If you’re wondering how to improve your onboarding process, you’ve come to the right place. An effective onboarding program lays the foundation for a fruitful and long-term relationship between new hires and their employers. A great onboarding program makes new hires feel valued and supported as they get accustomed to your organization. It also eases them into their workflows and is careful not to overwhelm them but also to bring them to peak productivity ASAP.
This article explores the benefits and ways to optimize your new employee onboarding strategy.
Benefits of an effective onboarding process
The importance of an effective employee onboarding program cannot be overstated. There are many advantages that both the employer and employee will get out of an optimized program.
Here’s a list of some of the top benefits that a well-optimized and effective employee onboarding program has to offer.
- Improves employee retention: According to Payscale, the voluntary turnover rate in 2022 was 25%. This means that one in four employees who go through your doors are likely to leave if they don’t have a positive experience. A well-thought-out onboarding program that places a strong emphasis on employee experience, professional development, and company culture can also improve retention. In fact, 69% of new employees are likely to stay with a company for more than three years if they had a great onboarding experience.
- Drives down hiring costs: Based on Glassdoor findings, the average United States employer spends roughly $4,000 and 24 days on hiring a new employee. Hiring costs can easily go up if you spend time, money, and energy on new hires only to have them leave after a few months, forcing the process to start all over again. A well-optimized onboarding process doesn’t only minimize turnover, thus lowering the hiring cost, but also increases retention and, therefore, maximizes the hiring return on investment.
- Boosts productivity: On average, it can take several months before a new employee reaches their full potential. One of the main aims of onboarding is to speed that up as much as possible without overwhelming them with too much work too soon. When done right, however, a successful onboarding process can reduce this time-to-productivity by over 70% and improve retention by 82% at the same time.
- Attracts top talent: Roughly 1 in 5 new employees are unlikely to recommend an organization if they’ve had a bad onboarding experience. However, a strong onboarding process will have the opposite effect. It can build the company’s brand, essentially marketing it as a “Best Place to Work.” If your onboarding program focuses on what today’s workforce is looking for, such as mentorships and professional development, you stand a far better chance at attracting and retaining top talent in your industry.
- Gains a competitive edge: According to a Goldman Sachs survey, 90% of businesses are struggling to fill their vacant positions. A successful onboarding process doesn’t only attract top talent but also ensures they remain with your company long-term. Given the current trends in the market, being able to fill your open positions with qualified personnel and keep them filled gives you a competitive advantage. Those who spend resources on new hires only to lose them in the short to mid-term will never reach their full potential.
13 best practices to optimize the new employee onboarding process
Recruiting top talent to your organization is the easy part. You also need to retain them over the long term and ensure that they’re happy and productive. This is where the new employee onboarding process comes into play.
Hiring managers and human resources (HR) teams need to ensure a good first impression, as it often sets the tone for the entire employee experience with the company. An optimized onboarding program will set new hires up for success from the outset, increasing their retention, job satisfaction, and productivity. Here are 13 best practices for a successful employee onboarding program.
#1: Start onboarding new hires before the first day
Many in HR make the mistake of waiting until the new employee’s first day to start the onboarding process. Instead, you should take the time between when a new hire agrees to join and their official start date to begin procedures. This is the pre-boarding stage.
This time frame can be an anxious one for many new recruits. A pre-boarding process helps put their minds at ease, reassuring them of their decision to become part of the team.
Some hiring managers use the pre-boarding to send out care packages filled with company merch, handwritten welcome notes, and other small tokens of appreciation. You can also take this time to handle some of the preliminary admin tasks like signing papers and NDAs, personality assessments, providing tech and software access, etc.
Additionally, you can provide them with an overview of the organization to familiarize themselves with the company culture, values, policies, and more.
#2: Make the positive employee experience a priority
Research clearly shows that companies who invest in employee experience see, on average, 4.2 times more profit and 2.1 times more revenue than those that don’t. It’s also important to note that an employee’s experience with a company starts during the initial hiring process. Throughout their onboarding, which typically lasts around 90 days, they meet their new team members and managers and get to see the company culture put into practice.
If these encounters aren’t anything to write home about and the overall employee onboarding experience is negative, the whole process could backfire. Instead of seeing new employee commitment and dedication, you’ll probably start seeing increasing apathy, disillusionment, and rising turnover rates.
