The association between onboarding and employee retention is a very strong but often forgotten one as companies prefer to finish the onboarding quickly instead of investing too much time in it. Brandon Hall Group found that establishing a strategy on how to improve the onboarding process at your company can boost employee retention by 82 percent and Bamboo HR determined that employees who have a good onboarding experience are 18 times more committed to their employers. Staggering as these statistics are, only 12 percent of employees actually believe that their company offers a good onboarding experience according to TeamStage. If your company is suffering from poor attrition rates and you’re wondering about the best ways to retain employees, then supporting your new hire from day one with a good onboarding process might be key.
Your onboarding process is your introduction to a new champion of your organization—do not take it lightly. (Image credit – Freepik)
Onboarding and Employee Retention: What Do These Terms Mean?
Before we get into a detailed breakdown of how best to hold onto employees, it is important to understand, in detail, what these two concepts are. Onboarding and employee retention might sound like simplistic concepts but this causal dismissal of the terms is why so many of us get our strategies wrong.
What Is Employee Onboarding?
Employee onboarding refers to the period after hiring when the employee is initiated to their role at their new organization. Depending on the company, the onboarding period can vary, but a week is often a minimum that many employers set to give employees a good idea of their new job role. Bamboo HR reports that onboarding should extend to at least 3 months to ensure the new employee is able to comfortably fit into an organization. That might sound excessive for many organizations that believe employees will be able to “learn on the job” easily. While they aren’t wrong and a lot of learning does happen naturally with practices, in many cases, employees learn strategy incorrectly, pick up poor habits, and undergo considerable stress trying to find direction on their own.
Even employees with considerable past experiences with the specific job role might struggle to complete tasks at a new organization simply because the methodologies are different, the departments are new to them, the company stylesheets and strategies remain unfamiliar, and an overall sense of uncertainty prevails over their time at work. It is obvious that under such circumstances, with no way to address these issues, an employee might remain disconnected from their new job even months after they join it. Companies need to learn how to improve their onboarding process to minimize these struggles.
For this reason, it is essential to understand that employee onboarding doesn’t just mean re-explaining their job role to them. Onboarding begins right after hiring when they submit necessary documents and join in on their first day, till the time they are fully settled into their role and comfortable with leading their work independently. It is not a one-time meeting but an ongoing process that takes time and energy.
What Is Employee Retention?
Employee retention refers to the process of holding on to existing workers and maintaining the population of the existing workforce. When a company hires a new worker, they spend resources to train and acclimatize the employee to the job role with the hope that the employee will continue to remain productive in their role for a few years at the least. Many companies boast of employees who have stayed at their jobs for multiple years because it remains a matter of pride that the employee would choose to remain at an organization. This is quite difficult to achieve, however, as employees will always have to look out for their individual growth and move out from an organization that does not support this need.
According to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), 3 to 4.5 million employees quit their jobs every month in the U.S. When employees begin to quit frequently, employers will have to invest considerable amounts of money to hire a replacement and retrain them all over again. Poor employee retention numbers might even make new employees reluctant to join the organization. As such, employee retention is an important matter and understanding the relationship between onboarding and employee retention can be the key to the cause.
How to Improve the Onboarding Process
If you’re still here then it is likely that you’re wondering how to increase employee retention and keep your employees satisfied with their work at your company. In that case, reviewing your current onboarding process and making improvements can be a great place to start. Here are some of the ways you can take care of onboarding and employee retention.
Reduce the Number of Admin Tasks
A major reason why we struggle to understand how to improve the onboarding process is that we look at it incorrectly. Document submissions, handing in referrals, and filling in employee forms are an obvious part of the routine and necessary for the employee record to be up-to-date. The problem arises when these tasks take up all of the time allotted for onboarding and employees are then rushed into their roles once complete. Sapling HR found that 58 percent of organizations reportedly focus their onboarding efforts mainly on processes and paperwork. Such systems are inefficient almost all the time, as employees are left tired of admin tasks and then rushed into responsibilities unprepared.
It can be a good idea to review the admin tasks that are included in the onboarding process and then streamline them efficiently so that documents and records that can be combined or done away with are treated accordingly. Automation and technology can help with data extraction from resumes instead of having to fill them out manually, and these tasks can also be spaced out over the week while other onboarding and training takes place.
Onboarding is Not Just a HR Responsibility
The HR team oversees both onboarding and employee retention so their role in the process is undeniable but they are not the only ones in charge. The HR team will be required to handle the administrative tasks and be the first face the employee sees when they join a company. From going over the company rules, regulations, and policies, to introducing them to the rest of the team, the HR manager needs to be a constant presence for the first few weeks at least. However, the actual manager and team members of the new employee need to step up and be of assistance as well.
The manager should be actively involved in providing instructions with a dedicated focus on onboarding and employee retention at every step. They should be able to look at tasks and break down all the resources the employee might need to get it done, from providing access to databases to addressing where to find a specific department relevant to their tasks. They should also be open to answering questions and encouraging curiosity in the employee.
Team members of the new employee should also consider how to contribute to and improve the onboarding process, thinking back to what they might have wanted on their first days at work. New hires will likely be more comfortable asking them questions rather than the boss. Inviting the new employee to lunch, encouraging conversation, introducing them to the rest of the team, giving them a summary of ongoing projects, etc. are simple ways in which existing employees can help the new hire settle in. Building such a supportive work culture is among the best ways to retain employees.
Set Simple Goals: How to Improve Onboarding Process
Joining a new company is difficult in more ways than one and being unsure of your responsibilities can be very demotivating. According to Urban Bound, 60 percent of businesses ignore goal setting for new employees. Employees are often assigned a few tasks straightaway with a few basic instructions, but with no way to assess whether they’re doing them right until they finish, they might find their manager wondering why they were hired at all. Their performance might falter not because they are bad at what they do but likely because they are unsure of the goal of the process, the intermediate steps to get there, and the company’s internal preference.
Set daily and weekly goals to aid in the onboarding process so the employee can get settled in through a structured approach. The first few days could revolve around getting to know the team, the office, and the clients that the company works with. The next few days could have goals pertaining to familiarizing the employee with all the technology used at the organization. Goals over time could involve reviewing past projects at the company or the expectations for future ones. It might sound like a slow process but if you really want to know how to improve the onboarding process, you might have to be patient with it.
Make a Good First Impression: How to Increase Employee Retention
We all understand that one of the best ways to retain employees is to have a good company culture. This culture needs to be established from day one of the onboarding process so employees can get a good sense of where they fit in. Among all the other onboarding procedures, help employees understand the benefits they enjoy from their work at the organization. Explain PTO policies, office lunches, team-building ventures, and introduce existing employee resource groups and let the employee feel welcome within the office space.
Do not try to mislead them into thinking there are opportunities where they aren’t as employees will not enjoy being lied to. Be honest about the work hours or other limitations in the organization but also introduce what kind of compensation they might receive for these drawbacks. Urban Bound suggests providing employees with hyperlocal information about the workplace and the city to truly help people who just arrived in town to settle in better. From information on the best restaurants close to work to where they can stock up on supplies, new employees will sincerely appreciate their companies looking out for them. This is a key element in the relationship between onboarding and employee retention.
If you are serious about working out how to increase employee retention, then caring about the needs and interests of your employees has to come first. This consideration should be evident right from your onboarding process to ensure that employees don’t keep looking for a new job after a disappointing first week at work. Considering the amount of time in a day that is spent on work-related activities, adding unnecessary stress and confusion to the mix can only serve to push employees away. Now is as good a time as ever to sit down and take a good look at the process of onboarding and employee retention at your organization.