Why onboarding is important for retention?

Regardless of what level a person is at in their career; the first days and weeks in a new job are nerve-racking, to say the least. Some things just simply come with time, but there are others that you as a recruiter can easily take control of to ensure that your new hire is comfortable, confident, and happy in their position.

Reports have found that 25% of employees leave a new position within the first 90 days.  But there must be several different possible reasons for this, not just how well they’ve been welcomed into the company. When employees go through a structured onboarding process, they are 58% more likely to remain with the company after three years. So there must be some sort of correlation between the two!

What is onboarding?

Onboarding is not the same thing as training.  It goes without saying that there is a need for all new employees to receive relevant training in order to do their job successfully, but it’s not what we are focusing on here.  Onboarding, on the other hand, is the management of the early stages of a relationship between an organisation and a new employee. This often gets overlooked, especially when you’ve been trying to fill a position that’s been vacant for some time, and are under pressure to get the new hire to start working on the huge backlog ASAP.  

Onboarding is more about nurturing the new employee, about checking in, about the personal approach.

Some of the most important factors that contribute to a successful onboarding process are the practical ones. Have you ever arrived for your first day of work and it’s clear to see that the company hasn’t even thought about where you’ll be sitting in the office? Or you do have a designated desk, but there isn’t a computer or phone set up for you, so you have to sit idle while the IT team fiddles around with equipment and cables in your workspace?  Way to make a person feel like a burden on their first day!

In a survey carried out by Office Team pictured below you can clearly see the percentage of new recruits who did not get even the basics on their first day.

To help you to create a standardised onboarding process so that all new hires have the exact same experience, we have created a checklist of some of the things that you can do ahead of their start date, within their first day/week of work and throughout their first 90 days.

Before They Start

• Connect them with their new team  
• Send details for their first day
• Be sure to email the new hire their start time, directions to the office (if required), a list of what they need to bring in and an agenda for their first day at least 2-3 working days ahead of their first day.
• Email forms to be completed instead of leaving them to the first day.

The First Day

• Have all new employees start later on the first day as it will give you chance to get all of the paper work and meetings out of the way.
• Have a desk set up and ready to go.
• Show them around.
• Bring them up to speed on company policies e.g.. holiday and sick pay.
• Schedule one-on-one time with their manager.
• Give them a list of achievable tasks to be working on .
• Go home early as the first day is a lot to take in.

The First 90 Days

• Have regular check-ins.
• Ask for their feedback
• Shadow all departments