Onboarding is the best way to ensure that those you have spent so much time attracting and wooing decide to stay with you.
Organizations are devoting more time to the on-boarding process and employing more creative and exciting techniques to get their newly hired employees productive sooner and to lay a foundation that will help retain them.
Employees who have gone through some onboarding process above and beyond the usual filling out paperwork and choosing benefit plans report feeling better connected to their colleagues and the company culture. This translates into loyalty that keeps employees from turning down offers that tempt them by offering more dollars.
There are at least three reasons that orientation or assimilation programs are becoming popular.
First, they help new hires feel that they are part of the organization and important. Good onboarding programs create a sense of security and involvement by introducing new employees to colleagues and senior management and helping them build an appreciation of the organization’s past and future direction.
Secondly, they expedite getting the new hires up-to-speed and productive. Some new hires take up to a year to reach full productivity, especially if their jobs depend on interacting with other employees or linking work from different parts of the firm. Upfront education can significantly shorten learning curves, especially for inexperienced employees and college hires. Internal social networks or online tools can also bring different people with similar needs together and facilitate learning.
And thirdly, they help convey the organization's culture so that decisions get made that are more in line with accepted practices and that help the organization function more smoothly. When senior-level employees explain why decisions were made or how a result came about, they also convey the organization's cultural values. By building roots from the beginning, people flourish and understand better why things are the way they are.
The best onboarding programs are fun, not overly formal, and engage employees. They have enough substance to address serious issues effectively but do it in a manner that is interactive and fun. Many organizations are using online tools to provide the new employee with corporate history, the firm's values, an overview of the strategy, and fiscal goals. Videos can give an overview of finances or long-term growth goals by the CFO, for example, or a greeting from a senior-level executive. Many offer virtual tours of the facilities or take the employees to remote locations to see how work gets done in other parts of the organization.
These tools and activities set the stage for productive, aligned, and focused work. Don’t assume that employees will “pick up” all the things they need to know to be successful quickly. What is evident to you may be obscure to someone just walking in the door and taking months to learn.
Good onboarding programs may extend over several months. After a virtual set of activities before their start date, subsequent activities may extend over several months at periodic intervals. Some programs include rotational assignments; others may include special projects designed to expose the new employee to parts of the company they would not normally have any contact with. For example, a human resources executive could be assigned to find out something about manufacturing operations that would require going to the factory, meeting the employees there, and completing a project. This lets them see how other employees work and gives them a feel for the culture in action. Scheduling events over several months allows getting into topics in-depth that short programs cannot.
Getting the hiring manager involved in the onboarding process is also important. Surveys show that the relationship with the manager is one of the most significant in retention and productivity.
Most employee turnover is ultimately caused by that relationship with their manager, which makes the ability to assimilate new employees a core competence of managers. An employee’s immediate manager controls all career progression, educational opportunities, and the assignment of projects. A manager who takes time to discuss issues with a new employee, who shows concern over that person’s assimilation, and who knows what the employee can do and wants to do will make wiser decisions and build loyalty over time.
The manager should be included as part of the onboarding process. Some firms insist that managers provide the employee with an initial set of goals – perhaps for the first 30-60 days. Others include the manager in team-building exercises or have a luncheon where the manager sits with the new employee. The key is to make sure the manager has a real role in both the formal process of onboarding as well as in the informal one that happens every day.
And finally, the best programs offer coaching and mentoring to new employees right from the start. Again, research shows very clearly that providing a mentor who can offer insights into the corporate culture, explain the organizational structure, and help the new employee understand why things get done in the way they do, is a major contributor to increased productivity and lower turnover.
These mentors should be individuals who are exemplars of the kind of behavior and results orientation your firm would like all its employees to exhibit. They need to be respected and well networked in the organization. The role of these mentors can be very simple – as simple as going to lunch once a week with the new hire to show them the ropes and transmit some of the implicit culture that is never articulated or often even acknowledged in formal sessions. These mentors are the vehicles to educate the new hire, and they should be trained to serve as listeners who can intervene quietly with a manager if an issue arises.
Onboarding is an essential tool for building engagement and improving retention.
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Good post. I would add two important things. First, would be access to organizational memory. For some organization this may be codified while others it is tacit. Either way, it is a critical resource for the orientation and onboarding activities. Second, most certainly involve senior executive management. A new employees is a major enterprise investment, akin to new factory. Executive management is very interested in all multi-million dollar investments of the firm. They must be involved. The thing is executives are very open to this activity! It is often fun and can be the most effective technique to assure a successful and prosperous onboarding and time-to-productivity. It will leave new-hires with a lasting, valuable impression of the firm and its leadership. There are dozens of formats to this activity. The talent manager could be best to configure the interaction according to organizational formats and values.