Recruiting new talent to your company is a big investment. Finding the right fit from a pool of applicants is a time and resource consuming task, and the stakes are high. Making the wrong recruitment decision can cost the company 5 to 27 times the person’s actual salary (Smart, Bradford D., Topgrading, 3rd Edition: The Proven Hiring and Promoting Method That Turbocharges Company Performance, 2012). But let’s say you make the right decision, find the perfect match for your organization and the recruitment is complete. Is this a guarantee of a committed, long-term employment relationship?
After recruitment, the realities of everyday work and life hit both you and your new employee. Several things could happen. Your new employee might not find their place in their team or in the company culture. They might feel left out of information loops. Everyone might simply be too busy to really have time for the newcomer. Research from 2019 shows that 33% of new hires start looking for a new job within the first six months of employment (Ferrazzi, K., Technology Can Save Onboarding from Itself, Harvard Business Review, March 2015). What can be done to stop this from happening?
ELEMENTS OF A GREAT ONBOARDING EXPERIENCE
After putting such effort into the recruitment process, make sure to follow up with an equally great employee experience. Onboarding is key to retain committed and happy employees. Consider the following perspectives on onboarding. Does your onboarding process support new hires in all aspects?
1. Connecting with culture
A good onboarding process needs to include more than just one-way communication such as reading manuals, filling out forms and checking boxes. Involve your new hires in engaging activities that bring them into direct contact with company culture, making sure the new recruits understand and experience the corporate purpose, values and ways of working.
2. Start asap, spread it out
Start the onboarding process as soon as possible (maybe even before the first day at work?) to enable new employees to quickly get up and running on the new job. Also make sure to spread out the content over at least a few months. This gives your newbies the opportunity to take in the new information at their own pace, rather than trying (and failing) to digest everything in the first weeks.
3. Remote-friendly options
Consider how well your onboarding process supports employees in your remote and/or hybrid work environment. Working remotely can make it more difficult for new employees to integrate into the company culture and to get to know other employees in the company.
4. Bring people together
Help your new coworkers to meet and network with other new hires as well as more established people within the company. Provide them with guidance and opportunities to find and build connections within the organisation and to build themselves a network of people they can turn to.
5. Mix it up
Just as any modern learning experience, the onboarding process should be varied, consisting of both on-demand content such as video clips, quizzes and individual reflections, as well as networking-focused and culture-strengthening content. Consider what content benefits from being done individually and at your own pace, and what should be done as a group activity at a given time.
“I have to say that I´m positively surprised by the onboarding programme. It involved more work than I expected – but in a good way! I have to admit that at first, before knowing any better, I thought that I would get all of this done over a cup of coffee. Well – it turned out that was not really the case here. 🙂
After this onboarding experience, no one can say “no one told me” about this or that, or complain that the company didn’t provide adequate onboarding.”
– Participant of a TalentMiles Onboarding programme, 2021
“One of the key features of a good onboarding programme is that it engages participants by creating and supporting meaningful interactions within the organisation. We also turn the tables by inviting new hires to discover different aspects of company culture and the business, rather than just serving them with information. This helps strengthen a healthy learning culture in the organisation and is also a great way of making new people feel welcome and appreciated in their new workplace”, says Erika Hyppönen, Development Manager of cultural onboarding programmes at TalentMiles.
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CONTACT US!
Contact us to find out how TalentMiles would create the best
employee experience for your new hires: erika.hypponen@talentmiles.pro
