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Is Your Employee Onboarding Process Failing? Here's How You Can Fix It

Written by Amin Fard | Mar 19, 2022 3:40:00 PM

Download the comprehensive Employee Onboarding Checklist by Dr. Talya Bauer — start making your onboarding process easier today

Introduction

According to Gallup only 12% of new hires state that their company does a good job of onboarding.

Ouch.

That number is abysmal, and it points to a much deeper problem.

Most organizations are leaving a lot of money on the table by not having an effective employee onboarding process in place.

If you're struggling with your current onboarding process (or lack thereof), don't worry — you're not alone.

In this post, I'll explore some of the common reasons why onboarding processes fail and offer some tips on how you can fix them.

Why Some New Hires Fail During Onboarding While Others Succeed

We spend a lot of time and resources on finding the perfect new person for our company.

Yet paradoxically, a lot of companies invest minimally when it comes to the onboarding experience of their future employees once the contract is signed.

We think of the recruiting process as nature and the onboarding process as nurture.

A person you hire comes with a certain “nature”, experience, capabilities, and personal skills, but the onboarding experience is where we have an opportunity to nurture the person into our culture, mindset or a given skill set/and role.

Both are equally important for a successful employee onboarding program, so let’s have a look at how to overcome the challenges of mastering both areas.

The employee onboarding process in most organizations has for too long been overlooked and outdated or left to local managers or a busy HR department with no one really owning the onboarding process.

"Death by PowerPoint" during new hire orientation day or sending an onboarding checklist to hiring managers once and hoping they follow it years later, often results in employee retention issues and staff turnover. 

How To Overcome The Challenge Of Remote Onboarding

Finding good ‘employee-to-job fit’ is more difficult than ever in the current climate where so much employee communications have moved online to platforms like Teams, Zoom, or Workplace by Facebook.

Put yourself in the shoes of the new employee to remember the anticipation, nerves, and loneliness most new hires experience when entering a new organization.

Such emotions are only heightened in a world where it’s more difficult to meet face-to-face and interact with others during your first time in a new job.

Now more than ever the nurture part of hiring is critical to ensure successful employee onboarding, and happy employees.

But what does nurturing look like in a virtual world?

Most companies already have digital learning platforms and one-size-fits-all e-learning systems, however, many such systems fail to meet the needs and expectations of today’s incoming employees.

Science-based Onboarding is More Important Than Ever

According to Dr. Talya Bauer Phd, the foremost authority on employee onboarding who authored the widely used 5 C’s (and now 6) of Onboarding, for new hires onboarding is so much more than the paperwork or the Compliance.

It is vital for the socialization of people in the Culture, building meaningful Connections, developing employee Confidence, and Clarification throughout the onboarding process.

Checkback is the latest addition to her framework, and it is all about listening to the new hires and continuously improving the experience over time.

Your Employee Onboarding Process is Failing – Here is Why

Companies that lack a structured and science-based onboarding process perform worse on important metrics like employee engagement, time to productivity.

According to survey results from staffing agency Robert Half & Associates 22% of new hires that quit, do so within the first 45 days.

Even more critical is the turnover in deskless and hourly workforce where a study by Krauss, A. D. (2010) showed that 50% of hourly workers quit within 120 first days.

According to SHRM, 69 percent of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experienced great onboarding experience.

Clearly, it hurts the bottom line to leave your employee onboarding to chance.

Inconsistent onboarding process or a ‘sink or swim’ mindset for your new hires has never worked well.

But in today’s landscape, this type of approach to onboarding can be detrimental and may result in new hires feeling overwhelmed and alone.

This is especially true for experienced hires who in such circumstances come to miss the safety net of co-workers to lean on from previous jobs.

The Onboarding Experience Is At An All-Time Low

Through our research of recent new hires who had recently started their new job in restaurants, call centers, and offices, we learned that employee onboarding experience is at an all-time low due to social distancing and work from home.

You too have probably experienced that onboarding employees are much harder with the recent changes in how we work and interact.

A significant part of onboarding happens by people interacting with each other.

With many employees working from home or being onboarded remotely, we need more standardized onboarding processes that take each new employee through one, consistent and engaging onboarding experience that motivates the new employee, and ensures they are seen and properly followed upon by others.

This way we can build productive employees who instantly feel as if they are part of the organization.

There's no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to employee onboarding - just download our free checklist, and get started with a tried-and-true process that's guaranteed to set your new hires up for success.

The Good News

A poor onboarding process is not affecting turnover in the new hire's first months as much as it was before the pandemic.

Employees and the organizations know they are in strange times.

Expectations of onboarding today are low.

At the same time, this is also an opportunity to go above and beyond to improve your new employee experience.

It doesn’t have to be costly.

Sending a new employee welcome kit from their co-worker or meeting their manager and co-workers for a Zoom- lunch on the first day are examples of small efforts that can make a big impact when expectations are low.

The Bad News

Poor onboarding experiences often boils down to simple things like failure to assign responsibility for a new hire’s success.

Managers don’t know what to do or are too busy.

HR also lags behind in terms of adapting and upgrading onboarding processes to ensure they are in line with today’s expectations and organizational needs.

