Generate a great first impression to enthuse the new hire and make them keen to work for you, often starting before the hiring process has even begun.
- Make the new employee feel welcome from the moment they set foot through the door.
- Introduce the employee to the various aspects of the company, both formal and informal.
- Help the employee understand what is needed from them, so that they have goals and a focus going forward.
- Focus on development through constant feedback, allowing you to learn more about the employee so that you can help them attain full productivity.
- Maintain consistency in what you offer to employees so that they feel satisfied with their roles.
If you can accomplish all of this, you are likely to experience more success with onboarding, resulting in higher employee retention.