We all know onboarding new team members is important but just how important is it?
Statistics that were compiled by Click Boarding (an onboarding software company) shows the value of a structured onboarding process:
- 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experienced great onboarding.
- New employees who went through a structured onboarding program were 58% more likely to be with the organization after three years.
- Organizations with a standard onboarding process experience 50% greater new-hire productivity.
Not long ago, we posted a blog that covered tips on effective onboarding, which you can check out here. Recently, we hired several new team members (you can check out their bio’s here), and after their onboarding, we did a deep dive into our process, made some updates, and added a few tips.
Here a Few Ways to Improve Your Onboarding Process
- Make sure the process is clearly documented.
- We have an onboarding checklist that includes “who does what and when”.
- When we kick off the onboarding process, it is important that the team knows what they are responsible for and the expected timelines.
- Once you’ve got your process documented, don’t let it become stale.
- This should be something that evolves over time. Debrief with your most recent hires, as well as those involved with the training process and tweak your process based on feedback.
- Anonymous surveys can work well for this or it can help to have a person do the debrief that wasn’t involved in the onboarding process so the new hire can feel comfortable giving honest feedback. “What went well?”/ “What didn’t go well?” / “What do you wish would have been done differently?”
- This should be something that evolves over time. Debrief with your most recent hires, as well as those involved with the training process and tweak your process based on feedback.
- Make it scalable but also customizable.
- Don’t start from scratch every time you have a new hire. We utilize templates that have been built out based on the different role types. For example, we use a general training schedule template to make sure we cover some basic training.
- Having templates can be very helpful as a baseline, however, onboarding needs to be tweaked based on each new hire. Prior to a candidate starting at Kester Search Group, we ask their learning style and tailor their training program around that (i.e. more “hands-on-learning” than “classroom style”).
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