Retaining top talent is a very high priority for any company, big or small. According to the Center for American progress, hiring and retraining new employees can be extremely expensive, costing the company up to 20% of the employee’s annual salary. The retention problem, however, has a very simple solution – creating a robust employee onboarding strategy.
According to a study by the Society for Human Resource Management, employees that go through a structured onboarding process are 58% more likely to stay in the organization within the next 3 years. 58%, as you could’ve guessed, is no small number.
Let’s say, for example, 3 employees making 50,000$ per year quit the company. 20% of $150,000 is $30,000. By cutting that number in half, your organization can save up to $15,000 dollars annually. If you consider the fact that the missing employee’s job isn’t being done during that time period, or that a high turnover hurts company culture, this number can be even higher.
Most companies, however, don’t have any kind of employee onboarding strategy. They never really structure the process -for them, onboarding is this thing you have to figure out when the new employee shows up. This, of course, can leave the employee completely disoriented, isolated and confused.
To get the employee onboarding strategy right, you’ll have to take care of 2 main factors:
- Plan the Onboarding Step By Step – to ensure social and professional integration, as well as ensure all the legalities are out of the way, you need to plan your onboarding step by step
- Streamline the Onboarding Through Software or Checklists – Once you know the exact steps you’d take for an onboarding, you should solidify it through software or checklists
Steps to a Successful Employee Onboarding Strategy
There are 3 main periods to consider for your strategy of employee onboarding : prior to employee showing up, on day one, and up to a month after.
Steps Before Day One
It’s important that you start off your employee onboarding strategy before your new employee actually shows up. In fact, a big chunk of the onboarding process happens within the company, without even involving the new employee at all.
- Have all the paperwork ready. That includes documents such as the W-4s, non-disclosures, etc. Best case scenario, you can have this out of the way long before the employee actually shows up through online forms. Otherwise, you’d want to have all the papers on standby for day one, so that the employee can just sign them and get all the administrative work out of the way.
- Set up the tech stack. Things like employee workstation, communication tools, email, etc. You don’t want your new employees first day at work to be just sitting around idly waiting for when the IT guy shows up.
- Bring the right supervisor up to speed. It’s important that they set aside their time to show the ropes to the new employee; showing up at a new job and being met with blank stares and “who’s this guy again”s is not fun.
- Introduce the new employee. Send out an email to the company or department letting everyone know of the new hire.
On Day One
The day one at work has to be special for your new employee. Whenever you meet someone for the first time, your first impression is something that sticks for a while. The same applies to work in a new company.
Your new hire will form their opinion of your company on day one – If you mess up there, changing it will be hard. If the first thought the employee has in the new company is, “what did I get myself into,” they’re pretty much a lost cause.
So, on day 1, you’d want them to learn as much about the company and other employees as possible.
- Office tour & introductions to the rest of the team. While everyone might be busy with their day-to-day tasks, it’s important that the new employee gets to meet most of the company or team (depending on how big your company is). This gives off the feeling that the company puts people first, and employees aren’t office drones programmed for efficiency.
- Assign an orientation buddy. It’s important that the newbie gets to feel welcome with the company and makes fast friends (or acquaintances, at least). If you leave the new hire to their own devices, however, this is unlikely to happen. Most of your employees are probably already divided into cliques or groups, making it hard for an outsider to fit in. Assigning them a “buddy” will ensure that the newbie has someone to help with integration and that they get to meet everyone on a more or less personal level.
- Company introduction, culture, mission, etc. Culture is what differentiates extraordinary companies and puts them ahead of their competitors. It’s important to teach the new employee about the history of your organization, mission, values, etc. This can be something informal (a small face-to-face de-brief), a presentation, or even a custom-made educational software.
- Professional or department orientation. Even if the new hire is the very best at what they do, they have no idea how your company does this. For marketing, for example, this could mean which channels have worked for the company in the past, and which haven’t. As with culture, this could be informal, with the supervisor going through their history in brief, or through a document created for this specific purpose (PDF, ppt, etc.).
- Define expectations and goals. Before the employee is fully integrated within the company & on top of their work, you need to give them some sort of a direction. i.e, assign different projects and work, define KPIs and a way to measure performance, etc.
Through the First Month
For your average company, employee orientation is done on day one. That is, however, usually not the case. The fact that the employee started working doesn’t mean that they’re really integrated within the company. After the first day, it’s important to follow-up with the employee for up to 90 days post-hire, ensuring that the onboarding is working as intended. Your company can greatly benefit from a good employee orientation.
The follow-up is best done as a one-on-one meeting with either the HR or their supervisor and should be done on, at a minimum, every 30 days. The purpose of the meeting is to…
- See whether the company is up to the hire’s expectations. Are they happy with the team? The way things are done? The culture? Etc.
- Are they hitting their KPIs & performing well? If not, why? Is there a way to improve this?
