There’s more to employee onboarding than just signing papers and going over company policies. To really create a beneficial onboarding, you need to provide employees with enough time, training, and attention to feel satisfied and confident. By building an effective onboarding process, you not only set them up for success but your company as well. This article explores the key benefits of onboarding and tips to make them a reality.
Key benefits of an effective onboarding program
The benefits of a strong onboarding process cannot be overstated.
By taking the time and investing in the right tools, processes, and training programs, you are almost guaranteed to see a good return on your hiring investment from your onboarding program.
That said, here are 10 reasons why you should develop a solid and effective employee onboarding process.
1. Attract new hires more easily
Today’s workforce knows what it wants and has a lot of job options to choose from. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 9.8 million job openings in the United States as of May 2023. Chances are that if you don’t align with workers’ wants and needs, you won’t be able to attract them. And company merch, pizza Fridays, and even promises of higher pay won’t cut it anymore.
Most of today’s working Americans are looking for learning and development opportunities and a company that’s willing to provide them. A good onboarding program is part of an employee’s career development. Showing them from the start that you are invested in and supportive of their professional development can set your company apart from competitors. Simply put, a successful onboarding program that focuses on continued employee development will help you attract more hires.
2. Improve retention rates
If companies aren’t careful, they can enter into a vicious cycle of hiring new employees, putting them straight to work on day one, not supporting them enough, and having them leave in only a few months. Then the process repeats itself. This has a tremendously negative effect on their bottom line as it costs, on average, $4,000 to hire a new employee.
If you’re struggling with your retention rates or are experiencing high employee turnover, there might be something wrong with your employees’ onboarding experience. The primary purpose of an employee onboarding program is to help ease the hire into their new role. You can’t rush this. There are many employee onboarding tips that can help you speed up the process, but you still can’t overburden them with too much work and too much information too soon.
A successful employee onboarding program, almost by definition, needs to improve your new hire retention rates and lower employee turnover. Studies have shown that organizations with a strong onboarding program can improve their new employee retention rate by 82 percent (and productivity by more than 70 percent but we’ll touch on that a bit later). Those with a weak program, on the other hand, are more likely to lose their new hires in the first year.
3. Attract top talent
If you think that the cost of your average employee turnover is high, then the replacement costs of a high earner or those in C-suite positions will shock you. Statistically, the cost of replacing top talent can cost up to 213 percent of their annual salary. So, if you subject a highly-skilled and well-paid new hire to a poor onboarding experience, you could end up with a tremendous financial burden.
An executive onboarding program does require some additional steps, but it isn’t all that different from any other effective employee onboarding process. What you need to do here is help new executive hires build rapport with managers, foster positive connections with direct reports and other employees, and develop a learning-centric company culture.
These factors all work together to create a highly sought-after working environment that’s not only good at attracting but also retaining top talent.
4. Promote employee relationships
An effective onboarding program is one that actively promotes employee relationships. There is a strong connection between how employees relate to each other, employee well-being, and overall job satisfaction. An ideal onboarding process focuses a great deal on social bonding, relationship building, and interpersonal connections between team members.
You should provide ample opportunity for new team members to build rapport with their peers and those in management, from their first day. Social learning is an excellent method for combining workplace relationship-building and knowledge acquisition.
From day one of onboarding, new employees can use forums, FAQs, and other social learning features to have their questions answered by their peers. It also allows new hires to learn at their own speed without having to wait for scheduled training to become productive. They learn from their peers on the go, strengthening their bond in the process. This has the added bonus of reinforcing your commitment to their professional growth and career development.
5. Build alignment
Building alignment with the company culture, goals, mission, and values is critical for avoiding high turnover and increasing productivity. If a new hire can’t successfully align with your business, it’s unlikely they’ll stick around for long.
An effective employee onboarding program educates new hires on all vital company policies and key organizational practices. This helps them better integrate into the company hierarchy and embrace its mission more easily and effectively.
One big challenge here is remote employee onboarding. As more and more people work from home, they will come into less direct contact with the rest of the team. This can lead to feelings of isolation and a lack of direction, making it more difficult to build alignment and form meaningful work relationships.
By providing multiple channels for communication, encouraging team member interaction, and conducting regular check-ins, human resource (HR) teams can build better alignment and integration with the company’s mission, vision, goals, and objectives.
6. Engage employees early on
Employee engagement and retention are two signs of a successful onboarding process. If these two onboarding metrics are down, you need to reevaluate your program. And you can’t have one without the other. In fact, low-engagement teams on average experience turnover rates from 18 percent to 43 percent higher than highly engaged teams.
By implementing an onboarding program that prioritizes employee experience, all types of businesses, regardless of their corporate culture or core values, can experience the benefits of early employee engagement.
7. Boost productivity
Nobody can realistically expect new hires to hit the ground running on day one and perform at peak efficiency immediately. Nevertheless, time-to-productivity is still one of the most important onboarding KPIs that many businesses are after, and for good reason.
Of the organizations that invested in improving the quality and scope of their employee onboarding process, 78 percent reported an increase in revenue in the last fiscal year. One in three saw an increase of over 10 percent.
According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Foundation, 60 percent of businesses see onboarding as improving their new hire’s time-to-productivity. This means that new employees who undergo an effective onboarding process can tackle their responsibilities faster than those with minimal guidance.
