Stop Employees from Ghosting Your Company with A Long-Lasting Onboarding Program

Four Connections Employees Must Make to Feel Purpose at Work

This weekend, LinkedIn reported an interesting new trend of employees ‘ghosting’ organizations, where folks flake on interviews, don’t show up for new-hire training, or quit without saying a thing. While this new phenomenon might come as a surprise to many, we’re in an employees’ market. Expect the unexpected.

With unemployment at the lowest it’s been in nearly two decades, we are in a full-on war for talent. More now than ever, HR leaders and practitioners will play a critical role in attracting and retaining employees – from even before day one. Naturally, the most important part of your new-hire journey is your onboarding experience.

Consider these statistics about onboarding programs:

• The first 90 days on the job are the most critical for long term success.
• 1 in 6 employees considered quitting a new job due to ineffective onboarding.
• 40% of employees believe time and money is wasted on ineffective onboarding.[1]

A long-lasting onboarding program is clearly a priority for new hires. Yet, 60 percent of companies indicate they do not set any milestones or concrete goals for new hires to attain. HR leaders should examine the drivers of their organization’s onboarding process to ensure a strong foundation for their employees’ experience. Learn about a couple of different new-hire situations that can lead to early resignation.

A recent Gallup poll [2] indicates that more than half of your workforce wants to leave their company citing that their current position doesn’t provide a sense of purpose. With this in mind, a strategic onboarding experience will not only consider organizational initiatives and compliance-based activities, but also the satisfaction drivers for employees.

An employee needs to make four different connections to be successful at the organization, and they all start during the onboarding experience.

1. Who am I working for?
2. Who do I work with?
3. What do I do to meet expectations?
4. How do I know how I’ve performed?

Business leaders should them map activities along an onboarding journey, clearly assigning responsibilities and providing tangible measures of success for all parties involved. Only then can you be confident that you’ve built a long-lasting onboarding program that cultivates company culture, all while ensuring workplace readiness and reducing training costs.

[1] Bamboo HR 2014 Onboarding study (n= 1,005 people, currently employed over the age of 24)

[2] State of the American Workplace report. Gallup.