The impact of good employee onboarding
The question of how onboarding impacts employee retention has been around quite some time. We understand how easy it can be to disassociate the two without the right explanation, so we’ve combined our top insights right here.
Not only will we show you how onboarding increases retention; we’ll delve into why choosing the right onboarding system can improve new hire retention and the employee retention rate of your entire workforce. For example, the Harvard Business Review states that organizations with a standardized onboarding process experience up to a 62% increase in new hire productivity, coupled with 50% higher new hire retention.
On the flip side, Gallup found that a harrowing 88% of employees don’t feel their company does a great job at onboarding new employees. The reason this is alarming is that if an emotional bond isn’t formed between the new hire and the organization, there’s a significantly higher risk of retaining that employee.
Be timely, proactive & impactful
If 22% of employee turnover happens within the first 45 days of the new hire being on the job, then the onboarding process must be organized, well-timed and impactful. There’s a lot of information to cover, which is why structure and organization are key.
We’ve outlined the important bases you need to cover below, and it’s important to integrate a one- to four-week timeline into your onboarding plan for new hires. If the onboarding process is too short, your employees won’t be equipped to handle their jobs, which may make them nervous or uninterested. If it’s too long, they may feel as if they’ll never get to their status as an employee and will abandon the training process. Either way, make sure to let employees know what to expect and be forthcoming by telling them their new hire onboarding training will last X amount of days/weeks.
Forget the sink-or-swim approach
Systematic and structured onboarding programs are best at helping retain employees as they provide new hires with standard processes to help ease them into new positions. In fact, new hires are 69% more likely to stay at a company for three years if they were a part of a well-structured onboarding program.
Does onboarding increase retention? It does with these tried-and-true tips:
- Create an outline of your onboarding plan, and don’t forget to send it out to the rest of your employees for their feedback and input.
- Conduct pre-onboarding surveys to get a better picture of your new employee’s ambitions, goals and overall what they hope to get out of the onboarding process.
- Provide space for them to list questions they may have about company policies so they can be answered throughout the process or afterwards if not covered.
- Set clear goals for the onboarding process that state what the new hire will accomplish.
- Every step should have a key takeaway or an action the new hire should take.
- Provide a space for them to make notes/comments about their own progress.
- Integrate the process into templates that can be reused for new hires over and over again. Consistency is key!
- Engage existing employees in the creation of your onboarding plan, after all they have the best insight into the roles and what new employees will need to know.
- Provide information on company structure and other employee’s roles and responsibilities so new hires know who does what and where their role fits into the big picture.
- Don’t just dump the onboarding program on them; make sure to over-communicate with them, and let them feel okay with asking questions.
- Follow up the onboarding program with a survey to see if your new hires had any issues or have any suggestions for improving the program.
- Was there something they would have liked to learn more about?
- Did they need more time or did they have too much time?
- You can create surveys using Qzzr.com or Surveymonkey.com on the fly!
- Most importantly: invest in the help of onboarding software to streamline the process and keep track of where your candidates are in the hiring process throughout.
With the help of Click Boarding, onboarding software for new hires, you can ensure candidate retention and employee retention are top of mind for recruiting teams and even one-person HR departments. Enlist the help and expertise of Click Boarding by contacting us for a personalized walkthrough of our onboarding software.
