How to Revolutionize Retention With 360° Feedback

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The ongoing talent scarcity is one of HR’s biggest challenges in 2022.?However, for organizations that are successfully able to recruit candidates in today’s job market, it’s important to remember that an employee’s journey doesn’t end once they sign their job offer letter. It’s critical that new hires have a great onboarding experience, one that effectively transitions them into their new role and makes them want to stick around in the long run.

A Glassdoor survey found that companies with effective onboarding can increase retention by 82% and productivity by more than 70%. Another survey revealed that 64% of employees are likely to leave a new job within their first year after having a poor onboarding experience. Other negative effects of poor onboarding include lower morale and engagement and a lack of trust in the organization.?

As important as onboarding is, it’s not the only step of the employee journey that can impact turnover and other key business outcomes. There’s also the pre-boarding or pre-hire phase, the post-hire work experience, and exit processes. However, new research from SkillSurvey reveals that most organizations are missing out on opportunities to collect valuable feedback at all of these touchpoints.

Amidst the ongoing talent shortage, companies can no longer afford to have a subpar onboarding program or employee experience. Gathering the right data at the right times can help businesses make informed decisions that can improve both engagement and retention. In today’s article, I’ll discuss what types of feedback to focus on and how this can benefit employers. I’ll also provide some helpful tips to make the feedback collection process easier and more effective.

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Why you should be collecting feedback during the pre-boarding phase:

Pre-hire employee feedback can help companies tailor their onboarding program. Most people believe that the best time to start collecting feedback is after a new team member has settled into their position. However, this leaves a great deal of potential data untapped. Gathering insights during the pre-hire period can help companies personalize the next step of the employee journey — onboarding. And this could make a big difference since SkillSurvey found that 35% of employers struggle to tailor onboarding to individual needs.

Pre-hire feedback from references on candidates’ strengths and areas of improvement can guide employers on specific areas to address. This is one of the major values of having a detailed reference feedback report. Employers can use this information to address any candidate shortcomings and set new hires up for greater success. In fact, taking this approach has been proven to reduce first-year turnover and it can uncover (and help people improve) the critical soft skills that are needed in many of today’s roles.?

And let me know your thoughts in the comments below — how is your company leveraging feedback from employees and other key stakeholders to boost retention?

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