How to Redefine the Employee Onboarding Journey in 2023

It's estimated that up to 20% of employee turnover^[1] occurs within the initial 45 days of someone being hired, and 34% occurs within the first year of a new employee being hired. With these statistics in mind, it's clear that part of the problem may be the onboarding process used by companies and organizations.

While other factors likely play, it's also clear that if the employee onboarding process isn't optimized and utilized to its full potential, the potential to keep quality employees is reduced significantly.

Problems with the Traditional Employee Onboarding Process

Traditionally, employee onboarding has a very narrow scope and definition. It involves orienting new hires to the company and their role within it. In some circles, it refers to just the initial day or week at work for a new hire. However, if you think about the employee onboarding process's impact, you will see why it is so important to get it right.

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What Is the Onboarding Process?

The onboarding process shouldn't be limited to a day or week. You need to customize the onboarding journey based on a new hire's role within the company or organization. In some situations, a truly effective employee onboarding journey will last for several months or years.

It's important to note that it is also an emotional journey. Many people leave positions and companies because they feel overwhelmed, undervalued, frustrated, or disconnected. With the proper onboarding process, new employees should feel confident in their role and competent. Now is the time to improve and optimize the onboarding experience new hires to your company or organization have. Doing this will improve the employee experience and like reduce cases of turnover.

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Benefits of Having an Onboarding Process

Developing the right onboarding process for new hires offers several benefits. Some of the top benefits include:

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Stronger Employee Experience

Employees have a lot of opportunities today. Job openings are at an all-time high; as a result, it's up to employers to ensure they want to stay in the position they are hired for. If an employee doesn't enjoy the experience in their new role, it's easy for them to find an opportunity that better suits them. The right onboarding process helps to set the right tone for the entire employee experience.

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Increased Employee Engagement

Engaged employees will do more than what is asked of them, which results in increased profits and productivity for the business. It also helps reduce absenteeism and turnover. Onboarding will help employees develop a connection to the organization, which is invaluable for any company.

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Improved Employee Retention

Employee retention is a top consideration for many organizations. High turnover rates are expensive since the cost of filling a vacated position is so high. While some level of turnover is expected, it's smart to maximize the lifetime value of your employees. This can be achieved with the proper onboarding process.

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Increased Ability to Attract Top Talent

About 20% of newly hired employees^[2] won't recommend their employer to someone they know after the onboarding experience. This is problematic, and by improving the onboarding process, you can improve this rate significantly.

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Factors That Help Redefine the Employee Onboarding Journey

When you put time and resources into building a high-quality and strategic employee onboarding process, you gain more than you give. The return will be clear – productive, engaged, and happy employees who know what is expected of them in their new roles. Some elements that will help you redefine and improve the onboarding journey for new employees can be found here.

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Being Proactive with Your Approach

Being proactive with planning and communicating is a must. You can't wait until a new hire's first day to engage with them. Start right away with email communication. With this, the first day will be much less overwhelming for a new hire, and they will gain a better sense of what to expect.

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Provide a Proper Orientation

Some companies will treat orientation and onboarding the same. However, this isn't s smart strategy. Orientation should be used to ensure workers are oriented to the company and their role before onboarding begins. Orientation includes things like:

• Tour of the facility
• Introduction to company technology
• Overview of the goals and mission of the company

The orientation state also includes administrative tasks like filling out paperwork. However, this is just a small portion of the onboarding process, not the entire thing.

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Create an Interactive Onboarding Experience

Technology simplifies the paperwork and provides new hires with a more interactive onboarding process. Try to engage in training content, such as webinars, videos, quizzes, and images. Usually, this will make the entire process easier for new employees to understand.

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Make the Training Process Personal

All employees are different. You must personalize the onboarding process and play to your new hire's strengths, preferences, and challenges. You need to ensure each new hire receives onboarding materials relevant to their location and role. It's also wise to personalize the process further by using surveys to determine what a new hire needs assistance with and to gain insight into communication preferences, training, tax management, and time management abilities.

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Create a Social Experience

An important part of transforming and redefining the onboarding process is to make it a social experience. Many new hires state that getting to know co-workers is a huge challenge. It's up to you to integrate this into the onboarding process to make getting acclimated to their new role easier.

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Key Takeaways

Modern preferences are being used to help reshape the employee onboarding process. The former methods of onboarding employees no longer make sense.

If you want to transform your onboarding process, use the tips and information here. Doing so will help you make the most of the experience and ensure your new hires are ready to stay with the company. In the long run, this is something that is going to benefit everyone involved.

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[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/85broads/2013/07/19/how-not-to-lose-your-new-employees-in-their-first-45-days/?sh=6c6b59a3be35

[2] https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/0cbe87_664f8806dc694bd7b52246c2e0fe41c1.pdf