HR Connection blog

When it comes to employee onboarding, the buddy system is one of the most reliable tools HR has at its disposal. Done well, it facilitates an immediate personal connection between new hires and the wider organization, and in the long term it can help drive employee engagement and improve time-to-productivity metrics. Such measures are especially critical in a work environment shaped by COVID-19, with many new hires spending their first days and weeks isolated at home.

The period that starts when a new hire signs a contract and ends after the first few months on the job can set the tone for his or her success (or failure) within an organization. But though many companies have great new-recruit processes, too often they conflate induction and orientation with onboarding. By engaging mostly in activities that fall into the first two categories while assuming (incorrectly) that they’ve therefore covered the third, those organizations are missing opportunities to engage and delight their ambassadors of tomorrow.

Up to 20 percent of employee turnover occurs within the first 45 days an employee joins a new company. The $3,000 to $43,000 price tag for each such departure makes onboarding an essential aspect of HR service and a significant influence on employee engagement and retention. Creating a welcome package for new hires is one way to reduce turnover by helping new hires feel excited about joining the company and calming their nerves by providing clear expectations, outcomes, and goals for their first day. A well-thought-out welcome package can leave a lasting impression and empower new employees in their roles.

Only 44 percent of employees believe their employer does a good job bringing new talent into the organization. Strategic onboarding seeks to solve that issue by moving beyond automating paperwork. Instead, it delivers a personalized journey that transforms new hires into fully functioning, integrated members of the team. Today’s onboarding approaches should provide clear expectations in terms of behavior and interaction with management, customers, and other employees.

When employees aren’t happy at work, they aren’t productive. Happiness at work is about feeling engaged and fulfilled–being confident, challenged and comfortable. When an onboarding process at a company is strategic, flexible and user-driven employees are more engaged and thus stay longer, allowing a business to save money.

Regardless of what we call it, we know onboarding is the process new hires (or newly promoted employees) go through to become productive. The question is, do organizations know how well onboarding works for them? There’s only one way to find out the effectiveness of the company’s onboarding process: by conducting an assessment.

  Imagine if your conference was less than a week away and your staffing agency pulled out of the contract. That was the harsh reality for the Event Planning service that was handling the NBA All-Star Game when it was hosted in Washington, D.C. Our Executive, Gala Johnson, led Temporary Solutions, Inc.’s recruiting team to hire 150 people in just 5 days. Read below to learn how:

If you ask most CEOs what makes companies successful, there’s a good chance their answer will include the quality of the people that work there. Great talent tends to make for great companies, and we know that maintaining a top-notch workforce depends on recruiting the right people. But it also depends on retaining them.

Companies want to attract the best talent. People want to work for the best companies. The definition of "best" varies, of course, but that's the beauty of a brand: it doesn't have to be “one size fits all.”