Think for a moment, about the onboarding process at your company. How much time and effort do you place on setting up new employees for success? Next to your hiring decision for a position, onboarding is the number-one indicator of employee loyalty. In fact, one in four new hires will leave a company within one year if onboarding is not successful. Data also shows that one in 25 employees actually quit after their first day. If you aren’t investing in onboarding, you risk the time and money spent on the entire candidate search.
Why Do We Neglect Onboarding?
All hiring managers know that a candidate search is an expensive venture. Companies are willing to invest in that process, yet they ignore the critical three-month onboarding window. Hard and soft costs are the biggest reasons why businesses neglect to onboard. Training a single new employee can cost around $10,000, and managers and peers must take time out of their schedule to help train new team members on systems and processes. This leads to the sink-or-swim approach that is so pervasive in today’s companies.
Can Technology Help With the Onboarding Process?
In an effort to help companies cut costs and improve onboarding, a new app has been developed that allows companies to create interactive training programs online. The purpose is to free up managers and veteran employees while offering an immersive experience to the trainee. It includes everything from staff photos and bios, new hire documents, training manuals, meeting notes, schedules and links to training portals. New team members and their supervisors can track their progress along the way.
Apps like this may be useful, but whether a business invests in technology to onboard or they create their own process, onboarding cannot be ignored. It is essential to make employees feel welcome from the minute they step through the door on the first day, and they must be given easy access to the tools they need to succeed. Spending time early on to reduce the learning curve prevents errors and frustration down the line. Onboarding also indicates to a new employee that the company cares about their success on the job. Nothing says, “we don’t care about you,” like leaving a new employee to try and navigate their job on their own.
Onboarding Is an Investment in the Company’s Success
Onboarding is time consuming and costs money. However, it is an investment in long-term retention and success. Properly onboarded employees are far more satisfied and productive on the job, and the up-front investment pays dividends down the line.
It can be difficult to develop strong onboarding processes on your own. Partnering with a strategic staffing firm can help you improve your program and reduce turnover. If your HR team is looking for innovative ways to improve hiring and retention, or you are seeking to add innovative thinkers to your existing HR team, email us the recruiting experts at Contemporary Staffing Solutions today. We can help you find the people and the strategies to create strong onboarding processes.