The Best Practices for Employee Onboarding

Benefits of Excellent Onboarding

Employee onboarding is rated as the second most important human resource practices. An excellent employee onboarding results in higher retention rates, employee experience optimization, and top talent acquisition.

In fact, some data estimates that advanced onboarding programs can have up to a 1000% rate of return on investment in comparison to traditional onboarding programs. Benefits of an outstanding employee onboarding program include-

1. New hire performance- Properly onboarding new hires can enhance employee performance by 11.5%. A poorly performing new hire can hurt company culture and overall employee experience so it is essential to acquire top talent and high performing employees.

A great way to make sure new hires are feeling motivated is to ask about their monetary and non-monetary incentives. Encourage your new hire to feel comfortable talking about their needs and wants.

2. Better employee retention- Your hiring manager and human resource professionals may think that the first day your new employee is on the job is the most important indicator of their retention. However, only 4% of new hires decide after day one to quit a new position.

Over 50% of employees who voluntarily leave their new jobs do so within the first year of employment. 66% of new employees who participate in a best practice employee onboarding program will remain at a company over three years.

Simple questions such as Why did you quit your last job? and asking about employee incentives can help new hire employees and your business to make sure your new hire is a good company culture fit.

3. Pre-boarding options- Let new hire employees hit the ground running by providing them with online pre-training material. A virtual tour or onboarding portal can help new employees feel comfortable on their first day on the job. Employees can be up to 80% less likely to leave during the first year of employment after participating in training and onboarding programs that occur before day one at their new company.

Examples of Great Onboarding Programs

Unsurprisingly, companies with best practices for employee onboarding are well-known and highly successful brand name businesses. Businesses who have an outstanding and innovative employee onboarding process include-

1. L'Oreal & IBM- Both powerhouse companies have a two-year-long effective onboarding process in place.
2. Zappos- Talent acquisition and talent management are top priorities for Zappos. They offer their new employees a $4,000 incentive to quit during their employee onboarding program if a new hire does not believe the company is a good fit for them.
3. Wippo- Their unique process onboarding new employees emphasizes the individual strengths of new hire employees. New hire employees who participated in the program were 32% less likely to quit at the six month point.
4. Facebook & Cisco- Both of these corporations have an option that allows their new team member to pick which team they want to join after completing their employee onboarding process.

The Top Employee Onboarding Best Practices

Best practices for employee onboarding include-

1. Communication before the first day of employment- Communicate with your new hire before their start date to make sure they feel comfortable and prepared before their first day on the new job. Their hiring manager and human resource staff can send information and introduce new team members via email.

Onboarding software can greatly help with this process by providing tools like an onboarding checklist and an onboarding portal for your hiring manager and human resource staff to use.

2. Consistently check-in- Many times, a hiring manager or human resource team member may assume a check-in after the first week is enough. Increase new hire success over the first six month period of employment by checking in at least once a month.

3. Buddy system- Link every new hire with a top talent team member that can help mentor and train them. A buddy can encourage a new employee to ask important questions and gather feedback about employee experience and company culture in your workplace.

4. Introductions- Help new hire employees to feel comfortable in their new work environment by introducing them to every team member possible. This includes higher-level executives and your top talent employees. When you take time to make sure new hire employees feel welcomed and apart of your company culture, you increase long term retention and employee experience overall.