Starting Strong: The Critical Role of Onboarding
by Kelly Lewis, Vice President at TurnkeyZRG
Imagine you have just accepted a job offer at a new company, eager to start this next chapter of your career. On your first day, you’re warmly welcomed by a people and culture team representative and given a detailed checklist of necessary paperwork to ensure compliance. You’re given a brief tour, but it’s rushed and lacks the comprehensive introduction you anticipated. Upon arriving at your office, you are greeted with a bag of SWAG as a token of welcome to the team. At first glance, this onboarding process seems robust—you’re warmly welcomed, given a tour, and provided with branded items. However, as the day progresses, it becomes clear that the onboarding process is disjointed and lacks depth.
There’s no clear agenda or structure beyond the initial greetings and paperwork. You’re not introduced to the company or the team you will be supporting, there is no collective lunch to foster team bonding, and there are no scheduled meetings with your manager to discuss your role and expectations. Meetings with other key stakeholders are sporadic and uncoordinated, leaving you feeling unprepared and disconnected from the organization’s strategic goals. There’s no IT or people and culture member to guide you through the nuances of the company’s systems and standard operating procedures. The promised alignment sessions to understand the company’s vision and mission are either delayed or nonexistent. You start to immediately feel the weight of unmet expectations and the challenge of adapting without adequate support. This experience starkly contrasts your previous onboarding, which was structured and supportive, fulfilling all the promises made during recruitment.
This ineffective onboarding experience undermines your confidence in joining the new company and hinders your ability to contribute effectively from the start. Unfortunately, this scenario highlights a common issue, as only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job onboarding new employees, according to Gallup. From seasoned veterans to new industry executives to first-time employees, an effective onboarding process is crucial to leverage their expertise and ensure they can drive the organization forward. Effective onboarding integrates you smoothly into the company and significantly impacts your long-term engagement and success.
This scenario leads us to the essential concept of July’s Kelly’s Culture: Starting Strong: The Critical Role of Onboarding. This article will illuminate research surrounding the topic of employee onboarding and highlight best practices to create an exceptional onboarding experience for employees.
Research:
Research emphasizes that effective onboarding is directly linked to improved employee engagement, performance, and retention. The onboarding process is the first impression of what it truly means to work for a company. Within this process, new employees quickly gather essential insights about their workplace, including company culture, workplace morale, managerial support, advancement opportunities, and team dynamics. While nearly every organization today has an onboarding process, few employees would call this experience great, ultimately laying the foundation for remorse, dissatisfaction, and frustration within the role. So, what exactly is the problem?
3 Key Problems:
It’s not my job mindset: This mindset can significantly impact the employee onboarding experience, especially when department heads and people managers delegate the responsibility solely to HR. While HR plays a crucial role in designing and facilitating the onboarding process, it’s essential for department heads and team leads to participate and take ownership actively. They are best positioned to provide specific insights into team dynamics, job expectations, and integration within the department. When leaders embrace their role in onboarding, it creates a more personalized and supportive experience for new hires, fostering a smoother transition and deeper integration into the team and organizational culture.
Lacks strategic framework: Ineffective onboarding strategies without a clear vision, philosophy, and methodology can result in a rushed, overwhelming experience for new hires, hindering integration and long-term success within the company. Many companies often prefer a laid-back, informal onboarding culture, believing it encourages connection and fun. However, it’s a mistake to approach onboarding as informal and haphazard. Lack of a strategic framework often results in overly short or superficial programs that fail to capitalize on the full potential of the onboarding process, which includes pre-boarding, first day, 30-60-90-day touchpoints, six months, and one-year checkpoints. When there is limited understanding of the possibility of onboarding, it can lead to cramming vital information into a single day or week, exposing new hires with an influx of information –which often becomes difficult to retain; or failure to expose new hires to role and company essential information critical to success. In both instances, this approach not only diminishes the program’s effectiveness but leaves individuals with a range of feelings, from disorientedness, losing interest, mental fatigue, decreased retention of critical information, and more. Without a clear framework, new employees may struggle to grasp the broader context of the role, key priorities of the business, and recollection of processes, procedures, and communications to be triumphant at the company.
Unclear Expectations and Knowledge Gaps: When expectations are not communicated clearly, new hires may struggle to understand their roles, responsibilities, and performance standards. Additionally, knowledge gaps in training and orientation can prevent new employees from acquiring essential skills and understanding company processes, further impacting their productivity and job satisfaction. Yielding confusion, frustration, and a lack of confidence in their ability to contribute effectively. Clear communication of expectations and thorough training are essential to mitigate these challenges and ensure a successful onboarding experience.
Quoting Gallup researchers, “The reality is this: that onboarding programs must be exceptional or else they are working against you. If you want exceptional employee outcomes, you must have exceptional onboarding. Average doesn’t cut it.”
