Your company is doing well and you are hiring to meet the growing demand - an ideal situation for any organization! You’ve found the right employees to bring onboard, with the right skills and the right energy, and you need them up-to-speed yesterday. The reality is that most new hires are months away from being mostly productive and getting them there will require time and effort from veteran employees. This process can be frustrating for both your new hire, who was excited to dive in and make an impact from day one, and for the organization, who needs them to do so.
Successfully integrating a new hire into a company and its culture is crucial for most employers or business owners. Employees starting a job want an onboarding process that will help them reduce the learning curve at the new company and provide access to the tools and information about deadlines, processes, and resources. This allows a new hire to become an effective and productive team member. According to recent statistics, it takes eight to twelve months on average to bring a new hire fully up to speed. Unfortunately, over one-third of companies do not have a structured onboarding process for new team members. In part, this is due to the time-consuming and costly effort required to create onboarding content. As a result, ineffective onboarding is a major reason why companies lose up to
31% of their new workers within the first six months and why 20% of all staff turnover occurs within 45 days of employment. Only by integrating an effective and strategic onboarding process can business leaders reduce new hire turnover, increase employee engagement and overall employee productivity.
In order to truly understand the importance of an effective onboarding process, we’ve provided some essential tips that will help you make your onboarding process as smooth and effective as possible.
Tips on how to make onboarding more effective
#1: Give your new hires the opportunity to practice skills before they need to apply it on the job
According to a survey, three-fourths of new hires said training during the first week on the job is most crucial to them. New hires are bombarded with lots of information early on that is critical to doing their jobs. Yet, the forgetting curve tells us that if new information isn’t applied within 6 days, we’ll only retain 25% of it. What a waste! With that in mind, you need to allow your new hires to practice the skills they need to fulfill their roles. Only by practicing new skills before they need to apply them on the job can employees sustain them, delivering a better quality of work in a short turnaround time. Not only does it help them better understand their roles and responsibilities within the company, but they also know their goals and are equipped with the tools and skillset to effectively meet them.
#2: Don’t use one-size-fits-all training
New hires join an organization with different experience and skills. Yet, many organizations treat them the same and present them with the same training during onboarding regardless. Use their time more effectively and see a faster ramp-up by providing training that adapts to the individual’s needs and experience. By using new-age tools, you can create tailored learning journeys that assess an employee’s competencies and only presents them with the training and information they need in order to bridge the gap and master the desired skill or behavior. It also improves new hire morale and satisfaction, not having to spend countless hours trying to stay engaged reviewing information they already know.
#3: Provide just-in-time training
Expecting a new hire, or any employee, to remember information they won’t need in the near future is unrealistic. Just-in-time training allows employees to access information when and where they need it, improving compliance and accelerating the learning curve. Use a learning platform that employees can access easily throughout their working day or on the move and quickly find the JIT training they need. Not only does it help them stay up to date with the latest information but they can also immediately start performing their jobs effectively. Let’s take a closer look when you need to develop and sustain a high-performance workforce with just-in-time training:
Provide one-click access to the most up-to-date information on-demand
Deliver knowledge in bite-size chunks on the go
Keep workers engaged and motivated
Define the skill sets of your workers to help them fulfill their goals as fast and smart as possible
Retrieve information at the time of need and immediately put it into practice
#4: Consider the modern learner
People’s habits, needs, and how they interact with information have been rapidly changing. Yet, training in many organizations, onboarding included, looks the same today as it did 20 years ago. Effective onboarding works with and supports employees' natural tendencies. It’s imperative to identify how your workers think and what their needs are. Research conducted by Deloitte cites that the ‘modern learner’ strives for relevant information that is directly related to his/her expertise and is available on the go, but at the same time, he/she is overwhelmed and often overworked. Use tools that allow you to provide employees with bite-sized, highly personalized, and focused content. Create eLearning which employees can complete on-demand that is interactive, engaging, and relevant to the individual, bringing value to you and your organization as quickly as possible.
Bottom line: Ready to redesign your onboarding process?
To sum it up, employee onboarding can be an expensive and time-consuming process but it doesn’t have to be! With the high cost of recruiting and the productivity gap in employee ramp-up, business leaders must understand that effective integration of new hires into the organization ensures their success. Moreover, new hires equally benefit from feeling welcomed, valued, and prepared. That’s why a modernized onboarding strategy supported by the newest software solution, reducing the burden on existing staff responsible for creating and supporting new hire onboarding, will help companies get the results they need - reduced new employee turnover, and achieving better employee engagement and motivations to improve the speed of ramp-up in productivity.