Use These Tips to Clean up Your Business’s Onboarding Process
Published on: Mar 5, 2019
A person’s first days, weeks and months on the job are a unique honeymoon period as a new employee acclimates to life at your company. In fact, this critical window of time can make or break the success of your hire.
- As reported by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 60 percent of a company’s workforce could be gone within four years of being hired, unless that organization has a formal onboarding process in place. On a positive note, companies with an engaging onboarding program retain 91 percent of their first-year hires.
- Workers who experience longer, more structured onboarding processes gain proficiency four times faster than those who go through more abbreviated programs. The first 90 days of employment are crucial to optimizing productivity, engagement and long-term retention.
Follow these guidelines on how to update your onboarding process:
Create a pre-employment guide and communication campaign.
You can – and should – begin engaging employees with your company even before their first day at work. In doing so, you greatly reduce their stress level and new job jitters.
- Provide access to your intranet site and other tools as soon as an offer is accepted. Give them a destination to find everything they need to know, including standard operating procedures, what technology your company uses, and even the most popular after-work hangouts.
Help new employees build connections.
A key aspect of your onboarding process should be strategic introductions to a new hire’s team members. Get them started on building the relationships and friendships they’ll need to thrive.
- Provide mentoring support. This gives new hires an additional layer of comfort in their role. A successful mentor/mentee relationship continues well past onboarding and provides an opportunity for ongoing learning and guidance.
- Consider forming a new hire affinity group where people can share experiences, ideas and problems. It’s important that employees bond with one another during their early days at your company – and their fellow newbies are the best people to understand what they’re going through.
Encourage managers to engage with new hires.
A new employee’s manager plays a leading role in their successful onboarding experience. In one study that traced 409 college graduates through their first two years on the job, the degree of supervisor rapport that people felt had significant implications for role clarity, satisfaction levels and even their salary over time.
- Ask managers to share department and team goals, key performance metrics and management style to help new hires understand priorities and know what to expect. Managers can deliver reminders, hold meetings with employees, and help measure new hire engagement. They should show a sincere interest in each individual, checking in frequently with them and talking about their aspirations and professional development opportunities.
Ask for feedback.
Without feedback data, you have no way to measure the success of your onboarding process. One of the best ways to garner input is to survey your new hires after one, six and 12 months have passed. Use survey data to pinpoint which aspects of your program are working and which could be improved or revamped. You may also want to consider external benchmarking of your competitors’ onboarding programs.
Partner with a staffing agency in Dallas, TX!
For all the tools and resources to create your winning employee onboarding process, contact the talent development experts at Frontline Source Group today. Put our powerhouse team to work as you build yours. To get in touch with our staffing service in Dallas, TX, click here. Contact us to find the branch nearest to you or read our related posts to learn more!
Category(ies): Blog