How do you create the best onboarding experience for new employees? In this article, we share some of our best practices for employee onboarding and what to be aware of.
Onboarding is key to success
Employee Onboarding is key when it comes to successfully integrating a new employee in your organization. Onboarding supports your new hires in making them feel informed, equipped and motivated towards their new role.
Unfortunately, many organizations confuse onboarding with orientation, but it’s not the same thing. Orientation is typically an introduction to your company in the beginning of the process with important information.
Onboarding is not a one-time event like orientation. It’s a process that includes everything your new employee needs to become a valuable contributor to your company.
A new hire onboarding process starts in the recruiting phase and it lasts until your new employee is fully up to speed and can perform independently. This process can last up to 12 months.
A study from 2018 shows that organizations with a structured onboarding process experience up to 50% greater new hire productivity along with 50% greater new hire retention.
Our Best Onboarding Practices
Let’s uncover these numbers supporting the importance of a new hire onboarding process:
1. Higher Engagement
You must make the onboarding experience fun and interesting to interact with to engage your employees in your company as quickly as possible. A good onboarding also provides clarity about your employees’ new role and makes it easier for them to relate to your organization.
2. Increased Productivity
If your employees feel engaged and they feel comfortable with their work tasks, their productivity increases because they are well informed. With a structured onboarding program you can minimize the time searching for information and support a more productive workflow.
3. Reduced turnovers
Good onboarding also reduces turnovers. If your employees feel like an important asset to your company and they are engaged in their work tasks, they are more likely to stay with your company longer.
4. Aligned expectations
The onboarding process is a mutual process. It's an ongoing effort to perfect the process, so it’s really important to align expectations during the entire onboarding to secure that your new hire feels involved in your organization.
This is why onboarding is really important to your company and has a huge impact on how successful your new hires will become. By implementing these components in a consistent strategy, you can support employee engagement and make it clear how every employee contributes to the overall company strategy
