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Is onboarding underrated? The truth is that, relative to organisational impact, onboarding may be one of the most underutilised stages in the employee lifecycle. In this article, we want to walk you through the return on investment (ROI) of great employee onboarding.
But first, if you are interested in bringing a bit more structure into your team’s onboarding processes, we’d recommend Personio’s Onboarding Checklist. It’s free to download, and can help your team deliver a more consistent and curated onboarding experience.
Is Onboarding All That Important?
The short answer? Definitely. The long one is that onboarding is crucial because, when done right, it activates and unlocks three critical components of employee experience:
Immediate and mid-term productivity
Engagement and overall employee satisfaction
Long-term retention and advocacy
Let’s take a look at each to make the case for a clear, structured and consistent onboarding process across your entire organisation…
1. Immediate and Mid-Term Productivity
According to a study by the Aberdeen Group, 83% of the highest-performing organisations begin onboarding prior to the first day on the job.
That sense of immediate productivity is crucial. It’s where the idea of “pre-onboarding” comes from, where you build a process that begins before the first day of work.
That said, this doesn’t mean demanding an employee begin their work before their first day. It is typically a cultural endeavour, where they are invited to meet new colleagues over coffee or attend an afterwork party or event.
Ultimately, this benefits the idea of an employee “finding their way” in a new organisation. And, it recognises the fact that onboarding is a journey that extends beyond induction day – for productivity to reign, it needs to be an extended process.
That is because organisations vary in complexity, and they all have different ways of working. To make the most of employee productivity, you need to phase out your onboarding and view new employees as the key stakeholders.
Top Takeaway: Think about the phases of your onboarding process. How long do they last? Do you have them at all? We recommend thinking in terms of days, weeks and months, to create an onboarding process that has multiple touchpoints over a longer timeframe.
2. Engagement and Overall Employee Satisfaction
Onboarding is meant to help your employees become more productive, while also ensuring they have completed all the legal and contractual particulars.
Most onboarding processes, though, weigh too heavily on the latter and not on the former. This is where onboarding becomes less engaging and more perfunctory.
Overall, this leads to employees feeling that “organisational productivity” is being taken more seriously than their own satisfaction. That is likely why, according to Gallup, only 12% of employees agreed strongly that their organisation does a great job onboarding new people.
So, employee sentiment around current onboarding processes trends fairly low. Many don’t think their organisations care enough to deliver an experience that truly focuses on or centres around them.
This is a shame, because there is a clear business case for great onboarding as it concerns employee motivation linked back to purpose. According to a report from Hays, 51% of employees stated that great onboarding motivates them to go “above and beyond” in their role.
When employees feel engaged and part of a process, even when it includes some admin, it makes a better first impression and leads to higher levels of engagement, satisfaction and – as a result – higher levels of performance and a better bottom line.
Top Takeaway: Consider your organisation’s onboarding right now. How much of an employee’s first day or week is spent ticking boxes that only benefits the company? How much of their time is spent getting to know their colleagues and your organisation’s purpose?
3. Long-Term Retention and Advocacy
A long-celebrated statistic by the Aberdeen Group mentions that 86% of respondents feel that a new hire’s decision to stay with a company long-term is made within their first six months of employment. This has continued to ring true.
There is both a sentiment and a reality behind this data point. A similar study from the Wynhurst Group found that 58% of newly-hired employees are more likely to be at a company three years down the road thanks to structured onboarding.
Essentially, we can see a direct causation between great onboarding and higher retention metrics. Especially for high performers, a structured onboarding process can not only help them work faster, but make a greater long-term organisational impact.
While there are a host of factors that influence whether an employee stays in their role, onboarding is a process where an organisation can do any of the following:
Integrate and embed a new employee in their culture
Set proper expectations for their role and development
Establish relationships with line managers and key stakeholders
Orient employees to ways of working and solving problems
All of these things can have a direct effect on every other stage of the employee lifecycle. And, even a great offboarding can turn departing employees into advocates for your employer brand – if they have a great experience.
Top Takeaway: If retention concerns you, consider re-onboarding. Re-onboard some choice employees and reintroduce them to your processes. Then, ask for their feedback and make similar changes to your standard onboarding process.
The Key to Great Onboarding: Structure
A structured onboarding is a strong onboarding. That’s because it can ensure that your organisation is ticking all of the boxes, while also prioritising an experience that can scale over time and in line with your headcount.
But, how do you introduce structure into your onboarding? Take Personio’s all-in-one HR software solution as an example. Using Personio’s Onboarding feature, you can define tasks, track progress and enable productivity from day one.
Give employees the stellar start they deserve, while saving your HR team time to create more impact and make time for what matters: your people. Speak with one of our HR experts today about how you currently run onboarding and how we can help.
