Employee Onboarding for Success

There are a lot of challenges that HR professionals have to deal with, one of which is the complexities of employee onboarding. You need hard-working, experienced and talented employees. Simply, it’s a struggle to find the right people to fill positions and there is a lot riding on finding the right person for a job. Even after spending a lot of time trying to find the right individual, this all becomes a pointless task if a candidate backs out. Luckily, having a defined employee onboarding process can make a significant difference.

Businesses tend to treat hiring and onboarding as two separate processes, but they are strongly linked. With candidates getting their first experience of your business during the hiring process, onboarding really does start the moment they submit a job application.

Employee Preboarding and Onboarding

If you want to keep recent hires engaged and satisfied at work, you need to put an employee preboarding and onboarding process in place. This is the process of integrating new hires into the business and familiarising them with everything they need to know. Onboarding should include letting an employee know what they will be doing every day, what to expect from the workplace culture and introducing them to other members of the team. It’s also a good idea to share any relevant business policies and stakeholder information.

With an effective onboarding process, you could improve your new hire retention by 82%, but it’s something that 67% of businesses are lacking. It’s also thought that a subpar employee onboarding process could be one of the main reasons as to why 28% of candidates leave a new job within 90 days of starting.

What to Include in Employee Onboarding

The more thorough and detailed the onboarding process, the better. Share information about the business’s mission, values and culture. Let a new hire know what the role will entail, who they will be working with and what you expect of employees. If they have any specific responsibilities or if there are any weekly meetings, let them know. This will help a new employee to feel welcomed, prepared and ready for their new job.

With an increasing number of workers opting for remote and hybrid setups, your employee onboarding process needs to be centred around technology. There are a lot of elements of the onboarding process that can be automated, and this benefits you and your employees. They will spend less time going through paperwork, enabling them to focus on settling into the workplace and meeting the team. As an employer, you can benefit from increased staff retention, which is boosted by being effective onboarding. Simply, if an employee is happy at work, they are more likely to stay for the long haul.

The key to effective employee onboarding is to start early and to involve everyone,  not just the HR team. From the moment a candidate is offered the job, managers and colleagues can help a new recruit to become a fully integrated part of the team.