The outcome is that new employees often are left to their own devices, trying to navigate new territory with no clear map or guidance.

Three key areas that are hurting organizations due to bad remote onboarding:

Unproductive new hires, and time spent getting them up to speed

  • New hires spend a lot of time doing nothing of value or sitting alone with no work to do. 
  • New hires struggle to find help to get work done because they don’t know who to speak with.
  • New hires leaving a bad customer service experience for end customers in the first weeks and months without anyone being there to give them feedback and training

New hires failing and feeling unhappy at work

  • New hires don’t feel a sense of accomplishment due to a lack of on the job learning and support.
  • Finding it hard to succeed at work while feeling like a failure goes both ways, employees feel it, and managers say they made the wrong decision as the person is not independent enough to succeed.
  • New hire work on things that do not result in tangible results for the organization and not directed towards long term success

Culture and employee engagement

  • Lack of community, connection, and socialization for new hires. 
  • A bad start when it comes to culture leads to bad habits that the person will bring with them throughout their life span at an organization.
  • A poor start leads to bad habits that the person will bring with them throughout their life span at an organization.

Lack of clarification, confidence, and connection

  • Recruiters and hiring managers are not good at clarifying the situation, how the company works, and what is expected of the new hires to succeed. Extra important in these different pandemic times.
  • Building confidence is the key to ensuring onboarding success. Small simple tasks that new hires can do on their own have been forgotten and managers have been busier. This leaves new hires with no work or work they are not able to do.
  • Connection is lacking as employees are not feeling like part of their team, do not know about (or believe in) the company mission. This usually happens when they have not been properly introduced to their new co-workers and the company story in the pre-boarding and first weeks on the job.

Quick Pro Tips for Great New Employee Onboarding

Automation is key

HR and hiring managers should not spend their time sending a lot of information manually to each new hire in order to give them the best onboarding experience.

Without clear and timely communication onboarding often fails.

Sending the right message at the right time and doing so automatically is the secret to success.

According to the internal communication company, Poppulo 50% of management emails are not opened by people that work behind a desk and 70% of emails are not opened in deskless workforces.

Imagine if you could push onboarding information to new hires, managers, and other onboarding stakeholders in the channels they use most and use software that can automate it for you.

Actionable tips by using automation of onboarding:

  • Send a CEO video to all new hires so they get more invested in the mission of the company in the critical pre-boarding phase.
  • Use SMS during pre-boarding and chat messages in the employee communication platform, because if no one reads the messages you might as well not have sent it.
  • New hires have a lot of questions and some of them might be embarrassing to ask. Is it allowed to date a colleague? What happens if I am late to work? What is the dress code? Information overload happens when sending a long e-mail with too much info. Imagine if you could send bite-sized messages over time to ensure that employees actually retain the information. You could also use an onboarding chatbot in Workplace from Facebook, Microsoft Teams, or Slack where new hires can get answers quickly.

Use a Science and Data-Based Approach

Implementing the 6 C's of onboarding framework and onboarding process is key to ensure onboarding success.

According to a study by Brandon Hall Group in 2015 Companies with the top maturity level in employee, onboarding are twice as likely to increase employee engagement versus companies that focus with a lower level of maturity.

Build Confidence and connection by giving new hires simple tasks like introducing themselves in Workplace from Facebook or Microsoft teams as part of their onboarding process.

Their colleagues will greet them and create a social bond, even if done remotely.

Clarify the work, progress, and ensure the new hire is aware of what is expected of them.

Good habits are created early on!

What Gets Measured Gets Managed

It can be scary to learn how little employees absorb the critical first weeks, but measuring feedback from new hires onboarding experience creates a culture of caring for your employees.

Over time it compounds and impacts your employer branding, engagement, and productivity.

Support managers with the right software

Don’t leave the full burden of employee onboarding to the HR department, make it easy for managers to become onboarding superheroes as well. Develop easy ways to ‘pass the baton’ to the new hire’s manager and help your managers with automated nudges and check-in points throughout the process.

Creating a buddy system for your new hires where the senior employees take more responsibility for helping the new employees during onboarding.

Get the software to handle the time consuming and boring tasks from the manager’s shoulders, like giving employees access to the right tools, do online intro courses and paperwork.

Lunch with managers in the early early days is important for employees to feel a connection, in today's work environment you can nudge managers by (automating) a message 10 days before the start to remind them to send a gift to their house.

Imagine the fuzzy feeling the new manager and organization give the new hires when the whole family of the new hire experiences that their new job has taken the time to send a package through mail, it does not take a lot to create engaged employees when expectations are low.

Conclusion

When you’re looking to improve your employee onboarding process, it’s important to consider the entire employee lifecycle and not just the first few weeks or months.

Onboarding is the critical period when employees are trying to learn about their new company, role, and teammates and at the same time make a decision about whether they will stay with the company long-term.

When done correctly, employee onboarding can improve engagement, reduce turnover, and increase productivity. Use the tips in this article to create a successful employee onboarding process at your company.

Don't leave anything to chance when it comes to employee onboarding - download the free Employee Onboarding Checklist, and make sure you're covering all your bases.