Importance of Onboarding: Why Your Business Needs a Strong Employee Onboarding Process
Do you want to reduce turnover and improve your new hires’ time for learning their role in your company? Onboarding can help you retain your new hires by making them more comfortable in their new position.
Onboarding can also eliminate paperwork, reduce problems and leave more time for training and socializing your new employees. Choosing the right onboarding program is important for making a good impression on new hires.
If you’ve experienced the costs of finding, attracting, hiring and training new employees prohibitive, it makes sense to develop a supportive onboarding process. Don’t underestimate the importance of onboarding for retaining top talent and growing your company.
This guide will show you how to tweak your onboarding process, so it’s more effective and keeps your new hires on track.
What Is Onboarding?
Onboarding is the program you use to assimilate your new hires into the workplace and company culture. It gives them the tools and training they need to succeed in their new role.
Onboarding begins before your new employees walk through the door and continue through the first year of employment. When you make your new hires feel welcomed and comfortable in their positions, the quicker they’ll become productive team members.
Benefits of Employee Onboarding
If you want to know why onboarding is important, these benefits will help convince you. Keep in mind that effective onboarding is more than what your new hires do the first day. It sets the tone for future job success.
Your new hires will experience the following benefits during the most crucial time of their employment:
- Set the tone for productivity and quality work
- Bridges the gap between recruitment and performance
- Heightens employee engagement
- Promotes communication
- Uses goal setting and development opportunities to improve performance
- Helps employee connect with your organization
- Ensures they understand their commitment to your company
- Understands your company’s commitment to them
- Sets accurate expectations before your new hire starts
- Aligns new hires with your company’s goals, values, objectives and culture
All of these onboarding benefits help your new hires feel more relaxed and stress-free in their new workplace.
Importance of Onboarding Process for Smooth Transitions
To be effective, onboarding has to be engaging and relevant. Your new employees need to walk away with a real appreciation about what your organization is all about. Employee onboarding builds loyalty and commitment, which results in retaining top talent.
Did you know that when your turnover rates increase, your other employees and their performance is at risk too? Also, it’s expensive.
To replace an employee, it can cost you as much as 50 to 60 percent of the employee’s yearly salary. That’s not to mention all the other costs involved in attracting and recruiting new talent.
If you have a great onboarding program, your new hires are more likely to stay with your company for the long-term. If you’re not sure how to go about starting your onboarding program, businesses like PowerHouse Hub use automation technologies to recruit and engage your employees throughout their employment in your company.
How to Go About It
By engaging your employees during their first year of employment, you can make a huge impact on the work they do for you. They’ll be more productive, loyal and positive. So, how do you make this happen?
The following tips for an onboarding experience that engage your new hires will ensure their success.
Connect Employees to Your Mission
When you’re interviewing potential hires, make sure you emphasize what matters to your company. Help them understand what their role will be within your business.
Congratulate Them on Joining Your Team
On top of giving your new employees information on what they need to get started with the new job, congratulate them on making the choice to join your company. This helps build personal relationships that make a big difference in positive employee experiences.
Say, “Hello”
It’s important to take some time just to say, “hello” to your new hires before they start their daily activities. This makes them feel appreciated and welcomed. Here are a few ways you and your staff can welcome new hires:
- Hold a “meet and greet”
- Assign a mentor or buddy to make orientation easier
- Ask about personal interests
- Enlist new hires in community projects, social events and team competitions
- Invite new employees to lunch
- All of these welcoming events establish your positive company culture and make your new hires feel important.
Communicate Early and Often
For successful onboarding, you should maintain communication and support with your new hires from when they accept your offer up to their first day on the job.
Interacting during this period is essential to prevent your competitors from swooping in. When this happens, it can make your new hires think twice about whether to stay with you.
Go Over Administrative Policies
Although going over policies and procedures isn’t the most exciting part of onboarding, it has to be done. Ensure that your new hires understand their job description, and what’s expected of them. This is also the time to have them enroll in your benefits plan.
It’s also a good idea to discuss management styles and go over your training programs. Providing an employee directory helps acclimate new hires, as well.
Set Clear Goals
Setting milestones and goals helps your new employees feel challenged. It gives them an objective and motivates them to attain the goals you set.
Keep track of their progress for two months and recognize their accomplishments in front of your other team members. Once they’ve progressed through the first 60 days, work with them to develop a plan for the next two months.
Determine the type of training they’ll need, offer them insights and give them new challenges to meet.
Celebrate Year One
After your new hires reach the one-year mark, celebrate. By this time, they’ve added value to your company and aligned themselves with your company culture.
This is the time to give them recognition either verbally or with a gift. Recognize their accomplishments and value, letting them know you made a good choice when you hired them.
Avoid Turnover with an Effective Onboarding Program
Since the cost of turnover for each of your employees is so expensive, you should pay close attention to improving your onboarding process. Follow these tips for assimilating and engaging your new hires from before they start to their one-year anniversary.
You can see the importance of onboarding when your new hires are glad they accepted your job offer after one-year of employment. Remember that onboarding is a continual process of engaging and communicating during your new hires’ first year.
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