Companies put big money and a lot of effort into recruiting the best employees for their business. However, many forget that there is one more step to the process – employee onboarding.
Employee onboarding is a process used to acclimate new employees to their new position and new work environment. Unfortunately, it has been found that 17% of new hires leave their position within the first 90 days. Companies that utilize employee onboarding correctly, however, find it helps to improve employee retention, company culture, and the company-specific skills training process.
If you have an onboarding process that you know could use improvement, the time to fix it is now. After all, the longer you go without an effective onboarding process the more likely you are to lose valuable employees and company money.
Here are a few proven strategies you can use to improve your employee onboarding process.
Focus on Experience
Employee experience is a very important aspect of the onboarding process. After all, the onboarding process to a company is like a cover to a book – the first impression. Take a lesson from Twitter and have your employees’ workspace and tools ready to go from the moment they arrive. Furthermore, go the extra mile and introduce your employees to their co-workers and other department heads in the company. Adopting these strategies and other strategies that focus on experience will help new employees feel welcome and wanted.
Skip the Skills
During the employee onboarding process, many companies focus solely on on-the-job skills. By doing this, employees only become acquainted with their individual role and fail to get to know the company as a whole. As a result, they are less engaged with the company culture and their co-workers which leads to a decline in communication. To avoid this from occurring, successful onboarding processes should skip the skills during the first few days and focus on helping the employee to get to know the company, the culture, and their co-workers.
Assign Mentors
One of the best ‘welcome to work’ gifts new employees can receive is a mentor that has their best interest in mind. Mentors can help a new employee get acquainted with the company, problem-solve unexpected events, and advocate for them in situations with senior employees. Employers that are able to create successful and sustainable mentorship programs are likely to see employees stay around longer and advance in their positions quicker than companies that do not. Both of which benefit the employee and the company.
Although there are many more strategies that can be implemented to improve the employee onboarding process, these three are easy to implement. And, with a few simple changes, these strategies will make a big difference in your company.