You think you’re working for a great company, but you can’t help but look at your turnover rate and feel something is wrong. A higher-than-desirable turnover rate doesn’t make you a bad company. You have a few problems in your hiring that have a tendency to alienate new employees from the organization; the paperwork could be one of these problematic areas. And the solution starts with better new hire onboarding.

Give them Structure

Some organizations are a little more attune to a hands-off approach when it comes to bringing on a new team member. But hiring for retention needs some real structure. Structured onboarding is more effective than free-flowing patterns of paperwork and cultural immersion, and it can have a huge impact on employee longevity. According to a recent survey, 73% of companies update their onboarding with the intention to increase employee retention. That’s too big of a number to not consider structuring your onboarding.

Being able to do what you want is fun and all, but when it comes to onboarding, your new hires need to have something to do. They’re still learning the ins and outs of your company, and if you let them wander around without dedicated guided instruction, they may not settle in for a while. Make sure to provide a mentor for them who can guide them through a day in the life of someone working in their department, so they have a great sense of structure AND culture. 

Automatic Retention

Even with a good formal onboarding program in place, if your employees are filling out the same information in their forms over and over, you’re not going to see them for long. Younger employees are used to automatic form-filling through the magic of things like Google Chrome’s Autofill feature. Neither you nor them want to spend hours filling out the same information, so it pays to spend some money on onboarding that gets rid of most of the paperwork.

Not only is it easier to fill out forms online, but it’s a better to ensure retention. In fact, automating onboarding tasks can give you up to 16% greater retention for new hires. When your new hires see your fancy automated onboarding process, they’ll know you mean business. And it saves you the trouble of having to check their information on every form they fill out.

Eye on the Prize

If you want to keep employees around long after you’ve onboarded them, you need to give them something to work for, they need goals. Make the development opportunities clear from the beginning, or you risk losing them to a more challenging, rewarding position, or one that simply pays better. This might seem like an easy fix, but only 49% of employees are satisfied with the career development opportunities offered by their employer.

So when you think about onboarding, think of it as more than a way to get your new hire working the way you want them to. If you’re hiring good talent, chances are they will eventually have more to offer your company. So take that into account from the minute you hire them. Offer new objectives for them to reach every few months. It can start out simply as a doing X number of tasks per week. Once they grow into their role (which could take up to eight months), offer the chance to have them learn something new. They’ll probably have something in mind.

Companies tend to overlook onboarding because it’s not the flashiest thing to spend money on. But it’s just as important as any other part of your hiring, and ignoring it could cost you the employees you worked to hard to hire. When you build a structured onboarding process, make it automatic, and keep employees focused on long and short-term goals, you’ll have much smoother hiring and more loyal employees.

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.