A Glassdoor research says organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by as much as 82% and productivity by 70%.
How can employers make sure onboarding efforts in their organisations are satisfactory?
New joiners often feel there is a disconnect between candidate experience and employee experience.
One of the most common reasons is communication and perception. Things that aren’t explicitly stated about the new role can lead to a disconnect between expectations and the reality of a new job. Wrong interpretations can be created. It is critical for Hiring managers and recruiters that they are transparent about the company and the opportunity during the hiring process and the onboarding process.
A clear onboarding process can help to bridge the gap between candidate and employee experience.
According to Dr. Talya Bauer from the SHRM Foundation, successful onboarding involves proactively covering The Four C’s. This stands for compliance, clarification, culture, and connection.
• Compliance is the lowest level and involves learning the basic rules and policies of the organization, as well as filling out all necessary paperwork.
• Clarification ensures that the new employees understand their roles and responsibilities. It can help to describe upcoming projects in which they will be participating, and how they can contribute.
• Culture explains the norms for the organization. This can be accomplished by giving them a tour of the facilities, describing how things work, and explaining how they fit within and impact the larger organization.
• Connection is the highest level, wherein a new employee develops relationships with the other members of the organization and begins to feel like part of the team. Introduce them to as many of their coworkers as possible!
Connection is the most powerful of the four points mentioned above and sits across the other three. Connection is really about creating a personal relation with the employee who is being onboarded.
In the current scenario of new age employees, virtual onboarding has become very common. There are certain best practices that the hiring managers and the HR need to take care of during the virtual onboarding process:
We all should understand that the needs of employees are the same whether it is virtual onboarding or in-person onboarding, however the approach has to be very different. Translating on-site experience into virtual world may not be the best option. Long days of zoom meetings or a dialogue free one-way information process being thrown upon a new joiner may not be the best experience that someone would be looking forward to.
Hiring managers and HR can look at a better way of curating a distinct and intentional virtual onboarding experience that is aligned with the organisational culture. It could certainly be more challenging as there will be more hand-holding involved across all the stakeholders.
However, a Smooth and streamlined onboarding process is what is critical here from both a new joiner perspective and from the company perspective as well.
- How the company is distributing the onboarding content is critical especially in the case of virtual onboarding- a good way would be to mix up the onboarding content into smaller modules, and making some part asynchronous while leaving others synchronous so that the employee has the flexibility and the advantage of being more engaged with the content shared.
- We all understand that managers can make or break the new hire onboarding processIt is important that they receive regular inputs on formal onboarding training, how to create consistent experience by delivering centralized onboarding sessions for specific content pertaining to employees being onboarded, HR culture etc. Managers should also be trained on being proactive in ensuring that their new employees have settled in well.
- Virtual gatherings with office cohorts, online sessions on casual catchups with them will ensure a smooth relationship building between new joiners and their teams. Having some kind of employee resource groups will also help new joiners settle down well.
- Another critical element in onboarding is Empathy and Understanding for the new joiners- Managers should be checking in on them to ensure they have settled in and if any extra support is needed by them at any point for settling down.
An employee’s career journey will have many defining moments that he/she will either want to cherish in the organisation- either because they carry fond memories or because they carry some uncomfortable experiences.
Leaders hence have the power to help new joiners have positive defining moments with the right onboarding experiences.
Published by Mosaic Solutions
April 2023