What is the onboarding process?

Employee onboarding is the initial step in employee engagement and a company’s retention strategy. It is one of the most important factors in ensuring that new hires will stay with your organization for a long time.

The Aberdeen Group found that 83% of best-in-class organizations begin the onboarding process before the new hire’s first day. This is most likely because an employee’s attitude and retention with your organization depends on their first 90 days of employment.

Employee onboarding determines if the hiring process is complete or if it must be restarted in a few months. According to a Jobvite survey, 20% of employee turnover occurs within the first 45 days of employment, and it frequently occurs as a result of the new hire’s unsuccessful onboarding. Studies have also shown that 69% of employees are more likely to stay with an organization for three years if they had a positive onboarding experience.

In this article, we’ll show you how effective onboarding achieves goals such as acclimating employees to their new role, the company’s values, and what the organization has to offer.

office workers having discussion in front of a laptop

7 Reasons Why Employee Onboarding is Significant

Talent scarcity and high turnover are among the biggest challenges that organizations will encounter in 2022, so it is critical to engage and retain employees from the beginning. You can do this by following our guide on how to implement a successful employee onboarding strategy. This will also help new workers get up to speed faster and start working sooner. 

A streamlined and effective onboarding process empowers employees to become acquainted with the requirements of their new function and the company as quickly as possible. They can become productive considerably faster because they understand the work for which they were hired. This increases the return on investment for employers.

Here are the top seven reasons why you should get your employees onboarded the right way.

1. It helps new hires get acquainted.

The onboarding process is an excellent opportunity to positively impact the employee experience with a great first impression. Failure to onboard effectively in the first week, on the other hand, can leave your employees with no clarity in their new responsibilities, poor engagement, and a lower employee retention rate. 

A successful onboarding process starts with creating a sense of connectedness and inclusiveness with new workers so they experience a sense of belonging. As a result, before the onboarding process, your employees and managers must drive real engagement in the company’s ideal performance culture. It allows them to learn about the team members before they join. Ensure that people from different departments speak to new hires during the onboarding process.

2. It can lower employee turnover rates.

Onboarding can result in reduced employee turnover, which means higher productivity and income. The best time to step up your efforts to retain your employees is the first day of their new job. Onboarding helps promote employee loyalty and motivates people to succeed.

In fact, 94% of surveyed employees stated that they would stay longer at a company that invested in their learning and growth.

Thus, attracting top talent and retaining employees through successful onboarding can save resources that would otherwise be spent on replacing employees who do not fit the company’s culture or values.

You can additionally opt for novel ways to save on onboarding and turnover costs. For example, in the age of social media and internet marketing, you might produce digital content and instantly disseminate it to new employees to get them up to speed. From training materials to instructional videos, these electronic learning resources help reduce onboarding costs because they are less expensive to replicate and can be shared conveniently via mobile devices, as opposed to mounds of paperwork.

Looking for a way to simplify onboarding for your team? eloomi’s onboarding software allows you to use our pre-built e-learning courses, or create your own!

3. It ensures workplace compliance from day one.

It’s easy to forget how important onboarding is when you’re busy thinking about other things, like what your new hire will be working on day one. But if you’re not careful, you could be overlooking a key part of your organization’s compliance strategy.

Onboarding starts with the new hire’s first day, and it shouldn’t end until all their training is done and they’re fully up to speed on what they need to know and do. In fact, for certain kinds of employees—like those in positions with access to restricted areas or customer service reps who have control over company finances—compliance training may never end.

The point is that it’s important to have a system in place for making sure every employee has what they need to stay compliant from day one. This helps protect your organization from legal issues and keeps everyone focused on their work instead of worrying about something going wrong because they weren’t clear on their responsibilities.

eloomi’s compliance training helps organizations of all sizes to stay compliant with current regulations.

4. It introduces new employees to company culture.

Helping newbies understand the corporate culture will help them fit in, and employees who feel like they belong are more likely to stay. Culture-centric onboarding not only helps employees stay but also attracts new talent.

The millennial employee pool is continuously looking for organizations that perceive them as people to invest in rather than positions to fill. This is where onboarding becomes a critical component of your company’s capacity to attract, recruit, and retain the best employees.

According to a 2022 LinkedIn survey, employees are 3.2x happier to be at work and 3.7x more likely to recommend their place of work when they feel cared about by their company.

While organizations believe that an effective onboarding program helps companies retain talent, we cannot ignore that marketing and selling a sound company culture also help to attract top talent. It also improves communication and sets clear expectations for the candidate and vice versa, which helps to hire the right candidate for the job.

5. It encourages collaboration, mentorship, and growth.

Starting on the right foot with collaboration-focused onboarding is about more than just addressing values and missions; it is also an opportunity to set clear expectations, foster participation, and open lines of communication from day one.

The most significant way onboarding procedures improve performance and productivity is by assisting new recruits in getting to work sooner. Furthermore, it not only allows you to get employees productive faster; it also allows you to retain them for a longer period through a culture of mentorship and fostered growth. 

Asking people to contribute their thoughts on how they would like the onboarding process to run is a great way to make them feel included and involved. It also works to break down any potential barriers between the onboarding team and new hires—if you need input from them, they’ll be happy to give it.

6. It shows new hires that you are invested in their success.

You have probably heard that employees who feel like they have a stake in the future of an organization are more likely to make it successful. Having new employees feel invested in the success of their new company is one way to keep them engaged and optimistic about their work long after they’ve been hired.

If you do not provide sufficient role-specific training to new hires throughout the onboarding process, they will be unable to fulfill their jobs effectively. This can have a negative impact on staff performance. 

A formal onboarding program, on the other hand, will create a favorable impression of the organization. It demonstrates that the organization is helpful and committed to assisting its employees in achieving success. Your staff will feel valued and inspired to achieve their best.

7. It keeps managers accountable.

It’s a fact: employees can’t perform at their best without proper training. Managers know how critical it is to get teammates up and running on the job as fast as possible. This is why onboarding is so important. It’s the period of time when managers and new hires can get acquainted with one another and learn how to work together effectively. 

Taking the time to have productive conversations about company culture, performance expectations and goals, and what success looks like can be an enormous help for the manager to ensure their team grows in the long run—but only if these conversations happen. 

If they don’t, teams may not be as productive, which might lead to fewer overall projects being completed on time or successfully. Hence, having a successful onboarding program can also boost manager accountability overall.

Give Your New Employees an Effective Onboarding Experience with eloomi

In this article, we studied the several advantages of proper onboarding and how it improves performance, successful recruiting, and new hire retention. While staying on track with all human resource challenges is difficult, the latest HR tools and onboarding software can improve the corporate work environment and employee lifecycle. 

eloomi recognizes the importance of onboarding and focuses on improving people’s outcomes by merging learning and performance. Our platform, which was founded in 2015, empowers you to improve employee outcomes, engagement, and productivity. We have worked hard to assist you in eliminating the 10+ tools required for any HR organization into a single, intuitive solution.

Click here for a free demo!