Onboarding - the hard bits made easier

A new idea to reduce needless early losses

We don't really like change, and for good reasons. Our history has wired us to be extra cautious in unfamiliar situations because of its survival advantage. The instinct stays with us in the modern world, making us uneasy in new situations, whether that's the first day at school or adjusting to a new employer.

It is the unanswered questions that are most difficult to cope with – we make a better show of coping with them as adults than we did as schoolchildren, but the same mixed emotions are there – they’re just under the surface. This is partly why so many people leave in the first of weeks of a new job, unless you can connect with them from the very start and help them feel at home.

Do you need a formal onboarding process? Yes - but that doesn't mean it has to be a formal experience for the new employee – in fact, quite the opposite. At a time when they have to absorb a lot of new information very quickly, the object is to get them relaxed so they can really take it in. We are simply more intelligent when relaxed, so an organisation that is trying to impress new employees with its importance and complexity is likely to be doing itself, and the new hires, a disservice.