The onboarding process shapes a new employee's future at an organisation. It can make or break whether new staff have job longevity or on the contrary, whether the company has a high turnover of employees. Only 29% of employees say they were adequately prepared for their new role, leaving plenty of room for improvement in introductory processes.
In summary, this article is a crash course for employers to ensure their company’s onboarding processes are successful. An in depth analysis of how a company can ensure job retention through mentoring, training, work place culture to name a few, are explored below.
Onboarding is the process of getting new hires to an organisation, trained and up to speed. It involves learning about the organisation's structure, vision, values and corporate culture. The process can be as short as a few days but can be months, depending on the role.
Not to be confused with orientation as the onboarding process is extensive, involves upper management and can last for an employee’s first year of employment. Whilst orientation is a key component of onboarding, it only serves a small part of the overall process.
The process helps serve as the building block for a new employee's success. Employee onboarding that simply involves lots of form filling and a quick tour around the office isn’t enough to truly captivate an employees aspiration to develop and prove their skillset. When a new hire first enters the company, they are impressionable, it’s essential to make sure they have a positive, engaging and invigorating experience.
Effective onboarding can improve productivity, increase engagement, create a great working environment, better employee retention and get employees productive earlier.
The initial introduction is vital to shaping an employee's experience. It influences if they stay for a long time with the company and their overall experience. Reasons for this outcome are discussed below.
Gallup recently came out with a study that showed only 12% of employees feel that their companies had a good onboarding process. Whilst extremely low, 12% were three times more likely to say they had the best job. Ultimately being more engaged.
Repeated studies have shown a link between engagement and productivity. A great onboarding experience serves as an opportunity to further engagement by:
Harbouring a captivating and successful onboarding process enables employees to be successful quicker. It ensures new employees have the proper support, mentorship and training around them to be effective at their job. In addition, new recruits will understand the company vision and can sculpt their learning and development around that.
Having a high turnover rate can be extremely costly. Retaining an employee is more cost-effective than hiring a new one. Having great onboarding processes helps decrease staff turnover and consequently staff have higher job satisfaction and long term goals within the company.
Giving new hires a clear vision of where the company will be in the future, their role in that growth and how the organisation values them leads them to stay for longer. When employees feel valued and their work is recognised, it creates a great starting point for their growth.
Whilst all organisation and onboarding processes are different, there are essential steps to that must be included. Revealed below are the onboarding activities and processes that have high success rates:
This step is not always administered, but organisations foster it to make new hires excited about their new role. This first step would be enacted after the job offer letter is sent but before the employee’s first day. Below are the essential steps of pre-boarding:
Typically conducted over a few days, this is the more formal part of the process. It involves signing paperwork, completing mandatory and compliance training, understanding the organisation values, and more.
Through the whole onboarding process, you must consistently convey the following:
This information most likely won’t be retained in the first few weeks, so has to be continually conveyed. Studies have shown that it can take up to a year for an employee to truly retain these company initiatives.
Successful companies adopt well-thought out mentoring systems. These are used to support the employee going through the onboarding process, enhance their understanding of expectations and help show a path to success.
Not only conducted by senior management, but existing employees on the same level can also provide a more relatable mentoring experience as they have gone through the same system.
The mentorships can range in length from 1 week to one year, depending on the complexity of the job at hand.
A less common, although necessary, part of a training program is reboarding. This is where employees who have left the organisation for an extended time are updated on changes in culture, relationships and changes in expectations. Harboring this step enables employees to reconnect with their teams and work towards the company goals.
Whilst in some way all staff should be involved in the onboarding process, there should be roles and responsibilities to create action and have accountability. Below is a guide for who should be involved and their functions:
Will deal with all of the new employee paperwork and administration, gives a tour of the premises and convey the corporate history.
One of the primary roles of the department in the onboarding process is sculpting learning pathways. Ultimately formulating what forms of training new employees receive.
Responsible for introductions to team members, conveying behaviours, expectations, and responsibilities.
Showcasing how the team works, how they get their jobs are done, and other nuances and dynamics of their work.
The executive team will deliver the overall picture of the company. The values, visions and goals that they wish the newly onboarded to emulate.
The mentor will answer questions, give advice and review rules and procedures.
With advancements in technology, there are multiple modes in which onboarding training can be delivered.
The old way of onboarding refers to manual and labour intensive. It involves many email chains to coordinate meetings and in-person training at designated hours and utilises a lot of senior management time. With training being all face to face, this delivery mode wasn’t trackable and there was no guarantee that information had been delivered correctly or retained by the new employee.
With the advancements in technology, organizations can utilise LMS systems to help them effectively manage, deliver and track the onboarding process. Consistent and engaging training is conveyed through e learning, and face to Face meetings and revision tests can be scheduled and delivered through events tools.
The training team can extensively track the onboarding process and see its effectiveness through real-time reporting. Using intuitive authoring tools allows training administrators to customise learning pathways which lean into the new recruits learning style, creating better engagement.
New employee training packs can be automatically sent to ensure the delivery of a consistent message and company values can be induced through different digital formats accessible on laptops or mobile devices.
An organisation’s onboarding system shouldn’t remain static for a long time. It should be fluid and able to adapt to organisational and market changes. There are several management metrics that training providers need to be aware of:
The training program must have time goals for each position to get up to speed. Largely swayed by the onboarding process, it’s a key indicator to see if any tweaks to your system need to be made.
Evaluate your new hires after a year and whether they’re still with the organisation or not. Training administrators can then link this finding back to which onboarding program they were under.
Conduct surveys for the company’s new starts throughout their first year. This assist to harness truthful feedback that might not be received face to face. Surveys can also help to attain the opinions of mentors and other stakeholders in the on boarding process.
Engagement is shown in the work an employee is producing. If they are performing well they are likely to be engaged and on the contrary, poor performance is evidence of disengaged employees.
Training providers should gather a group of new hires and acquire feedback about their experience. This can yield interesting insight into areas the process can improve. Specifically, using open-ended questions can help open up conversation in this scenario.
myAko is the powerful learning management system (LMS) that makes delivering, controlling and tracking onboarding easy. The intuitive and customisable learning pathways deliver engaging new employee training that is personalised to them. Training administrators can Create new employee packs and easily automate the training process. Furthermore, using the events features, allows meetings to be scheduled with mentors (on or offline) and much more.
Data acquisition is a huge benefit of using myAko to deliver and track onboarding. imyAko’s real-time reporting features assist to keep training materials tidy and trackable. Training administratos can evaluate how new employees are progressing, where they could improve and results of knowledge tests. In addition, feedback surveys can be instantly sent out on course completion, with answers stored locally.
New hires can be set multiple courses as myAko offers access to over 2000+ courses in different formats that cater to many learning styles such as audio, audiovisual and logical.
Get hands-on with the powerful tool by speaking to the myAko team here.
One of the team is ready to show you how everything works and answer any questions you might have!
Choose a Time Slot
Join Zoom Call
45 Minute Demo
Ask Questions