Onboarding:
Onboarding is the pivotal stage that bridges the completion of the talent acquisition process with the fulfillment of high-performance outcomes for new employees. Beyond mere paperwork and introductions, effective onboarding sets the stage for the entire employee journey. It significantly influences how employees perceive the organization, shaping their initial impressions of company culture and values. However, “Most HR practitioners, 84%, believe onboarding efforts are highly important to their organization’s ability to achieve stated business and HR goals. To complicate matters, only 45% of HR practitioners currently view their onboarding efforts as highly effective”, according to McLean & Company. Similarly, Gallup uncovers “after experiencing onboarding at their organization, 29% of new hires say that they feel fully prepared and supported to excel in their new role.” In alignment with McLean & Company insights, onboarding is most effective when viewed as a holistic program rather than a mere process. Unlike a linear series of steps, which a process implies, onboarding encompasses a variety of components that work together simultaneously to acclimate, guide, and develop new employees.
Onboarding is also great for the bottom line of the business. Effective onboarding offers many benefits: a Click Boarding study reveals that employees are 58 percent more likely to remain with a company for three years with a structured onboarding experience. Additionally, new hires are 50 percent more productive when they undergo standardized onboarding. Furthermore, Gallup highlights that employees who experience positive onboarding are 2.6 times more likely to be “extremely satisfied” at work. Moreover, effective onboarding can significantly reduce a new hire’s time-to-productivity, potentially shaving off months from their integration into the company, as noted in a SHRM Foundation guide. These findings underscore the critical role of onboarding in enhancing retention, productivity, engagement, and time efficiency within organizations.
Onboarding Best Practices to Consider:
McLean & Company
McLean & Company stresses that onboarding and orientation are not the same. They describe the difference: Orientation is typically a few days of completing paperwork, reading manuals, and learning about the company’s history, strategic goals, and culture. By contrast, onboarding is three to twelve months dedicated to welcoming, acclimating, guiding, and developing new employees – with the ideal duration reflecting the time-to-productivity for the role.” McLean & Company describes building an onboarding program as rooted in three main objectives: acclimate, guide, and develop.
Acclimate
Help new hires feel connected to the organization by clearly articulating the mission, vision, values, and what the company does. Help them understand the business model, industry, and who their competitors are. Help them feel connected to their new team members by providing opportunities for socialization and a support network.
Guide
Help put new hires on the path to high performance by clearly outlining their role in the organization and how their performance will be evaluated.
Develop
Help new hires receive the experience and training they require to become high performers by supporting their development of needed competencies.
When deciding on the duration of an onboarding program, factors such as the role’s complexity, industry norms, and the seniority level of the new hire should be considered. For instance, game day employees handling straightforward tasks might undergo a three-month onboarding, whereas senior leaders might participate in a year-long program. Ideally, the length of the onboarding program should match the average time it takes for employees to achieve full productivity in their respective roles.
Watch for signs that the onboarding process isn’t fitting new hires’ needs. McLean & Company’s primary and secondary research identified the following as the reasons employees leave organizations prematurely.
Acclimate
The onboarding experience is misaligned from the employer’s brand.
Socialization and/or integration into the existing culture is left to the employee.
Guide
Key role expectations or role usefulness are not clearly communicated.
Company strategy is unclear.
Opportunities for advancement are unclear.
Develop
Coaching, counseling, and/or support from coworkers and/or management is lacking.
The organization fails to demonstrate that it cares about the new employee’s needs.
Research from their 2023 Global Culture Report finds that less than half of employees (43%) have an onboarding experience that was more than just a day of orientation and a standard set of benefits. Many companies are missing the opportunity to create welcoming onboarding experiences that build connections between new employees and their teams and organizations. Check Out the O.C. Tanner Onboarding Checklist for Success below:
Communicate Purpose - Only 25% of employees worldwide feel connected to their company mission.
Consider putting new hires into an email nature track that delivers weekly culture insights and tips.
Make a great first impression – 69% of employees are likelier to stay with the company for at least 3 years after a great onboarding experience.
On the first day, show them what they need to know to have fun. Offer gifts with meaning. Connect new hires to a mentor or peer group for support.
Check-in Frequently – up to 20% of turnover happens within the first 45 days of employment.
30 days into the role, ask employees how they feel. Plan a lunch with senior executives, allowing new hires to ask open questions and get to know leadership better.
Set clear goals - 60% of companies indicate that they do not set any milestones or concrete goals for new hires to attain.
60 days into the role, recognize them for their great work. Co-create a plan for the next 60 days that focuses on growth, insights, and aspirational goals to strive for.
Stay the course – new hires in companies with longer onboarding programs report being more proficient in their roles 4 months sooner than in companies with shorter onboarding programs.
90 days in with the company, keep and reinforce an open-door policy.
Show your appreciation – 10x as many people leave at one vs five years. The one-year mark is when you must demonstrate how much you value your employees.
Give a gift or symbolic award.
Gallup:
Encourages HR leaders to consider the mindset of new hires. With questions like, “What is this place all about? How do I fit in? How can I make a difference here,” they suggest these fundamental questions should be at the heart of an effective onboarding process. They urge HR leaders instead of merely focusing on administrative requirements, HR/people and culture should prioritize addressing these core psychological needs of new hires. Gallup research has identified five critical questions that, when answered, contribute to an exceptional onboarding experience.