To improve the new hire’s experience, consider the following:
- Organize informal meetings with senior staff members and leaders
- Arrange for a team lunch on day one
- Share interesting bits of history about the company
- Show the new hire photos and videos of behind-the-scenes moments to paint them a picture of how it is to work at your company
- Emphasize your learning and development program
- Conduct regular check-ins to ensure the new employee is settling in
- Maintain a positive, supportive, and encouraging attitude
#3: Keep your onboarding program simple
A good onboarding program should keep things simple. If new hires get into the thick of things without having the necessary time to properly settle into their new role, they can start feeling overwhelmed. This can easily turn into anxiety, stress, and burnout.
New hire onboarding needs to be a seamless experience where they’re not bombarded with too much information or work too soon. Ensure new hires get only essential information that’s easy to follow and steadily build from there.
A confusing and overly-complex onboarding process will typically result in a negative onboarding experience. Design your onboarding program in a timely manner providing necessary information and resources at a time when they are first needed. Also, provide new hires with workflow milestones that can be easily achieved; especially during their first month.
#4: Get everyone excited about the new hire
The vibe generated by your staff members strongly influences the new employee’s experience with the company. If they’re greeted with excitement and enthusiasm, they’ll likely “catch” it too. If, however, your long-standing team is indifferent, dismissive, or apathetic, the new hire might start doubting their decision to join your company.
New hires should, therefore, receive a warm welcome from everyone in your organization. Confirm that everyone is on board and is willing to take part. Do so by ensuring they know what added value the new hire will bring to them and the organization as a whole.
It’s also a good idea to involve team members in the onboarding process by sharing their knowledge and experience from their own onboarding. This helps them empathize with the new hire, which will make them more likely to take the new employee under their wing.
#5: Have some fun
Although you need to take your onboarding process seriously, you can still have some fun with it. In fact, it’s recommended.
While you should have a sound strategy in place, it’s a good idea to sprinkle in some fun activities or add some more spice to the activities you’ve already planned. Examples include trivia, ping-pong, a game of pool, or a bit of wine tasting after hours. You can also turn the office tour into a scavenger hunt or create a photo board where team members can add pictures of themselves enjoying their favorite hobbies or activities.
These can act as icebreakers, especially if there are a lot of people in the office. Or, you can have your new employees work in teams to complete a certain challenge with prizes at the end. Similarly, you can add some gamification features to your training program. These were shown to improve employee engagement. You don’t need anything too expensive or overly-complicated here. If possible, just try to make these fun onboarding activities somehow reflect your company culture.
#6: Schedule 1-on-1 time with direct managers
Onboarding isn’t just about handling paperwork and doing various administrative tasks. Its main purpose is or should be to help the new hire become an integral part of the team. This means getting to know not just their new team members but also the people they’ll be working under.
A one-on-one with their direct managers is, therefore, critical for new employees’ engagement and retention. This is an excellent opportunity for managers to make a great first impression, build rapport with the new employee, and set workflows for the first week of the onboarding process.
#7: Automate the tedious stuff
It’s best to automate the onboarding process for various tasks, such as form completion, policy education, video training, etc. This helps both the HR team and new hires get through it more easily. Onboarding software like Docebo manages to get the boring stuff done quickly and efficiently while also boosting employee engagement.
You can create different enrollment rules based on separate job roles or responsibilities to significantly streamline the online course enrollment and compliance training process.
#8: Ensure your training materials are engaging
Once the new recruit has settled in, you should start their training. It’s also a good idea to set several milestones for their first week, month, and quarter. This allows you to better gauge their knowledge level, create their workflows, and design a personalized professional development plan. It also makes it easier for them to absorb as much useful knowledge as they need without becoming overwhelmed by too much information.
To get the best results out of your training program, you need to make your training materials as engaging as possible. PowerPoint presentations just don’t cut it anymore. Video content, for example, is generally more effective. In fact, 83% of human learning is visual. Fortunately, learning management system (LMS) tools like Docebo boost employee engagement through the type of mobile-friendly e-learning content they generate. Docebo’s gamification and social learning features help to further drive engagement and facilitate employee productivity much faster than standard training courses.
