I want to share a personal example of how a new hire can go very wrong without an onboarding checklist.
One of the most memorable hiring experiences I ever had was with a Fortune 500. It had taken months to get through the rigorous pre-hire process. The company was thorough, with multiple interviews with several executives and department heads.
When I arrived, excited at the possibilities, No one greeted me on arrival, and had to locate someone in HR to figure out how to get the ball rolling. I was ready to meet the team and start getting settled in. Instead I was led to an empty desk with no chair. There was a monitor, but no computer. No supplies. I set my things down and leaned against the desk.
It was 30 minutes before someone came to get me settled. I didn’t get a chair for a few hours, and the computer came the next day. I was ready to hit the ground running for this amazing company, but despite plenty of time to prepare, they weren’t ready for me. The onboarding didn’t get any better from there.
Unfortunately, this is far too common, and it happens in companies of all sizes. It’s an experience that you absolutely must avoid at all costs, because you’ll pay for it in churn – among other ways. The minimum cost for a new hire is $50,000 when you factor in recruiting costs, ads, time dedicated to training and the cost of replacing an employee due to churn.
According to a 2007 study by the Wynhurst Group, when employees go through structured onboarding, they are 58% more likely to remain with the organization after three years.YEC
And churn can climb when you don’t have a solid onboarding checklist to guide you. According to a study from Bamboo HR, 31% of respondents had quit their job within the first 6 months of hire; most in the first 90 days. A steady stream of employees left from within the first week all the way up to the 3rd month.
Missing the Onboard Checklist – What Bad Onboarding Costs You
There’s a list of consequences that stem from poor onboarding, whether it simply needs improving or your company completely lacks an onboarding checklist.
- You risk losing a potentially great employee, whom you hired because of their talents. All because they didn’t get the necessary guidance to understand their place in the organization.
- Leadership is limited in how they can spot a poor hiring choice early on with a lack of an onboarding process. Evaluation is hard to do when there’s no evaluation process.
- Loss of productive output because it takes a significant amount of time for them to gain traction in their role.
- Increased stress among individuals and teams.
- Reduced happiness in new hires, which is never a good place to start.
To keep your hard-won talent, it’s absolutely critical to create an onboarding process which should include a complete onboarding checklist. This ensures that no step is missed as they get acquainted with the organization, the expectations, responsibilities of their position, culture, and their specific tasks.
In the same Bamboo HR survey, respondents were asked what factors would have kept them from leaving their jobs early on. The results speak for themselves:
- 23% said they wanted to receiving clear guidelines to what their responsibilities were.
- 21% said they wanted more effective training.
Create an Onboarding Checklist That Follows the Three A’s
Virtually every scenario in which an onboarding process is lacking, or non-existent, you’re going to have significant time-waste. That waste compounds with every new employee hired, and impacts the performance of every employee up the chain.
To avoid this kind of progressive impact, it’s important to follow just a few simple guidelines called the Three A’s of Onboarding:
Accommodation
Create a consistent plan used for every new hire, specific to their roles, ensuring everything is ready for them on the day of arrival. In many cases, starting communication and accommodation before day one can make for easier onboarding once the employee actually starts with the company.
Assimilation
Managers must treat an onboarding checklist with personal attention and seriously. Forming a personal connection with employees on their team raises confidence and makes new hires feel more at ease. It should be a goal for a team leader or manager to take their new employees to lunch on the first day, forging a personal connection outside of the workspace.
Acceleration
Onboarding doesn’t stop after an employee is settled in. Acceleration is a key part of employee growth, retention, and reducing churn. Invest in training, and find ways to help employees absorb new information at their own speed.
Now that you’ve got a basic model or creating a stronger onboarding process, let’s run through a solid onboarding checklist you can easy follow to create your own.
The Onboarding Template
Before the First Day
- Have all paperwork ready for new hires. Simplify the process by using digital forms and contracts. This way you can send a link online, or the forms, to you new hire so their first day isn’t wasted by filling out paperwork.
- Bring the supervisors up to speed. Direct supervisors should create a 30-60-90 day plan for the new hire, determine what projects they’ll be working on, and the knowledge they should have. This makes it far easier to communicate expectations on day 1.
- Run through a new hire checklist that covers everything to be in place on day 1. This includes things like hardware, company swag, email accounts, communications accounts like Slack, a list of team members to meat with, software tools, supplies, necessary reading, and details on their first tasks or projects.
- For the love of all, make sure their workstation is ready and waiting for them… and has a chair.
- Use an automated process tracking platform, and get your checklist loaded digitally. This way you can move from step to step through the onboarding process automatically, triggering approvals and alerts where needed for things like reviews.
On Day One
- Get your new hires up to speed. Sit down and discuss all the projects and company goals. Make sure they know how to contribute and where they fit in the master plan. It might take a significant amount of time, but its critical to their success.
- Make clear all your expectations. They should know what they will be doing, how they’re contributing, specific responsibilities, your goals, and what is expected over the next 90 days.
- Impart the company culture. Go over company documentation and make sure the employee is given ample time to meet with other team members. Review marketing materials, meet with different departments, and make clear the values the company operates on.
- Have something ready for them to take on. Whatever the scope, have a startup task. This is important to make employees feel valued, and like they’re already contributing. Even if it’s a small task. Quora pushes each new engineer to commit to adding themselves to the team page on the first day, to deploy a bug fix, new feature, or a new experiment by the end of the first week.
The First 30 Days and Beyond
- Expand on their knowledge foundation with supporting material, including relevant company materials and books
- Socially integrate new employees into the team. This can sometimes be best achieved with small group projects or outings with the team.
- Get feedback from your staff at every level. This is critical to revising and improving your onboarding checklist and process.
- Never rush onboarding. It’s not a first-day task, but an ongoing process that should continue until you’re absolutely sure the new employee can “swim on their own.”
