A strong onboarding strategy is essential to a company’s growth. It provides new hires with a clear path to their role and demonstrates that your business cares about them.
The logistical components of onboarding are important, but managers must also build connections with their new hires. This can be done through 1:1 conversations and regular check-ins built into performance discussions.
Define Your Goals
A strong onboarding strategy is a plan that guides your new hire through integration into your organization. It encompasses the various training, meetings, and other activities that help your employee transition into their role.
A clear onboarding process helps minimize early attrition and disengagement by ensuring new employees have the tools to succeed. It also supports your company culture by fostering an environment where employees feel they belong.
One of the most important aspects of a successful onboarding program is clearly defining your goals and how you will measure success. For example, you could focus on improving the efficiency of your new hire process by reducing the time it takes for them to complete their orientation.
Another goal might be increasing employee engagement by helping them build strong connections with coworkers. This could be done by encouraging them to meet their coworkers through group events or 1:1 meetings and by creating an internal knowledge base that makes it easy for employees to find answers to common questions.
Establish a Plan of Action
A strong onboarding strategy aims to help new hires succeed in their roles quickly and efficiently. This is achieved by allowing them to unlock all the knowledge, resources, and support they need to thrive in their role. Additionally, it is important to help them establish social connections in the workplace and build trust and confidence.
It is also important to be able to track the success of your onboarding program. This is done by establishing clear KPIs and having a system to measure progress.
One way to do this is by using onboarding analytics. This will allow you to identify any areas that need improvement and make necessary changes. Another way to track the success of your onboarding is by measuring employee engagement. This can be done by conducting surveys, using pulse surveys, and analyzing employee feedback data. This will give you insight into your onboarding program’s success and how it impacts your business. It will also allow you to adjust the onboarding process toward your goals and objectives.
Communicate Your Goals
It’s important to be clear with new hires about their career path and development opportunities at the company. It helps boost employee retention rates, which benefits both the employee and the employer.
It also allows the company to show how much it values its employees, which is another key part of retaining talent. This can be accomplished by setting specific goals for each employee, celebrating their achievements, and providing them with training opportunities.
Developing a strong onboarding strategy requires the participation of multiple departments, including HR, IT, and payroll. Having the team coordinate their efforts and establish a clear timeline allows each department to ensure all of the pieces are in place before the employee starts, ensuring that everything will stay intact.
It’s also essential for HR to collect feedback throughout the onboarding process and act on it quickly. If new hires feel their input and ideas will be ignored, they will likely leave the company sooner. By taking the time to gather and act on feedback, HR can continuously improve its onboarding processes.
Be Flexible
A good onboarding strategy is key to an organization’s retaining employees. Research shows that 80% of new hires hold their company in high regard when they have a strong onboarding experience.
A successful onboarding strategy teaches new employees how to do their job and establishes a strong foundation for success. It also helps to ensure they understand their role in the larger organizational picture and feel valued from day one.
While it is important to be able to communicate a clear vision for the future, it is also vital that you give your new hires time to get up to speed with their duties. Create a schedule of training sessions that can be adapted to fit the needs of your employees. For example, slate high-level sessions on company processes during the first week and skills training during the second and third weeks.
Your onboarding process must allow new employees to develop a solid working relationship with their peers and managers. This will help them feel a sense of belonging and boost retention rates.
Engage Your Team
With the cost of replacing an employee often ranging up to 300% of their salary, a healthy onboarding experience is something that every business should strive for. The most effective way to do this is by applying engagement tactics right from the start of someone’s employment journey.
An example would be giving new hires a peer buddy, or mentor, who helps them integrate into the office culture and gives them contextual and institutional knowledge they can’t get from official onboarding materials. These buddies aren’t involved in evaluations or assigning work; they help their new team members understand the big picture and what it means to work at the company.
Another important element of a strong onboarding strategy is ensuring managers are prepared to engage with their new team members. One of the best ways to do this is by sending a manager just-in-time onboarding checklists that are sent out 24 hours before their new hire’s arrival. This gives them time to prepare for their recruit’s questions and ensure they have everything they need.
