Employee Onboarding is Your Best First Step to Stop Turnover
Effective onboarding boosts new hire productivity, confidence, connection and satisfaction. This leads to improved retention. The most successful companies onboard over months, not days. Ongoing checkpoints and training help cement roles and where available, assigning a well matched peer mentor creates connection and relationship.
Employee Onboarding Is Much More Than An Administrative Process
An excellent onboarding process is much more than paperwork - it's an immersive cultural experience that pays dividends in talent retention.
On their first day, new employees are hungry to understand the company vision and values. New hires want to learn critical systems and processes. They may not know it, but they want to get to know their teammates and find their new work friends.
Newly hired employees want to know everything they don't know yet about your company - the insider knowledge that expedites them getting up to speed. This thirst for information should be welcomed!
Sink or Swim Onboarding Equals Future Turnover
Yet too often, new hires are drowned in documents their first week and left to sink or swim. Without structured onboarding, they feel disconnected from the organizational culture and uncertain in their roles.
Onboarding Is An Investment In Lowering Employee Turnover
The companies we see prosper the most invest in onboarding processes spanning multiple phases. Tactics like assigning peer mentors, scheduling regular check-ins, and providing ongoing training past orientation set new hires up to truly thrive. In this environment, little frustrations get resolved before they become dealbreakers.
The numbers speak for themselves - structured onboarding programs have been proven to boost new hire retention by over 80%5. When employees feel valued from day one, they are far less likely to jump ship at the first better offer.
Of course, onboarding is just the beginning. Sustaining a culture of learning and inclusion takes conscious effort. But proper onboarding gets new hires invested in the company vision. They become more loyal to leadership and peers who help them succeed in those critical early days.
The time and resources to onboard well pay dividends through higher productivity, fulfillment, and retention.
Good onboarding that extends beyond orientation paperwork incorporates:
- Sharing the company vision, values and culture
- Introducing new hires to key team members and leaders
- Providing training on systems, tools and processes
- Setting clear expectations and performance standards
- Assigning a mentor for ongoing support and guidance
- Checking in regularly on progress and satisfaction
- Soliciting feedback to improve the experience
Comprehensive onboarding processes are critical for reducing turnover rates.
The data clearly shows that employees who go through structured onboarding that focuses on cultural assimilation, role clarity, and networking end up staying at companies longer than those who receive minimal onboarding. This makes sense - onboarding sets the foundation for integration into the company and engagement with one's role. Employees who feel welcomed, prepared, and connected from day one have fewer reasons over time to want to leave.
With the high costs of continuously recruiting and training new employees, investments into onboarding infrastructure and training quickly pay for themselves through that increased retention.
Enable new hires to envision a future with the organization. For any business looking to decrease turnover, the key is not just attracting talent but setting that talent up for success from the start through onboarding.
In our next post we look at how job market trends can affect turnover rates and what you should do to keep up with the market.
Up NEXT -> Offer Pay that Keeps Up with the Market to Avoid Bad Turnover
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Joseph Campagna, SPHR, SHRM-SCP is president and owner of My Virtual HR Director, a human resources outsourcing company serving small and medium sized businesses nationwide. My Virtual HR Director provides an executive level HR advisor to companies that can’t afford or can’t justify hiring a fulltime HR professional on staff.
With twenty years of experience dedicated to the HR profession, Mr. Campagna has honed his skills as an expert in compliance, talent management and employee relations. Bringing human capital management experience from start-ups, IT and biotechnology companies, employee leasing, and fortune 100 behemoths Mr. Campagna has filled his tool belt through generalist work, executive positions, and consulting opportunities with companies such as ADP, Merrill Lynch, and Johnson & Johnson. As Vice President of HR for biotech company Hemo Concepts, as well as the head of HR for the global IT solutions company, the Galaxy Group, Mr. Campagna created rich and successful organizational development and employee engagement programs.
Having worked with a diverse group of companies and clients in a broad spectrum of industries and environments, he brings a unique HR philosophy to every organization he works with. “HR is not the picnic department,” he says “but instead bears the full responsibility and the unlimited potential for a highly productive and efficient workforce. If HR systems are successful, the organization’s revenue should be increased.” From mergers and acquisitions, to IPO’s, to new product development, to divestiture Mr. Campagna has a true business background to support his HR Architecture.
Mr. Campagna is certified as a senior professional through both the Human Resources Certification Institute (HRCI) and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). The HRCI designation of Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) is an experienced-based examination certification. The SHRM certification is a competency based examination certification. Each is a premier designation in the world of HR and recognized by the Society for Human Resource Management of which Joe is a national member and former chapter president.
Mr. Campagna brings decades of helping small and medium sized businesses create HR structures such as employee handbooks, performance systems, talent management, training programs, and employee engagement. He knows how to deliver business results through HR aligned objectives.
Nearly 30 years of expertise and HR executive authority combined with a group health insurance license and certifications from the Society for Human Resource management and the Human Resources Certification Institute have given Joseph Campagna the guru status that has earned him leadership roles, board of director roles, and speaking engagements related to human resources.