The Five Questions of Onboarding:
What do we believe in around here?”
Culture matters. When employees strongly agree that they understand “how we do things at this organization,” they are 4.7 times more likely to strongly agree their onboarding process was exceptional.
What are my strengths?
People thrive when they do what they excel at and are recognized for their unique qualities. Organizations can build strong relationships and show genuine care by understanding employees’ strengths. Employees who feel they can apply their strengths daily are 3.5 times more likely to find their onboarding process exceptional.
What is my role?
What is expected of me?” is a simple question, yet it frequently remains unanswered in the workplace. “Employees who strongly agree that they are confident in their ability to excel in their role are 1.8 times more likely to agree that their onboarding process was exceptional strongly.”
Who are my partners?
People perform best when they respect and trust their colleagues. Although building trust takes time, managers and organizations can foster it to enhance team collaboration. Employees who strongly agree they have reliable partners at work are 1.9 times more likely to find their onboarding process exceptional.
What does my future here look like?
People perform best when they respect and trust their colleagues. Managers and organizations can foster this trust to enhance collaboration. Employees with reliable partners at work are 1.9 times more likely to find their onboarding process exceptional.
Other findings:
The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) found that when organizations have a standard onboarding process, new hires are 50% more productive.
“When managers take an active role in onboarding, employees are 3.4 times as likely to agree their onboarding process was exceptional strongly”- Gallup
91 percent of new hires say they will quit a new job in the first month if it doesn’t align with their expectations.
Organizational Highlight:
Microsoft revamped its onboarding process based on data analysis, identifying two key improvements: having new hires meet with their manager at least once in the first week and assigning an “onboarding buddy” to each new hire.
New hires who met with their managers scored 8 percent higher on intent-to-stay measures, felt a stronger sense of belonging, and engaged in more collaborative work. Those paired with buddies were 36 percent more satisfied, and 56 percent who met with their buddies at least once reported faster productivity. Meeting buddies more frequently boosted this effect, with 97 percent of those who met more than eight times in the first 90 days saying they reached productivity faster.
Conclusion:
As the war for top talent intensifies, sports teams and leagues have begun considering talent outside the industry to strengthen their competitive edge. This effort includes seeking individuals with diverse experiences, genders, educational backgrounds, and races/ethnicities, among other factors. As researchers suggest, the outcome of these efforts is directly connected to their onboarding experience.
When a person decides to switch careers, the transition is often challenging. Despite great enthusiasm and potential, a lackluster onboarding can leave the best talent struggling to adapt to the new industry’s demands and nuances. Without adequate training, support, and cultural integration, one can find oneself with longer ramp-ups to productivity or (even worse) challenges in understanding one’s role, building credibility and rapport, or driving immediate success, ultimately leading to one’s early departure, producing a negative impact on the bottom line of the business in numerous ways.
When an employee departs, the company is typically hit with hard and soft costs. Hard costs, primarily visible and consistent across companies, include administrative processing of departures, advertising and recruitment, interviewing and testing candidates, and onboarding and training new hires. Soft costs, though less visible, also significantly impact the business. Soft costs include the lower productivity of departing employees and their supervisors. Time spent training new hires, and the morale damage caused by a turnover. Studies show that turnover costs vary by position, with entry-level replacements costing 30-50% of the annual salary, mid-level at 150% or more, and high-level or specialized employees around 400%.
This reality underscores how essential it is for organizations to invest in a comprehensive onboarding program, especially when bringing new, particularly talent from outside the industry, to ensure a smooth transition, foster job satisfaction, and set the stage for long-term success. To drive home the point further, according to Robert Half, 91% of new employees are willing to walk within the first month if their new job isn’t what they expected. They’ll also walk if they don’t like the company culture. Of that 91%, 28% do walk out within the month.
When companies recruit, they lean into the company culture and impact opportunities. In the interview process, human resources and hiring managers discuss the importance of the new team member to the organization’s success and how much their team members are valued. Following buying into a perceived sure thing or sweet dream, many employees are quickly greeted by the realities of transition from hiring to working. The excitement, energy, and thrill of working at a new place are dampened. From being met with extensive paperwork, HR manuals, and managers who aren’t ready for them, the feeling of not knowing what to do or where to be and wondering why they were even hired in the first place begins to permeate their minds quickly—resulting in every other instance from his day forward, reinforcing the initial wrong first impression.
Research proposes that a spectacular onboarding experience should focus on several key actions to combat this reality. These include extending our thoughts around the possibility of onboarding, including expanding onboarding to encompass the entire first year to ensure ongoing support and integration, aligning the onboarding experience with the organization’s core values and mission, providing clear answers to new hires’ fundamental questions about their roles and the company, integrating experiences that reflect the company’s unique culture, empowering leaders and teams to take responsibility for onboarding, leveraging employee feedback to refine and improve the process continually, and integrating findings from research and case studies to inform best practices. These steps collectively can contribute to a welcoming and productive onboarding environment that sets new hires up for long-term success.