Aside from welcoming new joiners, organizational onboarding serves the purpose of equipping new employees with all the information they need to succeed in the organization and their roles. Despite its obvious benefits, around 1 in 3 employers don’t have a structured onboarding process.
In this blog post, we’ll explore why onboarding matters, its components, and how it is done right.
Why Onboarding Matters?
The importance of onboarding to organizations cannot be underestimated. Onboarding plays a key role in ensuring the smooth sailing of new joiners, reducing time to optimal performance, and retaining the people you have worked hard to attract to your organization. Here are the top benefits of onboarding.
1. Increasing New Hire Performance
Research shows that effective onboarding can improve new employee productivity by 60%. It is simply easier for employees to reach optimal performance faster when they know the system, the people, what is expected of them, and how to get things done.
2. Increasing New Hire Retention
You will be surprised to know that 1 out of 5 new hires exits within the first 45 days of a new job. And what can help turn this around? Onboarding! The first couple of months on the job are the most critical to employee retention. This is the time when the new hire is still not fully committed and may be still getting offers from his recent job search. It is the time when you need to do the most to convince the new hire that they’ve made the right choice by choosing you.
3. Building Organizational Alignment
A successful onboarding program delivered consistently to all new hires ensures that all employees speak the same language. This can go a long way in ensuring smooth processes, frictionless operations, positive employee interactions, and, most importantly, a common organizational culture.
Components of an Effective Onboarding
Now that you know the importance of having a structured, consistent onboarding process, you need to know the main components that make the program successful.
1. Tools Allocation
One of the first things you need to do when an employee comes to the office on Day 1 is to ensure they have all the tools they need to get going with an early start. You need to provide the new hire with their station, laptop, accessories, wifi connection, email account, access cards, etc. as early on as possible. Moreover, you can even pump it up more by gifting the new hire a ‘welcome kit’ that may include more fun items, such as a mug with their name, pen, notebook, etc.
2. Compliance Training
There is no better time to provide the new hire with compliance training than when they are still fresh to the organization and not yet loaded with work. Compliance training may include code of conduct, information security, health & safety training, and much more.
3. Culture Orientation
Culture is one of the key components of any successful onboarding program. Your new hire needs to know about the organizational history, structure, vision, mission, values, catalyzing behaviors, principles, and artifacts. This helps set the tone for the new hire and accelerates their fitting in.
4. Job Orientation
A successful onboarding program also must contain an element of job orientation. In this part of the program, the new hire is introduced to their job role, description, KPIs, and, most importantly, performance expectations. This also includes visibility into the organizational objectives and how the new hire’s role fits in.
5. System Orientation
Most organizations today flaunt more than one system that they use to automate their work. They may have a system for HR processes, one for communication, one for procurement requests, another for project management, and many more. With such myriad systems and tools, it is important to ensure that before the end of the program, the new hire has gained access and knowledge of how to use all the tools needed for their role.
How to Get Onboarding Right?
Once you have a fully-fledged onboarding program that comprises all these main components, you can follow these general tips to implement the program successfully.
1. Use an onboarding checklist
An onboarding checklist goes a long way in helping you stay on top of things and keep organized. It ensures you don’t miss anything important, gives visibility to the new hire into their onboarding plan, and ensures buy-in if you require the new hire’s sign-off at the end.
2. Make it human
It is very important that you don’t get lost in the trees and miss the forest. After all, the new hire is probably overwhelmed and slightly worried. At every step of the way, ensure you connect the new hire with the ‘people’ who can help them with the topic at hand. It is also critical that you leverage the onboarding period to start the new hire’s relationship with their peers and manager on the right foot. You can even schedule a ‘meet & greet lunch’ with the team as part of the onboarding.
3. Measure effectiveness
You cannot improve what you don’t measure. Take the time to survey the new hire’s opinion at the end of the program to learn what went well and what needs improvement. A best practice related to measuring onboarding effectiveness is to also share an effectiveness survey three months post onboarding. This 90-day survey gives you indispensable insights into the effectiveness of your program because, unlike the former one, it is filled in with a deeper perspective from the new hire.
Digitize Your Onboarding Process
Do you believe like us that successful onboarding is important? If yes, you can always provide a seamless, digital onboarding experience to your new hires. Visit our talent management solutions to learn more.
