Employee engagement is a perpetual hot-button topic for employers. Almost 70% of employees are disengaged at work. This means less productivity for employees and endless frustration for you and your management team. The best way to create a culture that is engaged and happy is by engaging your employees as soon as possible — during the onboarding process.
Use Culture to Propel Employee Engagement
Thought leaders will tell you to onboard your employees before their first day (including us, by the way!). But there’s more to early onboarding than having legal paperwork completed by their first day. Use this first step as a way to fully immerse employees in your organization’s culture.
Almost 50% of potential employees explore company materials (like their careers website) to get a feel for the company’s values and cultural fit. For employers, this means “cultural onboarding” needs to start well before an employee starts working. Provide your new hires with digital information as part of their onboarding material. Be sure to explain what your company is about and contextualize their job within its larger vision. This gives your hire a better idea of the company they’re about to work for, easing them into the job.
Be Proactive and Smile
You’ve told your new hire where their office is and what events go on the company calendar… now what? What do candidates want from their onboarding? According to a recent survey by BambooHR, 23% of new hires who left their jobs within six months of starting wanted clearer guidelines about their responsibilities. 17% felt “a friendly smile or helpful co-worker would have made all the difference.” The message? When it comes to onboarding, a little friendliness goes a long way.
Better Performance Through Longer Onboarding
Just what do you stand to gain from good onboarding? Better employee performance. Research shows that employee onboarding programs increase performance by 11%. Now imagine what you could do if you truly engaged your employees before day one. The more you teach your employees before they get into the on-the-job training, the faster they’ll be able to do their job.
When performance is taken into consideration, every day counts. Even day-one. Many companies have a probationary period, so understanding an employee’s growth from the first day is a crucial predictor to their performance in the future. The average time for a professional employee to reach full productivity is about 20 weeks. 26 weeks for those at the executive level. So no matter how minor it may be, every little thing you teach an employee through onboarding will cut down on this time, meaning higher performance and better work sooner.
It’s simple: if you want your employees to engage with your company culture, have a better onboarding experience, and grow into their own as employees more quickly, you need to engage with them before and throughout the onboarding process. Even something as simple as a positive attitude can go a long way. If you engage your new hires during onboarding, you’re setting your employees up for better performance and a better experience.
For maximum employee engagement during your onboarding, get Click Boarding, the fastest, simplest solution for signing forms, learning culture, and mapping out an employee’s first day. Sign up for a demo today!
