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.

The first five to six months are critical – around 50% of new hires have gone by then if companies don't onboard effectively. But losses reduce hugely with an onboarding programme that answers people's questions and settles them. Thus it is vital to get this right, but what are the unanswered questions the onboarding programme needs to resolve?

Remember, if a flower doesn't bloom, there's no use blaming the flower. Every living thing tends to thrive if the conditions are right, so if people don't do well you can look to the conditions they have found themselves in.

The primary question a new employee needs answered is simple: will this place meet my practical and psychological needs?

Wherever we are and whatever we are doing, there's a common set of things that almost all human beings are trying to achieve. We try, instinctively, to make our lives secure, to achieve some control over events, to interact with others in a social group, to do things that stretch us, are interesting and useful, to know we have been useful to our group, and to know that there's some point to the things we're doing.

These needs are instinctive, fundamental and non-negotiable, and they apply at work, in relationships, at the football club or wherever. At work they will unpack differently for different people with different backgrounds and lengths of tenure, but the same fundamentals apply if we want to stay in our job, achieve and enjoy working life.

This explains what is going on in the minds of new hires as they try to integrate into their new setting, and we can now see what the onboarding system has to do if we want to keep new staff.

In the context of work, the psychological needs of the new hires will play out something like this – they will be trying to:

• familiarise themselves thoroughly with the purpose of the company
• make sure they know what exactly they should be doing, so as to prevent embarrassment and preserve their status
• make sure they are on the same page as the people round them, because no-one likes being out on a limb
• get together with more experienced staff and see if they can enjoy the fruits of co-operation
• check their knowledge and skills against their peers and against the demands of the job
• be sure they have the resources they need to make themselves look competent
• make social connections and integrate into a peer group
• get connected with the team spirit and (hopefully) start to feel motivated by that
• check out their position in the group and build status by doing things that are useful (or sometimes just impressive) to others
• get some control over events
• work out how they can become secure
• learn the rhythm of the new work and establish when they can consolidate learning
• work out what they can do to reduce uncertainty and anxiety
• check that the new role is actually meaningful to them.

If they meet the psychological needs outlined above, they should feel reasonably calm and settled.

So, the proportion of new employees who stay is a measure of how well these needs are met by your onboarding programme – and you can improve that proportion by measuring how each new staff member feels about each of these areas of working life.

By no coincidence this is precisely one of the ways companies use WeThrive – it gives them an individual view of how each person is settling in and how happy they are becoming in the new job. WeThrive asks them about each area in turn, and the areas that are problematic are exactly where you need to focus the onboarding efforts for that individual to get them on track.

You can do some of this by just asking questions, of course. But some of the things that are vital to having happy, energised but settled new staff are not normally discussed, and some managers don't remember to do it, so here's a simple but highly effective way to get the inside track on how people are settling in.

It's an extra channel of communication, right through to how the employee is feeling about his or her new job, which helps you to keep expectations and reality in line. Try it free today at wethrive.net and let us know what it tells you about onboarding at your workplace?