5 Tips for Successful Employee Onboarding

On average, it costs anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 to hire a […]

On average, it costs anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 to hire a new employee. That being the case, smart organizations are constantly striving to improve their retention stats so that employees stick around longer and they have to make fewer and fewer hiring decisions — and, therefore, spend less money replacing headcount.

But even the companies with the best retention stats in the world will still see some of their employees jump ship eventually. So any way you slice it, you can’t avoid having to onboard new workers from time to time.

In order to increase the chances that your new hires of today turn into the veterans your company depends upon in the future, you need to provide an onboarding process that’s as smooth and helpful as possible. Here are five tips for a successful employee onboarding process to help you ensure your new employees have an enjoyable first day, first week, and first month:

 

  1. Create a program dedicated to onboarding
    If you want to successfully onboard employees, you first need to build an employee onboarding program. Sounds like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? Believe it or not, only 52% of employees say that their organizations have bona fide onboarding programs. This is part of the reason why 4% of employees never come back to the office after their first day and 33% of them decide to quit within their first month.
  2. Set up your new hire’s work space
    According to a recent infographic, 33% of new employees reported that the technology they were expected to use for work wasn’t properly configured when they first stepped into the office. What’s more, 22% of workers said necessary supplies they needed to do their jobs were not on hand, either. While you can’t control certain aspects of the onboarding process (e.g., how your employees respond to it), you have complete control over ensuring that your new employees’ work spaces are set up correctly before they sit down at their desks for the first time.
  3. Introduce your rookies to the rest of the team
    You’d think that every organization would be sure to show new employees around the office and introduce them to the other members of the team. But 15% of new hires said they were never introduced to their new coworkers while 14% indicated they weren’t given a tour of their new surroundings, according to the above infographic. Make sure you do both on your new hire’s first day.
  4.  Take your new hire out to lunch with a small group
    The number one thing employees like about their jobs are the colleagues they work with. While it’s great to take a new hire around the office and introduce them to the rest of the team, you can’t expect bonds to develop from those interactions alone. On their first day of work, take your new hire out to lunch with a couple of the team members they will be working with most closely over the next several months. Have an icebreaker game or two ready to get the conversation started.
  5. Incorporate training into your onboarding process
    In a perfect world, you’d be able to extend employment offers to new hires and they’d be ready to knock it out of the park on their first day. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. It might take as long as eight months for new employees to become fully productive in their roles. Part of the reason for that is because a shocking number of companies don’t offer enough training as part of the onboarding process. This is a problem, because53% of employees believe they’d be more effective in their roles if their companies offered more helpful training opportunities. Don’t assume that the genius you just hired will learn the ropes on their own. Make sure each new hire is thoroughly trained.

 

Originally published on TinyPulse

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