How long, or rather, how short is your company’s onboarding process? Onboarding is often overlooked, and it seems to be a rather short process these days. From boosting performance to improving job satisfaction and job retention, it is key in the development of your workforce. Honestly, what company enjoys hiring an employee, only to be candidate searching a couple months later for the same position because they didn’t focus on cultivating that new hire?
According to a survey by SHRM.org, “around 77 percent of onboarding programs among large employers in North America last just three months or less, and 38 percent of employers report their programs are only a week or less.” Many experts recommend a 12-month onboarding process to get the most out of new employees. So, where does your company stand?
Managers seem to be rushing the onboarding process with the thought that if an employee is being onboarded for an entire 12 months, that employee is not fully contributing. It can also be viewed as taking time out of the managers day, when they could be allocating that time towards more “valuable organizational processes.” It is a crazy idea, but it is becoming more and more apparent with the short processes set in place at so many companies. Onboarding should be approached as learning AND contributing to avoid this “non-contributing” mindset.
Bringing these awesome employees into the organization seems to be where most of the attention is focused towards, rather than retaining those employees for the long term. Failure to recognize this imbalance will result in a repeat of the hiring process over and over. It’s time for your company to start implementing a strong onboarding process to avoid that cycle of hiring and then re-hiring for the same positions because employee retention is horrible.
It is a challenging concept to implement a strong onboarding process. When looking at it:
- Onboarding should provide an engaging experience to the new hire and convey how their role intertwines with the overall business goal. Information overload is common in many organizations as they are trying to teach as much information with the short process that they do have set up.
- Onboarding should allow them to interact and learn from coworkers, which will help them to thrive in the company culture by building a strong support network. Research shows that the most engaged employees are those that have strong relationships with their co-workers as well as managers.
- Lastly, it should offer a personalized experience based on the duties of that new hire.
At Axiom, we can offer awesome onboarding practices that will allow your company to truly appreciate what a strong process can do for employee engagement, retention and company culture. A solid onboarding process will pay great dividends in the long run and get your company out of the turnover industry that so many fall victim to. Give us a call at 844-587-1019 or email us at hr@axiomhrs.com.