Hiring new people is tough. I often groaned at the thought of bringing someone new on board; it’s a massive effort. Forget about posting the job ad and sifting through all the resumes to find candidates with the right skill set. And don’t get me started on the people who apply for roles for which they have zero qualifications. It takes time and effort to filter quality candidates from those who can’t do the job. Then there’s the interview process, which typically involves multiple rounds. At a minimum, you’ll spend at least three hours interviewing qualified candidates, if not more. Whether you’re conducting team interviews or individual ones, by the time you extend an offer, you’ve probably invested at least 75 hours into the search. This doesn’t even include the time your team or other leaders spend helping you find the right candidate. And that’s assuming someone accepts your offer. Every candidate has multiple offers these days—at least the quality ones do—so if you’re not competitive, you start back at square one. It’s clear why it’s so important to retain candidates once you’ve hired them.
What surprises me most is that many companies fail to recognize the value and importance of having a structured onboarding plan. First, let’s clarify: there is a difference between orientation and onboarding. Orientation is a one-time event that welcomes the new employee to your company and is more general in focus. Typically conducted by your HR team, it includes the legal aspects and standard training that applies to every team member within your organization. This might involve understanding your vision and mission, your company history, their handbook, and filling out their I-9 forms—all the “fun” stuff they get to do on day one. Don’t get me wrong; orientation is extremely important—it’s the first impression an employee has of your organization. When they walk into the office and find their desk set up, complete with a computer and maybe a nice note from the team, it creates a welcoming atmosphere. This first impression is crucial when hiring new employees. We need to consider how professional our orientation is. Do we have an effective orientation process? Is our handbook well-prepared? Have we set up all the documents they need to review? Maybe we’ve pre-filled some of these documents for them. How easy is it for them to navigate the day-one process? They will walk away either thinking that your organization has its act together or not.
Then we come to onboarding, which is usually managed by the hiring manager and their team. I cannot stress enough the importance of having an effective and systemized onboarding process. We shouldn’t have to create something new every time we hire an employee. As an organization, we need standardized scorecards, goal-setting metrics, and KPIs. One would assume you’d create those before posting the job ad; how else will you know what you need this individual to accomplish? Additionally, you need to consider the training plan: what do we need to teach this individual so they can perform their job effectively? A good onboarding plan addresses the six C’s:
- Compliance: These are the basic legal and policy-related rules and regulations of your team. This could include how to enter time into your ticketing system or the rules for billing. Anything that is a rule within your team should be part of this training program.
- Clarification: A good onboarding program ensures that the employee understands their new job and all related expectations, helping them grasp what “good” looks like in terms of their contributions.
- Confidence: If trained well, the new employee will develop the confidence to perform their job functions independently. This is why cohesive training programs are so important.
- Connection: It’s like the first day of school when you’re the new kid; we spend so much time at work that we want to know the people we work with. These vital interpersonal relationships and information networks are essential for new employees to establish. How do you help facilitate this?
- Check-Back: No onboarding program is perfect. Gathering feedback from the employees about their experience during the onboarding process is critical. This feedback will help you modify your program for future employees and address any gaps in training. Also, it’s essential to maintain constant communication with your new hire. A good onboarding plan includes 14 different touchpoints in the first year from the manager—yes, 14.
- Culture: Providing employees with a sense of both formal and informal organizational norms is key to their integration. For example, at IT by Design, we practice The Collaborative Way framework as part of our culture. If individuals aren’t trained on it, they won’t know the various phrases we use to communicate.
Onboarding is essential. New employees who go through structured onboarding experiences are 58% more likely to remain with their organizations after 36 months than those who do not. In fact, it can cost you three times an individual’s salary to fill that role. Organizations with structured onboarding programs achieve a 91% first-year retention rate for their employees, and 62% of those employees meet their goals for the year. It’s clear that as leaders, we must ensure we have an onboarding plan that works.
Imagine yourself as a new employee: you walk into the office, and there’s no one waiting for you, no desk or computer set up, and someone is haphazardly trying to organize paperwork for you. They don’t have your scorecard or KPIs ready, and you’re placed next to an engineer for a kind of “show and tell.” There’s no structured onboarding plan. Your manager delegates your training to a coworker, who teaches you the ropes. By the end of week two, they expect you to perform at the same level as your peers. You might speak to your manager once during this process, then again for a quarterly review.
Would you stay with this organization? Did you feel valued and that they prepared for your onboarding? Remember, it’s a competitive market out there; finding good talent is difficult. So when you do, ensure you onboard them correctly to retain them. It’s a critical component of every organization’s retention strategy.
If you know your onboarding plan is struggling, feel free to watch our webinar on this topic and get a template to help you start in the right direction. You and any future employees will thank us for it.