- Was the onboarding efficient? Did it hit its goals of social, professional, and cultural integration? If not, is there any way to improve it?
Streamlining the Onboarding Process
Now that you know the exact steps you’d want to take during an onboarding, it’s important to streamline the whole process. Onboarding, after all, is never a one-time thing. Once you’ve nailed down the right process with a single new employee, you’ll have to re-use it for any other new hires. Plus, chances are, it won’t be the same person doing the onboarding for each run, so it’s important to pass the knowledge of how to do it properly along.
To streamline your employee onboarding strategy, there are 2 simple ways…
- Employee Onboarding Checklist – You can take all the steps we’ve described above and create a checklist. This is usually done in a PDF and is handed out to whoever’s in charge of the onboarding process, ensuring that no critical step is missed.
- Employee Onboarding Software – While handing out a physical checklist is a working solution, it’s significantly easier to just use the right software. Tallyfy offers an employee onboarding template that keeps track of the process from start to finish, as well as automating several of the steps in-between.
Once you have your onboarding process streamlined using a checklist of software, you’re pretty much done! Now all you have to do is re-do the onboarding for each new employee, and improve the entire process through feedback.
Related Questions
Why is it important to have an employee onboarding strategy?
A good employee onboarding process makes new hires feel welcomed and prepared to succeed on their first day. It’s sort of like welcoming a new friend into your home: You want to make them comfortable and show them the lay of the land and where everything is. Companies that do onboarding well retain 91 percent of their first-year workers, and they see 62 percent higher productivity from their new hires. “This is not about paperwork; it’s about gaining confidence, making connections and putting your new team members in a position to succeed,” she said.
What should be the typical duration of employee onboarding process?
While most firms speed through onboarding in a week, the sweet spot, research shows, is 90 days. This 90-day period allows new employees to have time to learn in a comfortable manner, develop work relationships to the fullest extent, and be aware of what their job role is. Some top companies, in fact, carry onboarding out over six months or more, splitting it into distinct phases, like orientation, training for a role and integrating within a team. And keep in mind that it’s better to invest time at the front end than rush through, only to lose out on a great hire.
What are the key components of the employee onboarding process?
A good onboarding process requires four key ingredients: paperwork and compliance, role clarity and expectations, culture and connections and ongoing support. Get creative and look beyond the basics — for example, team lunch dates, mentor matching, project shadowing. The best programs also inject personal touches such as welcome packages, culture workshops and early “wins” through small projects. Don’t forget the formal learning and the social learning.
How can you measure the success of your onboarding strategy?
Go beyond simple graduation rates to assess true impact. Tracking data such as time-to-productivity, new hire satisfaction scores, and 90-day retention. Collect information by doing regular pulse surveys and one-on-one check-ins. Stay vigilant for indicators of involvement, such as team events and optional training sessions. Benchmark the performance of employees who go through varying versions of your onboarding to continue enhancing it.
What common mistakes should you avoid in employee onboarding?
Among the biggest traps is treating onboarding like a one-day orientation. And major mistakes more generally include bombarding new hires with information, being too paperwork-centric, and not getting the team involved in welcoming the new kid. Do not throw babies in with the bathwater – float, if you will. And don’t neglect to individualize the experience, or bypass the crucial social connections that assist new employees in feeling like part of the team.
How can technology improve the onboarding process?
And the smart use of technology can take a paperwork nightmare and turn it into a seamless journey. Leverage workflow automation to tackle the routine tasks, digital checklists to manage progress, and video calls for the remote team introductions. You could create an online resource hub where people can learn at their own pace. Virtual reality training might even help remote workers feel a little more grounded in an office scene.
What role should managers play in the onboarding process?
It’s all about managers As it turns out, managers make the onboarding difference. They ought to have regular check-ins, clear goals and constant feedback. Solid managers make introductions to critical contacts, explain unwritten rules and help navigate company culture. They have to strike a balance of being supportive and promoting independence, making room for quick wins while remaining accessible for questions and guidance.
How should onboarding differ for remote employees?
Because so much of the process is done remotely, onboarding requires extra care in communicating and connecting. Make virtual office tours, video meet-and-greets and digital collaboration tools work for you. Ship welcome packages to home offices and schedule virtual social events. Ensure remote staff has all equipment needed before day one. Think about pairing up the team members or creating virtual spaces where people can hang out and chat casually, like at the water cooler.
What are the long-term benefits of a strong onboarding strategy?
An awesome onboarding strategy has an incredible payoff for so long after the first few months. It results in greater employee engagement, closer team relationships and better performance. New hires are more comfortable sharing fresh ideas, and companies see a boost in innovation. Great onboarding creates cultural ambassadors who are more apt to refer additional talent and contribute to a stronger employer brand. It’s an investment that continues to pay off in the form of lower turnover, more productive employees and a healthier workplace culture.
