Effective employee onboarding has the power to improve your business on multiple fronts. When planned and implemented correctly, your onboarding program will help you increase employee retention, boost productivity, increase profits and create your brand advocates.
Onboarding provides numerous benefits that not only make it helpful but essential to success. A well-defined onboarding plan can help you identify the right employees required for various business roles, whether it is leadership development, product knowledge training or customer service. In this article, we are going to share with you what makes effective onboarding crucial to success for both your new hires and the entire organization.
Reduces Employee Attrition
Onboarding has been proven to significantly increase employee retention rates. In fact, in a recent study by Gallup it was found that organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82%. This is great news for talent teams as it clearly identifies what is needed to be done for employee retention. It is necessary for HR and L&D teams to come together and make sure that employees connect well with company’s culture to clearly understand their job expectations.
20% of employee turnover happens within the first 45 days.(1) According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the average person changes jobs 10-15 times during their career. To put it simply, first impressions matter and a comprehensive onboarding program is the key to making a great one.
Speeds up Time-to-Competency
After new hires start, it can take them up to eight months to attain their optimal productivity.(2) This can look like a daunting number. However, effective onboarding can speed up this process quite a bit.
Recent studies have shown that employees who participate in long onboarding programs gain full proficiency of 34% faster than those who participated in shorter ones.(2)
Why? What it really means that employees who go through the onboarding process get answers to their questions and required training essential to their new job faster than those who don’t.
Boosts Engagement
Undoubtedly, higher rates of employee engagement are good for businesses. Engaged employees perform better at work and onboarding has been a proven tool that boosts engagement. Recent surveys stated that 54% of companies with onboarding programs reported higher employee engagement.(3)
This is most likely because the most effective onboarding programs create engagement by providing necessary training and information they are needed to succeed. These also help employees understand the importance of their role and the kind of impact they can bring to the business.
Improves Employee Performance
Implementing a formal onboarding process improves employee performance. In a recent study, it was found that 77% of employees who hit their first performance goals had participated in an onboarding program. On the other hand, 49% of those who did not meet their performance milestones have not participated in any onboarding process.(4)
When employees understand their roles and related expectations early in the organization, it helps them to set their goals accordingly. Most of the times, this resonates well with business objectives resulting in higher levels of performance output. Employees that identify their KRAs early end up giving the best results in the shortest time.
Promotes Cross-functional Operations
Onboarding programs that include social learning elements like mentor programs and team-building activities tend to be more result oriented. Incorporating such activities encourage relationship and collaboration for employees during early days in the organization. 70% of employees reported that having friends at work is one of the most crucial elements for a happy work-life.(4) Having a contented employee will always put extra effort to drive business resulting in a substantial boost in profits.
Employee onboarding programs with social components promote productivity by helping new employees make connections with peers early on.
Reduces costs
Investing in improving your onboarding process is one of the most effective ways you can increase your organization’s productivity and profits. Not having a formal onboarding process has the opposite effect that can cost your organization money and employees.
Currently, organizations are losing about 25% of their new hires in the first year.(4) Hiring a new employee and allowing it time to reach it’s full potential is always a costly affair. Creating an effective onboarding program will increase employee retention and in return, it will improve productivity rates.
Gives a Competitive Advantage
Onboarding is the one of the initial processes that helps your employees connect with your organization, the company culture, their peers and learn how to do their job well. This reduces common concerns of new hires which engages them during early joining days, aligned with training and help accelerate their competency graph.
Additionally, onboarding helps create positive experiences at work which improves your brand’s reputation. A lot of organizations have started to work upon on creating onboarding experiences that engages employees even before their date of joining. This helps them to learn about the company much earlier and understand their expectations from the very beginning. Employees who have positive onboarding experiences are more likely to recommend your organization. Not only this helps to create brand image, but also create employee advocacy.
To learn more about how creating and implementing an effective onboarding program can positively impact your business, check out this case study about developing a successful onboarding program in which Infopro Learning helped an industry leader in risk, retirement and health consulting services. At the end of the day, an effective onboarding not only gives you a competitive advantage but it essential to both employee and organizational success.
