The question of how onboarding affects employee retention has come up a lot lately on social, in comments of blog articles and across the web in general. We understand it’s easy to disassociate the two without the right explanation, so check out these top insights into how the right onboarding system can improve not only new hire retention but the employee retention rate of your entire workforce too. 

Be Timely, Proactive and Impactful

If 22% of employee turnover happens within the first 45 days of the new hire being on the job, then the onboarding process must be organized, well-timed and impactful. There’s a lot of information to cover, which is why organization is key. See the bases you need to cover below, and make sure to integrate a 1 to 4 week timeline into your onboarding plan. If the onboarding process is too short, your employees won’t be equipped to handle their jobs, which may make them nervous or uninterested. If it’s too long, they may feel as if they’ll never get to their status as an employee and will abandon the training process. Either way, make sure to let employees know what to expect and be forthcoming by telling them onboarding/ new hire training will last X amount of days/weeks. 

Forget the Sink or Swim Approach

Systematic and structured onboarding programs are best at helping retain employees as they provide new hires with standard processes to help ease them into new positions. In fact, new hires are 69% more likely to stay at a company for 3 years if they were a part of a well-structured onboarding program.

Don’t Miss a Beat with These Last Minute Tips:

●      Create an outline of your onboarding plan, and don’t forget to send it out to the rest of your employees for their feedback and input

●      Conduct pre-onboarding surveys to get a better picture of your new employee’s ambitions, goals and overall what they hope to get out of the onboarding process. Provide space for them to list questions they may have about company policies so they can be answered throughout the process or afterward if not covered.

●      Set clear goals for the onboarding process that state what the new hire will accomplish – every step should have a key takeaway or an action the new hire should take. Provide a space for them to make notes/comments about their own progress.

●      Integrate the process into templates that can be reused for new hires over and over again – consistency is key!

●      Engage existing employees in the creation of your onboarding plan, after all they have the best insight into the roles and what new employees will need to know

●      Provide information on company structure and other employee’s roles and responsibilities so new hires know who does what

●      Don’t just dump the onboarding program on them – make sure to over-communicate with them and let them feel okay with asking questions

●      Follow up the onboarding program with a survey to see if your new hires had any issues or have any suggestions for improving the program. Was there something they would have liked to learn more about? Did they need more time or did they have too much time? You can create surveys using Qzzr.com or Surveymonkey.com on the fly!

●      Most importantly: invest in the help of an employee onboarding software to streamline the process and keep track of where your candidates are in the hiring process throughout.

Implementing these three talking points in your onboarding system can easily rid of your new hire retention and overall employee retention rate worries immensely. 

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.