The onboarding is only as good as you make it. If you place little care and effort in your onboarding, the outcome is likely to be poor and can even have detrimental effects on attrition. But spending time and energy getting it right can really benefit businesses.
Research from Gallup found that 88% of organisations have a poor onboarding process, suggesting improvements need to be made so your employees gain the most out of this.
So, let’s delve into some of the ways you can improve your onboarding…
Make your onboarding process interactive
Whether your onboarding is delivered online, entirely in person or a combination of both, it’s important that you make it interactive and engaging for the end user. Presenting too much information can become quite tedious for your employees and they might switch off. To avoid this, provide a positive introduction to the business as a starting point to capture them.
Think about creating activities employees can interact with or include a knowledge test to ensure they are absorbing the information being presented. Without interaction, information retention levels are significantly lower will be low and make it more challenging for employees to recall what they have been presented with.
Personalise it
Generalised onboarding might be easier to create but often lacks care and understanding of the new employee and their role in your business. There will always be elements within onboarding that all employees must know, but try to personalise where you can so it’s more relevant to the employee’s position.
Consider removing sections of learning that are not relevant, adding content specific to their role and altering text where possible to personalise more.
It’s important that any new starter understands what their role provides to the business and why it’s important. This will help them feel like a valued part of the company and mean they’re more likely to stay loyal to your business.
Support them with progression
Another key element of a good onboarding experience is showing how will support them through their career. Share your company values give an indication on support you will provide to help develop them as an employee. Although everyone’s journey will be different, they need to feel supported from you as a company.
Within your onboarding, you need to find ways to demonstrate this. Think about using a mix of infographics, videos, animations or just plain text instructions to show the employee what to expect. Give employees a taste but leave enough room for them to explore so they don’t feel progression journeys are the same for everyone.
Automate your onboarding
Automating paperwork and normal onboarding practices can increase productivity for you and your new employee. This speeds up the process and allows HR teams to spend time on other processes, making them more efficient as a department. An automated system sends notification updates for when documents are due, in need of completion or have been finished which saves HR departments having to chase this up.
For the employee it means they can immerse themselves into the culture quicker and start to achieve their goals. Essentially it increases productivity and efficiency for everyone!
Onboarding is one of the first stages an employee will face when they start their career with you, so, it needs to be perfect. It provides their first impression of your business and a poor onboarding experience can put an employee off almost immediately. Contact us to see how we can support your onboarding process and take it to the next level!
