Improving Employee Onboarding Programs with Retention in Mind

Strategies You Need to Embrace

In today's competitive business environment, the significance of human capital cannot be overstated. With companies vying for top talent, the focus on acquiring and retaining skilled employees shouldn’t stop at recruitment. A robust and dedicated employee onboarding program is key to ensuring your employees not only start off on the right foot but thrive in their positions.

In this article, we’ll provide valuable insights for CEOs, private equity managers and companies navigating staffing challenges who want to improve retention and productivity. Helping companies grow and prosper is what Growth Operators does best.

The Challenge of Talent Scarcity

Talent scarcity is an ongoing concern for HR departments. It has also grown more problematic for C-suite executives, especially in rapidly evolving industries. The right talent can be the differentiator between success and failure – this makes the inability to attract and retain skilled high-level professionals a substantial threat to business growth and innovation.

The Significance of Onboarding in Employee Retention

A strategic onboarding process is more than a mere introduction to the company, it's a foundational step in building a long-term relationship with employees. Statistics reveal that organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70% (Brandon Hall Group). This underscores the direct impact of effective onboarding on employee longevity and organizational success. A study by BambooHR shows that effective onboarding helps employees to:

  • Feel stronger commitment to companies

  • Become more engaged at work

  • Experience connection within the workplace

By contrast, 17% of employees leave a job between the first week and the third month and 50% leave within two years. Not surprising if 52% of new employees feel under-trained for their jobs.

With the cost of onboarding a new employee hovering somewhere between $1,500-$35,000 for executives and the increased challenges of remote employee onboarding, don’t risk losing your valuable investment. Get the right expertise to resolve the employee onboarding challenges within your organization.

Holistic Employee Onboarding Solutions

Effective onboarding does more than orient new hires, it integrates them into the company culture, aligns them with organizational goals and clarifies their roles and responsibilities. This crucial phase instills company values and ethics so that employees are not just aware of their tasks but are also emotionally invested in the company's vision and mission. It leaves employees feeling connected, inspired and motivated.

What a Good Onboarding Process Looks Like

To create an effective onboarding process, it's essential to consider the four essentials:

  1. Compliance: Make sure new employees understand and follow legal and regulatory requirements related to their roles.

  2. Clarification: Provide clear expectations, goals, and performance metrics to help new hires understand their responsibilities and how they contribute to the organization's success.

  3. Connection: Foster relationships and connections between new employees and their colleagues, managers, and mentors to create a supportive network.

  4. Culture: Introduce new hires to the organization's values, mission, and culture, helping them align their behaviors and actions accordingly.

8 Employee Onboarding Strategies that Make a Great Onboarding Process

Using these tools and following best practices will ensure that you properly prepare new hires to do their best work:

  1. Structured Program: Develop a structured onboarding program with clear milestones and objectives. Tap internal and external expertise to draft templates to scale team onboarding.

  2. Consider Pre-Boarding Programs: Preboarding can help new hires understand their role, the business, and the company’s culture before they start working.

  3. Total Rewards Statements (TRS): Ensure that employees fully understand their compensation, benefits, retirement savings, insurance deductions and time off with regular TRS statements.

  4. Appoint Mentors: Pair new hires with mentors for guidance and support.

  5. Cultural Immersion: Include activities that immerse new employees in the company culture.

  6. Continuous Learning: Offer ongoing learning opportunities to aid professional growth. One of the most common reasons employees leave their jobs is a lack of investment in their development.

  7. Progress Tracking: Track timelines and performance metrics to measure employee progress. Keep management accountable for their success.

  8. Feedback Mechanism: Establish regular feedback sessions to address concerns and encourage open communication.

Success Stories: Why Experience Matters

Crafting an employee onboarding template that delivers results can be a guessing game without the right experience and expertise. This is where leveraging the right HR leadership matters. The experts at Growth Operators have helped numerous companies attract and retain talent more successfully through a holistic hiring practice that include robust onboarding plans.

Not only do we design workable programs, we train your internal HR team members and managers so that they can fully implement the program independent of us.

See our team in action through these case studies:

HR Solutions for Employee Onboarding

Give your new hires the best employee onboarding experiences possible with a carefully structured process. From hiring paperwork to onboarding software, the Growth Operators team can design a process that attracts more talent, better engages employees and helps them connect the dots between their role and the company’s objectives. Let’s hop on a call to discuss a starting point. Our sleeves are already rolled up!