The platform is also SCORM-compliant, meaning that it can integrate with other corporate learning and content curation apps, without experiencing any compatibility issues.
Furthermore, you’ll have access to a built-in marketplace where you can buy and sell training content catalogs.
#9: Do what you can to personalize the onboarding experience
A truly effective onboarding program needs to match the new hire’s personal and professional development at that moment. This is why you must personalize the onboarding process to match each employee’s strengths, weaknesses, and preferences.
For starters, your HR team needs to hand them the right onboarding materials that fit their new job role and location. Furthermore, you need to personalize their training program based on their current skill level.
You can determine these factors by using surveys. They grant you more in-depth insights into communication, workflows, and training, as well as time and task management.
#10: Plan for the new hires’ future with a 30-60-90 plan
Motivation plays a key role in a new employee’s success or failure in their job. A lack of motivation often stems from employees not having clear goals and expectations set in place during their onboarding process.
Managers should take some time and work with new hires to create a journey map that outlines their long-term career goals, short-term workflows, and e-learning plans. These milestones serve to keep employees motivated by constantly offering new challenges to strive towards.
For the short term, a 30-60-90-day plan tends to work best. This is basically a spreadsheet that defines which milestones they need to reach in their first 30, 60, and 90 days. For the best outcomes, try creating SMART goals or goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based.
#11: Collect detailed feedback
Gathering detailed feedback from new employees on their onboarding experience is an excellent way to improve the process. Based on their input, you can determine which areas work, which don’t, why, and what you can do to optimize them.
You can send anonymous surveys to newly onboarded hires, asking them what they liked and/or disliked about the onboarding process. You can also ask them to rate the different parts of the program and to provide more detailed explanations. Not only will you be able to improve your onboarding processes with employee feedback but you’ll also make new hires feel heard and involved. Just make sure not to overdo it, otherwise, you risk employees developing so-called survey fatigue.
#12: Maintain ongoing communication and access to company resources
Once everything is running smoothly and the new team member is starting to settle in, you need to keep the momentum going. Do this by opening and maintaining communication channels where they can ask questions and voice any concerns they might have. This will provide them with a sense of safety that allows them to take more risks and makes them more productive overall.
In addition, give them access to the company’s resources such as internal processes, departmental key performance indicators (KPIs), and more. These will give them a deeper understanding of your products and services.
#13: Develop a mentoring program
No onboarding process can reach its full potential without a mentoring program. Not only can mentors bring your new employees to peak productivity faster but they can also make them stay longer with your company. They also help new hires better understand the company’s culture, values, and long-term goals. As a guide for the mentee’s personal and professional development, a mentor is usually someone with more experience and of higher rank in the company.
Level up your onboarding process with an AI-powered LMS
An artificial intelligence (AI)-powered LMS like Docebo can help your onboarding process by improving employee engagement and retention, as well as boosting the effectiveness of your training program. AI features help to take the guesswork out of onboarding strategy and streamline the process. Schedule a demo today to learn how your HR team can increase its onboarding performance.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
For any quick questions, we’ve got the answers.
Q1. Who is responsible for which parts of the onboarding process?
- Human resources is responsible for gathering all the necessary paperwork, automating all legal proceedings, and answering compensation questions. They also boost new hires’ morale and ensure their assimilation into the company’s culture.
- The hiring manager is responsible for providing an overview of the company’s goals, structure, and expectations. They also gather all relevant KPIs based on goals and structural processes.
- The hiring team bridges the gap between the HR team and the hiring manager. It also provides support to the new hire, answering questions and ensuring a seamless assimilation into the new team.
- The IT team manages the set-up and training related to any tech equipment for the new hire. They also set up the workstation in terms of functionality and security, as well as issue any physical or digital security cards.
Q2. What is an “onboarding needs form”?
It’s a form issued by HR to the hiring team after a candidate’s background check has started. It provides the HR team with all the needed information to complete the onboarding request.
Q3. What do new hires look for in their onboarding?
New employees generally want an onboarding process that makes them feel at ease and equips them with all the necessary tools and know-how to become an asset to the team. They typically prefer orientations, corporate training, mentorship, and job shadowing during their onboarding.
