Firstly, let’s look at WHY your top talent is leaving…
You may get varied answers when you ask them, but in at least one out of six cases the real reason is an ineffective employee onboarding process.
What does ‘staying engaged’ mean?
Surveys asking employees “what do you need to stay engaged?” revealed these 7 elements:
- Training
- Regular specific feedback about what they’re doing
- Coach or mentor other than their manager
- Clarity about what the company needs them to do
- Better communication with their manager
- Better relationship with their co-workers
- More resources
Research shows that the first 90 days of onboarding new employees are the most critical. This means you need to move fast to not only keep them engaged, but also to incorporate other aspects of what a new employee expects.
Yet, 25% of companies say their onboarding does not include any kind of training!
76% saying on-the-job training is most important followed closely by a review of company policies at 73%.
How do we go about planning a successful onboarding process?
Onboarding is more than just processing paperwork and completing the checklist for a new hire to start.
Research has shown that it can be broken down into two key areas:
- Training (Classroom, videos, on-the-job training)
- Socialization (Culture, Best practices, Mentoring programs, communication, network building, intranets & wikis)
Training
- Set training and performance benchmarks for new employees that focus on learning rather than performance during the first six to 12 months. This learning orientation enables the new employee to take more risks while learning, which is a necessary element for training success.
- Reward these new employees on achieving learning goals.
Socialization
- Introduce new employees to the culture and to the accepted practices of the organisation.
- Assign at least one mentoring partner to each new employee to whom they can ask questions, raise concerns and simply exchange information with.
- Help them build their own organisation network.
- Survey new employees to get feedback and find out what they want to do to improve on their understanding of the company and their role.
Final Thoughts
Think about his…
You put a great deal of time, money and effort into recruiting the best talent and ensuring they’re a good culture fit.
And yet, you’re at risk of losing one out of six new employees and thousands of pounds. All because of ineffective, or lack of employee onboarding.
Do you really want to continue taking this risk?
Have a look at the following video showing the ‘First 100 Days’ and how social learning can help you improve your on boarding process:
[vc_video link=’https://youtu.be/G_SMVFsboV0′]
Hey, Intec, great article.
Working as a remote employee, engagement with my team and work is really important to keep me going and interested when it comes to executing my roles and responsibilities.
The first few weeks or months is fine — a new work and fresh beginnings, but as the days blur together with redundant tasks, sometimes, it is easy to drop everything and say, I still have tomorrow. Until this becomes an ingrained habit and the employee’s interest dwindles and the company starts to suffer.
Having a solid employee onboarding such as this one: https://www.intec.co.uk/hr-stop-wasting-company-money-and-improve-your-onboarding-process/ is a good resource to go with yours when it comes to making sure you constantly engage your new hire.