To boost their new hires’ productivity, companies need to set clear goals and expectations right from the start. These should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound (SMART) goals, so that performance can be tracked and improved upon over time.
Mobile learning also allows new employees to access the information they need, when they need it, and from anywhere where there’s an internet connection. Coupled with e-learning content that’s aimed at targeting well-defined knowledge gaps, mobile learning can boost employee performance in real-time and not just during formal training sessions.
8. Reduce stress
For most employees, starting a new job can be a stressful experience. Some may even be second-guessing themselves with regard to joining your company in the first place. If left unchecked, these feelings of anxiety and stress can even turn into apathy or full-blown burnout.
An effective employee onboarding program aims to turn these first-day jitters into feelings of excitement. A good onboarding experience helps new hires integrate with their team members, and boost their confidence through blended training (e-learning coupled with face-to-face instruction). HR teams should also conduct frequent check-ins and gather new employee feedback to see how they’re settling in and if any areas need improvement.
The key to a successful onboarding program is to ease the new hire into their work environment by answering their questions, helping them form new connections, providing the necessary assistance, and not overburdening them with too much work.
9. Improve employee satisfaction
The purpose of new employee training is not to check yet another item off the onboarding checklist. It needs to provide value every time it’s used and tackle the learner’s wants and needs both in that moment and over the long term. In other words, an effective onboarding program needs to help new hires gain the knowledge and tools necessary to be happy and productive in their new roles.
Companies that invest in their employees’ experience and success will also have more satisfied and committed workers. So-called learning pills—factual bits of information that tackle specific skill areas—like those created with Docebo Shape, address employee needs at every stage of their development. They’re great at filling knowledge gaps, no matter how small, increasing employee satisfaction, and minimizing possible frustration whenever the employee needs a refresher or is taking on a new challenge.
10. Improve knowledge retention
According to the forgetting curve, people forget around 50 percent of what they’ve learned within one hour after acquiring it. They’ll forget roughly 70 percent within the first day, and about 90 percent after the first week. This is why corporate training is not a one-time thing. It needs to be a continuous process, where employees can repeat what they’ve learned and keep their knowledge and skills sharp.
To ensure that your training sticks, you also need to make it as engaging as possible. Boring learning content goes in one ear and out the other. Fortunately, modern technology features such as onboarding gamification, like that offered by Docebo, use game mechanics in the form of scores, leaderboards, and reward systems, among others, to keep the learner engaged.
By understanding these employee onboarding benefits, you are in a better position to improve your onboarding process. To get the most out of it, follow the steps presented below.
5 tips to fully reap the benefits of employee onboarding
These five tips will help you develop an effective and ultimately successful employee onboarding process guaranteed to generate most of the aforementioned benefits.
Have clear goals and expectations
You can’t really expect your employees to perform in their new roles if they don’t have a clear understanding of what they need to do or what’s expected of them. Setting clear goals and expectations right from the start helps set the tone and ensures a seamless transition into the new work environment. As mentioned earlier, these goals need to follow the SMART framework so that new hires can feel confident and in control of their workflows.
Use onboarding software
Onboarding software, like Docebo, helps you streamline your employee onboarding process. This is a SaaS (software as a service) learning management system (LMS) that leverages automation in many of its functions, making it easier for you and your HR teams to deliver an effective onboarding experience. Things like social learning, gamification, mobile learning, white-labeling, and learner performance tracking are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what it can do.
This video is a quick case study highlighting how businesses can successfully onboard their employees. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this video should provide you with what you need to know about using an LMS for onboarding.
Personalize the onboarding process
No matter how powerful your onboarding software is, you can’t expect to see meaningful results if your training program doesn’t cater to each individual employee’s needs.
A personalized e-learning program based on specific job roles, experience, or other verticals is far more likely to generate employee engagement, retention, and overall job satisfaction. This customization of the training experience makes the material more relevant to the learner’s life and, therefore, causes them to take greater ownership of their learning journey.
Sure, some things like compliance or company culture information need to stay the same, but when it comes to the actual job-related know-how, keep it specific to each individual learner.
Assign an onboarding buddy
The onboarding buddy is typically a team member who helps the new hire settle into their new role. They don’t need to have more experience than the new employee but should have enough knowledge regarding the company culture, its values, organizational structure, and daily processes.
Onboarding buddies make the proper introductions with coworkers, bridge social connections, help the new hire navigate the company’s social norms, and answer any questions they might have. They are an excellent way of relieving the stress and anxiety new hires might feel in the beginning.
Allow time for training
Last but not least is pacing. Whether you’re dealing with newbies fresh out of school or an executive with years of experience, you can’t expect them to hit the ground running on day one.
An effective onboarding program can last up to a year and if you want to reap most of the benefits of onboarding, you need to allow plenty of time for employee training and development. Don’t overwhelm your new hires with too many responsibilities too soon but allow them to learn the ropes. The more time they spend on training, the faster their time-to-productivity will be.
Now over to you
If you want to reap the benefits of employee onboarding, you need to empathize with your new hires and give them the necessary time, training, and tools to become effective members of your team. Schedule a demo with Docebo today and see exactly what it can do for your onboarding needs.
