Nine ways to improve employee onboarding

Imagine spending months interviewing candidates, finding just the right one, only to see them dissatisfied and leave within a year of being hired.

What a colossal waste of time and talent.

Yet, all too commonly, that's precisely what happens.

One of the hidden costs of hiring someone is the time it takes for employee onboarding.

Not only are they not fully effective yet, but they're also taking additional time from their team members.

Yet, without employee onboarding, your new hires will flounder, and if onboarding is done poorly, they are far more likely to quit.

In fact, 80% of new hires with poor onboarding experience plan to quit.

Paychex  surveyed over 1,000 workers who started their current jobs in the last year and found that 80% of respondents who felt undertrained due to poor onboarding plans to quit soon.

Hiring is expensive and time-consuming, and losing an employee to a poor onboarding experience is exceptionally costly.

So here are nine ways to improve your employee onboarding experience.

1. Communicate Job Expectations from First Contact

Many organizations post job descriptions that lack a definition of job expectations and those that do often lack the ability to state them in an actionable way. And worse, the interview process focuses on past performance and knowledge, not forward-looking expectations.

The cost of misunderstanding the role can affect both the employer and the employee. But you can easily get everyone on the same page by including actionable expectations in the position and then covering those during the interview process.

A common method is to post 30-, 60-, 90-, or 180-day approach outcomes in the job posting. Don't just add them by making the listing longer. Replace the common (and boring) abilities and responsibilities section with expectations.

Now, during the interview, you have clear expectations and outcomes to discuss.

2. Go Beyond the Culture Deck, Have Great Documentation

Ensuring an employee can learn at their own pace is critical. That's why having clear documentation about the company (its policies, culture, etc.), procedures, and how to get things done is vital.

Many companies stop at the benefits and culture deck.

Having well-organized and up-to-date documentation that's readily available and easily accessible is key.

Here are a few tactics to make documentation more effortless and more accessible

• Adopt a "get a question, document a question" policy. Instead of just replying to the person, write it down in a company FAQ.
• Use the "Boy Scout" principle. Common in coding is the idea that you fix problems in code when you encounter them. When someone sees an error, they fix it. This lets you crowdsource updates.
• Make it easily accessible, no matter where it is. Tools like AskJack  (your AI-powered HR chatbot ) brings your documentation together, no matter where you keep it. This lets teams use the tool of their choice and lets AI do the lifting.

3. Training Programs

A comprehensive training program will quickly transform your new hire from being confused about everyone's names to excelling at their job.

The key is to tailor the training to the individual.

A good solution is a hybrid program that introduces the new employee to the company. This program can be given to everyone and includes specific training for the employees' roles.

For example, onboarding for a sales executive would cover the pitch deck, including sitting in on other reps' calls and doing sales role-playing, while someone in software engineering would focus on learning the team's DevOps, development lifecycle, and the ins and outs of their new code base.

In both cases, be sure to have clear milestones that match the employee's expectations.

Take our free Employee Onboarding Program Assessment to see where you can improve your program.

4. Easy Technology and Tools Setup

One of the biggest jokes in hiring today is that it often takes as long to set up your new laptop as it did 20 years ago.

Many employees share that their entire first week is spent waiting on their hardware, waiting for passwords, asking colleagues what apps they need, and, of course, waiting for someone to get them accounts.

But it doesn't have to be this way. At my last company, we hired a third-party company to manage this and made the experience amazing.

An employee's laptop showed up a couple of days before their first day. Then, on the morning of their first day, they were emailed their password. Their new laptop was all set up, key applications were downloaded, and invites to all the applications they'd use for their job were in their work email.

5. Mentorship and Support

Navigating a new company can be daunting.

You don't know who is across the table from you. A name on a Zoom call doesn't tell you someone's title. And there's no way to see the history of a project being discussed in a meeting you've never attended.

However, a good mentorship program can shortcut all these problematic hurdles.

Some companies assign buddy programs to new hires. The problem with these is that sometimes the buddy doesn't know what is expected of them.

That's where a formal mentorship program comes in. The mentor is provided with expectations and training, and clear objectives help the mentor fast-track the mentee into your corporate culture.

6. Company Culture and Values Integration

Today, it's common for many companies to have culture decks. But what is rare is everyone in the company understanding the deck, let alone understanding how to adopt the culture and put it into practice.

That's where a culture integration program comes into place.

A culture program goes beyond one introduction meeting and helps provide multiple touch points, such as activities, meetings, and discussions, for the new hire to understand.

7. Continued Role Definition and Expectations Setting

If you've done your job, your new hire knew what was expected of them on day one because it was covered in their job description and during the hiring process.

But after your employee's first day, making it real to the employee is critical.

It's helpful for their manager to unpack their role and expectations and turn them into measurable performance goals.

If you use the 30-, 60-, 90-, or 180-day approach, the blueprint for setting goals for the employees' onboarding is already there.

8. Fast Team Integration

Can you imagine joining a brand new team and not even getting introductions?

You may laugh, but it's all too common for a new hire not to be introduced to everyone (let alone formally).

The danger here is it reinforces knowledge silos  as company policy.

It's key for employees to integrate into your new company so that they know who is who, inside and outside of their team.

At my last company, we had every new hire set up a brief intro meeting with department heads throughout the company. This worked in a fast-growing startup, but it doesn't scale when you have thousands of employees.

At a minimum, set up meet-and-greets and have them participate in activities that introduce them to their team members (aka more than a single Zoom call).

9. Feedback and Improvement Process

Last but not least, onboarding needs a feedback loop. Hiring managers and HR should be sure to meet with their new employees to provide continuous feedback.

Having the hiring manager set up a sequence of meetings with their new employee for the first months gives the employee the opportunity to raise questions instead of sitting on them.

It also helps identify gaps in your onboarding strategy, allowing you to address them immediately and adapt the program for the future.

Where can you improve?

No one wants to lose an employee after an expensive hiring process.

Take our free Employee Onboarding ProgramAssessment to see where you can improve your program.