Your Ultimate Guide to Employee Onboarding
In our latest blog we covered the importance of offboarding – the process of smoothly exiting an employee from your business.
Now, I’d like to look at the opposite end of the spectrum and delve into the process of onboarding a new employee.
This can be an exciting time for any employer – after weeks of trawling through resumes and conducting interviews, you’ve finally found the perfect candidate! The gap in your team is filled and your brand-new employee is ready to start.
But the process doesn’t stop there.
In fact, it’s only just the beginning. Onboarding and training are two of the most important processes when preparing an employee for a new role, and without them, chances are your new hire won’t make it past the first few months.
So, what is employee onboarding, and why is it so critical to a company’s success?
In this blog post we’ll cover all you need to know, including:
What is the employee onboarding process?
What is the difference between onboarding versus training?
Why is onboarding so important?
Common mistakes people make when onboarding
Recommended onboarding process
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What is the employee onboarding process?
Employee onboarding is the method of initiating new hires into your business. It acts as a support process to help new employees integrate into your company culture and find their feet as they transition into a role.
The best employee onboarding processes are carefully thought-out, with well-devised steps to ensure new employees feel:
Welcomed at work by their team and direct reports
Confident and clear on how to perform their role (with support and training)
And the result? Successful onboarding leads to new employees becoming happy, productive contributors to an organisation – but we’ll explore these benefits in more detail shortly.
What is the difference between onboarding versus training?
It’s not uncommon for businesses to mistake training for onboarding, particularly within the small-medium business arena. And while training does have an important role within the onboarding process, it does not, and should not, represent the entire scope.
The key differences to remember are:
Training covers the technicalities or tasks of a role. It explains processes on how to complete responsibilities, how to work technology and equipment, and ultimately, how to do a job.
Onboarding on the other hand, is more broadly focused on employee integration, and how to incorporate a new employee with other team members, management and workplace culture.
Why is employee onboarding so important?
Your relationship with employees is moulded by their interaction with the business – right from their very first interview, all the way through to their very last day. An employee’s impression and experience with a workplace can have major impacts on productivity, development and overall company culture.
In fact, some of the key benefits of a successful onboarding program include:
Increased employee productivity – employees know how to carry out tasks, who to speak to, and what the process is to get the job done efficiently and effectively
Decreased employee stress – rather than feeling alone in a new workplace, onboarding ensures new employees have a supportive network around them, ultimately building a strong team that can rely on one another (read more on Employee Burnout here)
Reduced employee turnover – new employees are successfully integrated into the company culture and are happy with their role
Just to name a few!
This was highlighted in a study published in the Academy of Management Journal, which determined that the first 90 days of employment are the most critical time for organisations to build harmonious relationships for a new hire. Findings of the study revealed that employees who were offered a support system during this initial period, often had positive employee attitudes and harder work ethics. Alternatively, when a lack of support and direction was provided during this time, employees were unhappy, unproductive and often didn’t stay at the organisation for more than four months.
Losing employees on the basis of bad onboarding is not only costly financially, but has a negative effective on brand, employee perception and future hiring ability.
Effective employee onboarding can improve productivity and increase employee confidence
Common mistakes people make when onboarding an employee
Now we understand why the onboarding process is important, it’s time to look at how to execute the process, and more specifically, what to avoid.
Depending on the workplace, the onboarding process can become quite lengthy and detailed, with checklists, forms, logins, signatures, email introductions, contracts…the list goes on. So, while you are navigating the process, here’s some common mistakes to watch out for:
Confusing training with onboarding:
We’ve touched on this earlier in the article, however I’ve included it again to really emphasise the importance of distinguishing your training processes from your onboarding processes. All onboarding processes should have a mixture of training (technical learning) and employee integration activities, to ensure new hires have the support they need to transition into the new working environment.
Ad hoc onboarding:
Another common mistake occurs when businesses take an ad hoc approach to onboarding. When an organisation lacks a formalised cohesive approach, it is likely that the onboarding process will be executed poorly. This can result in missing crucial steps or delivering processes at the incorrect time.
For example, introducing a new hire to the team over a lunch should happen within the earlier stages of the onboarding process. Not months later, when the new recruit may feel as though they had to go the extra mile to familiarise themselves with all employees.
The best way to avoid this mistake is to have a checklist and process in place, with clear lines of responsibility and accountability. This way, every new employee receives the same consistent welcome, and the steps are executed seamlessly in order every time.
What is the onboarding process you recommend?
The onboarding process should be designed to cater to the unique needs of your business. There is not one single onboarding process that trumps all. However, there are some measures that all successful onboarding processes should have in place to ensure they are executed effectively and efficiently.
Top tips for a successful employee onboarding program:
Develop a clear, structured process to ensure onboarding consistency
Centralise onboarding so that one department or individual has oversight and decision authority over the business’ entire onboarding process
Consider using metrics to measure the effectiveness of the onboarding program
Be clear on how the new employee’s role is critical to the company’s success
Ensure managers are actively involved in the onboarding experience and understand their responsibilities
Each year, technology advances and a new generation of candidates enter the workplace. With it, the techniques used to attract, manage, and retain employees are adapting and changing.
If you remember just one thing from this article, remember this:
An onboarding program that gives as much attention to how employees are feeling throughout the process, as it does to the process itself, is one that will thrive.
If you need assistance managing this process, or have any questions about how to successfully onboard an employee, contact Melbourne HR for a free consultation and quote.
PHONE: 1300 784 687
Emma Weeks is a Senior HR Advisor with Melbourne HR.
Edited by Nicole Torrington, Marketing Manager at Melbourne HR.