Companies overlook new hire onboarding. It’s what they do. They’re so busy sourcing, interviewing, and hiring new candidates, they forget that what you do after a candidate accepts the offer is just as important as all the steps that lead up to it. If your company’s bleeding good employees or missing out on candidates because they’re tired of waiting for the official offer, you might have a new hire onboarding issue. 

New Hire Onboarding Needs Investment

Think onboarding is signing a W4 and i9 form as quickly as possible? It’s so much more. True seamless new hire onboarding involves getting an employee up to speed on how the company works, getting them to meet everyone, and making sure everyone’s compliant and ready to work, depending on your industry. It’s about reinforcing that accepting the job offer was the best decision and making the first day a great day!

Onboarding also involves proper new hire training, and this costs money. Unfortunately, 35% of companies admit to spending no money on an onboarding program, which is both a lie (printing those new hire forms does cost money, y’know!) and disappointing. Companies want to cut corners wherever they can, and new hire onboarding suffers as a result.

If you think you can get away with skimping on employee onboarding, think again. One out of every 25 people will leave a new job simply because the company has poor or no onboarding in place. Without a proper onboarding program, new employees get confused about what their role in the company is, what their actual duties are, and where the bathroom is. This leaves them frustrated and with one eye watching the exit. 

What Efficient New Hire Onboarding Does

Of course, there’s more to good onboarding than an introduction to the company. Good employee onboarding gets people to understand your company’s vision. This is one area where many companies are suffering. Around 60% of companies don’t set concrete goals for new hires to work toward. That’s a problem, because when you leave employees to fend for themselves in finding their purpose, they stray from your company’s purpose. Eventually, this leads to them becoming the 43% of employees who are familiar with the company goals but can’t name them. You can’t be vague about your new hire onboarding. It needs to be crystal clear.

It also needs to help hires settle into their new job. Even after everything gets filled out, employees get familiar with the company, and you have a productive new hire, you have more to do. Companies need to understand that beyond an easy first few days, 76% of new hires want more on-the-job training. It’s more important to them than free perks like food, which only 1% of employees want more of.

Following Up on New Hire Onboarding

The lesson here is that efficiency isn’t always about speed. Sometimes, it’s about ease of use and consistency. Though many new hires can get cold feet and leave after a bad initial onboarding experience, the real decision to stay at a company comes farther down the road. Around one-third of new hires quit their job after about six months.

Getting a new employee up-to-speed is one thing, but getting them to love working for you is another, and if you want to avoid having to pay for another round of recruiting, it’s worth it to keep at your new hire onboarding initiatives long after most companies have forgotten about it.

This means successful onboarding is about keeping employees around, too. If you don’t buy how important employee onboarding is to long-term retention, consider this: 73% of organizations say the biggest reasons they’re revamping their onboarding is not only to get new hires up to speed more quickly, but to retain them as well.

So ask yourself: is your new hire onboarding efficient? Are you spending enough money to make it a worthwhile investment in your new hires? Are you making sure your process is efficient enough to help employees reach their full potential more quickly? Are you following up your initial onboarding with longer-term on-the-job training to make sure employees stick around?

Bio: Christine Marino

Christine is the Chief Revenue Officer of Click Boarding, LLC, a company that offers employee onboarding software and solutions. She is responsible for the sales, marketing and business development strategies. Leveraging her 18+ years of experience in the Human Capital Management space, Christine drives company growth through strategic partner relationships as well new customer acquisitions across the small to large enterprise markets.