Effective onboarding is a crucial tool to ensure that new employees feel like part of your business and fully understand your company culture. The ability to introduce new hires to your organization, make them productive and effective in the shortest possible time – and retain them – is an essential business priority with key bottom-line implications.
Retention Starts Here
Research has shown that 90 percent of new hires decide whether or not to stay at a company within their first six months of employment.
- Successful onboarding is especially important in 2015. The economy is rolling along again, and the talent war has reached new competitive heights. Millennials this year became the largest segment of the U.S. workforce population – and they demand engagement, challenge, guidance and inspiration from day one on their new jobs.
- Onboarding is different than orientation. Orientation encompasses the administrative functions of new employment, such as signing up for benefits, understanding payroll, and getting an ID badge and a parking pass. Onboarding, by contrast, has a business impact and results perspective. It should include everything a new hire needs to reach minimum expected productivity and become a valued business contributor.
Benefits of Effective Onboarding
A positive onboarding experience engages people in your company as quickly as possible, assuring that they are completely comfortable in their new roles. Among the benefits of a well-designed onboarding program are:
- A solid ROI. Businesses with a structured onboarding program enjoy a 60 percent year-over-year improvement in revenue per full-time employee, and a 63 percent improvement in customer satisfaction.
- Higher engagement levels. Onboarding should ensure that new team members are fully connected to organizational culture. This results in lower turnover, at a fraction of the cost of recruitment and rehiring.
- Brand enhancement. Value is added to your brand and your employer value proposition via a more motivated workforce. New hires who rave about their onboarding will do so via social media and other networks, and your positive message will quickly spread.
- Better customer service. In the long run, well-structured onboarding improves the customer experience because your employees are more effective in their roles.
How to Be Best in Class
One industry study classified companies as best in class for onboarding if 89 percent or more of their new hires rated themselves as highly engaged, 87 percent succeeded in reaching their initial performance milestones, and 67 percent achieved “exceed” ratings in their first performance reviews. Common denominators among these employers were:
- Formal processes to ensure that all new employees clearly understood what was expected of them, as well as similar processes to ensure dialogue and feedback.
- Assurance that new hires arrived at work ready to be productive, starting from day one.
- Attribution of changes in profitability directly to onboarding.
Your onboarding framework should balance the latest technology with face-to-face interaction. From social media to gaming and eLearning solutions, enhance content delivery electronically in order to reach a broader group of individuals, as well as target audiences as needed. Familiarize new hires with your corporate website, intranet and other electronic tools. But don’t rely too heavily on computer-facing activities. A basic premise of your program should be a group classroom setting so people can personally get to know one another. Add a virtual element if necessary due to geographic issues, but keep it personal.
The recruitment and hiring experts at PrideStaff Fresno can help you design and implement a world-class onboarding program to make your employees feel valued right from the start. Read our related posts or contact us today to learn more.