YOUR ORGANIZATION’S FATE IS HOSTAGE TO YOUR ONBOARDING PROGRAM
YOUR ORGANIZATION’S FATE IS HOSTAGE TO YOUR ONBOARDING PROGRAM
The recruitment funnel is distressingly coarse and overlong – no arguments there. It’s only instinctual to get thrilled and ultimately unwind upon seeing the light at the end of the tunnel – upon having hired a high-caliber top talent. However, your job here is not done. The tunnel has reached its finale, but the journey has not ended yet. To put it precisely, if you are not careful post-recruitment, you will see recruits prematurely heading for exits. We need to take meticulous steps to stave off this nightmare and convert star players into successful longer-term employees – steps that are carefully taken to augment the candidates’ experience during onboarding.
Never Forget the Numbers – Onboarding Stats To Keep Close in 2022
Organizations worldwide continue to wrestle with the perpetual employee retention problem and the costly impact of top-employees turnover – ?Human Capital Resources’ Onboarding Retention Whitepaper reveals that up to 20% of new hires leave within the first forty-five days of employment. These organizations also claim to have put an extensive onboarding program in place. It’s almost funny then that about 58% of these organizations base their onboarding program on processes and paperwork – well, any seasoned veteran would label that as red-tapism and not precisely an onboarding program.
Research suggests that 69% of employees will stay for at least three years if you nail your onboarding program. Mind you, experiences and numbers only point towards one thing here, a tailored employee onboarding program directly impacts employee engagement, excellence, and turnover. If that does not push you to brush up on your onboarding experience, I am sure the next round of numerical evidence (which I have already discussed in a preceding article) would.
The Whitepaper also reveals that 78% of the organizations that invest in onboarding programs report an evident increase in revenue. 64% saw positive gains in most of their organizational KPIs, and 54% saw significant gains in employee engagement. Another study (see, numerous studies pointing towards one thing only) published by Aberdeen Group shows that if a company has an effective onboarding program and retention experience, then it is likely to experience 2.5 times the revenue growth and 1.9 times the profit margin of companies who have constructed these two critical areas little amiss. The same study associates first performance milestones and retention of employees with the company’s strong onboarding program. However, companies with a poor onboarding program could only retain 30% of their new employees by the end of the year, with only 17% meeting their first milestones on time. Why does it happen? Let’s see it from the employees’ perspective.?
Top-tier Employees’ POV: “Were the Claims in The EVP a Hoax?”
You oversold during the whole recruitment process, and now you have stopped. During the onboarding period, your new hire is gauging the level of your commitment to your Employee Value Proposition and feels disappointed. You must realize that every employee goes through a process of organizational-socialization – the process by which they become accustomed to being in your organization, a mechanism through which recruits acquire the required knowledge, competencies, and behavior to be of value to the organization.?
The organizations classified as the absolute best, focus broadly on this phenomenon – they build their onboarding programs across the dimensions that focus on organizational socialization. The ones with less effective onboarding programs focus more on the administrative processes in their onboarding design.?
To successfully embark your recruits on the journey of organizational socialization, make sure that you fix your onboarding program to include the factors we will discuss shortly.?
Honeymoon effect – emotional rise and dips of new hires?
Onboarding is a matter of emotions. This tip-off from Christian Harpelund’s prestigious publication – Onboarding: Getting New Hires off to a Flying Start – has been the onboarding mantra for me.? It only strengthens the idea that onboarding should primarily be about the recruits, their emotions, and expectations. When a new hire starts their job, there is a predictable curve going from high to low to high again in terms of their emotional experience of the onboarding,? as ventilated by Harpelund. He calls this the honeymoon effect. The new hires come with bursting energy, emotions, and excitement, which generally takes a dip within the first three months. During these months, recruits learn about their jobs, roles, culture, etc. If their expectations are not met at this point, star players will not hesitate to exit the building as their hope and drive are eroded. Why am I discussing it here? These emotional dips and the energy dips are evident. As a manager, you must keep a close eye on these dips. If it happens in the second month of their employment, you must take it as a hint that the onboarding activities should intensify.?
Time to Start Onboarding – But How??
Now having convinced you both, subjectively and objectively, how important the onboarding process is; let’s dive right into HOW you can ensure that your onboarding process is on point.?
Open the channels of communication for your star candidate during the post-offer acceptance phase to make them feel welcomed. This is when the employee-to-be has not yet set his feet on the premises of your organization but has already signed the offer. Send them a welcome mailer with a brief history of your company and its values. Give them access to your employee portal to fill out logistic details if they want, sign up for key card access, etc. but do not bombard them with red-tapism - you do not want to drive them away.?
领英推荐
Onboarding should be systematic and smooth. Speaking from experience, companies can benefit significantly from project management and Kanban software such as Fusioo, Paymo, Workzone, or any preferred software to create a template that illustrates all the steps involved in the onboarding process. You can create a To-do list and check-lists card through which the new hires can easily tally their performance against a given goal. These premade templates would give them a sense of purpose, all the while lowering their first-day anxiety.?
From the first step of the recruitment to the day, your new employee sits on their seat in the office; make sure that they know what the role demands and your expectations. On the first day, you must bring them to speed vis-à-vis employment demands, your company’s competition and customers, the product, and budget-related constraints. Tell them what’s tolerable in their new role and what is not. Everything has to be precise but not sternly set out at this point.
A meeting between top executives and top-tier new hires of your organization is almost symbolic. Such a meeting is a convincing gesture that the new employee is an important priority. The hiring manager must make sure that the directors meet with all the recruits and deliver them the whole story of your organization’s foundation and the key moments that built up the company. Many companies tend to leverage video technology to make their top executives present quickly. Some small companies prefer to make these meetings more memorable by ritually indulging the recruits and the directors in a game of their preferred sport. It’s up to you how you want this interaction to happen, but remember, keep it fun, not stern.?
?The “top-ten companies to work for” that everyone so inquisitively googles are those companies that quickly plunge into action, including Facebook or Meta these days. The sooner the star candidates feel contributing, the more confident they feel that they have availed themselves of the right opportunity. And guess what? More chances of their retention by the end of the year (you may need to look back at the study by Aberdeen Group which we discussed above). Remember how we once discussed how a star employee constantly needs his ego stroked? This is one of those things. Make sure they feel needed as soon as possible, but do not expect them to blast out of the building the very first day either.?
Allow them to be brutally honest with you. They are looking for it. Arrange a one-on-one check-in by the end of the first week and then by the end of the first month to ask them if they are settling well and if the company is living up to their expectations—no harm in taking suggestions as well. You can ask them the following questions and a “no” or any hesitation while answering these - and you would know what it implies. Perhaps, if you detect the cause early, you can also fix it.?
Your new candidates need what we call “onboarding buddy” in the recruitment jargon. Their buddy could give them their first tour around the company, introduce them to the rest of the team, have lunch with them to break the ice. This buddy would be someone they could turn to in case of any confusion or queries. Senior management also needs to introduce this new star employee to all the stakeholders. Remember, if you make them feel socially accepted, it is highly likely that they will stick (not my opinion, but a statistically proven fact).?
What Next? Success!
Success. Having read the word must have instantly surged your happy hormones (let’s not get into the scientific names here, we have to leave something to the medical professionalstoo). As important as the above-mentioned essential onboarding tips we have discussed in the article are, equally important is for your organization to have the necessary competencies in place to deliver the onboarding experience. You must carefully train and appoint people in specific roles: the buddy, the mentor, the emotional support (because it is not just the direct manager who will ‘caretake’ the new hires). What follows then? Success.?