The Importance of Onboarding
You’ve done it! You found the right candidate, you made an offer, they accepted, and they are scheduled to start training. What could possible go wrong from here? I wrote an article about the importance of Offer Lettersand what they convey to the candidate. The message in this article will be similar: just because they accepted, doesn’t mean they have bought in. I have spoken to enough candidates who recently accepted a position but have told me, “This job is good enough, but I want to stay in touch because I’ll be looking again soon.” When I ask why, it always comes down to the offer they received (see above link) or due to a lack of onboarding and/or training. For today, we will focus on onboarding.
“Onboarding is a prime opportunity for employers to win the hearts and minds of new employees. Don’t waste it, experts say.” This quote is taken from a 2017 SHRM article written about the importance of onboarding. Many will misconstrue the hiring experience from the candidate perspective and believe that they are in a honeymoon period, so overjoyed to be joining a new organization. No, the honeymoon period was during the interview. When both sides determined that they liked each other enough to form a relationship. The onboarding process is the first days of living together, where the rubber hits the road, reality sets in, or whatever trope you prefer.
Taking a new job is emotional, stressful, exciting, disruptive, and time-consuming. How is my new company helping with that? Harvard Business Review reports that 53% of new hires feel undertrained after onboarding. What’s worse, that number climbs to 63% for remote workers and 66% for employees of small businesses. What’s scarier is that 50% of new hires plan to leave their job “soon.” As I noted above, I hear this frequently. However, that same article states that 51% of employees reported that they would go “above and beyond” if they had received better onboarding.
Onboarding is a team effort. Your boss and coworkers know your job better than anyone else: make sure the responsibilities are clear and the new hire feels welcomed. Establish metrics and a clear understanding of KPI’s. HR should know the organization better than anyone: make sure new hires clearly understand the lay of the land, who you go to for what, what resources are available, what benefits are available, etc. Follow up is critical: nothing feels worse than empty promises or disingenuous interest from your employer. If they are all in on day one and then you don’t hear from them again, all the onboarding work will fall apart.
It is important to put a plan in place, to assess it for each position within the company, establish checks and balances, to follow up, and to always work towards improvement. If you are wondering why employee tenures continue to drop, onboarding may be the prime culprit.
