Welcome to our three-part blog series on employee onboarding in which we discuss the benefits of onboarding, how to get it right and how exactly eLearning can get your new hires up to speed.
For any employee, the first days on the job are crucial and can make a lasting impression. There’s a lot of people to meet, things to learn and questions to ask. At onboarding, a new employee should be provided with what they need to know to get started with their job. First, it should focus on the information, process and tools that they will need to use early in the job and prioritise what they will use frequently. While getting up to speed on how to perform tasks and learn the rules of the company is important, it is also a critical time to get to know your new colleagues and start to build strong relationships from day one.
With effective onboarding, you can turn a potentially stressful time into an enjoyable and productive experience. Let’s take a look at how this can be achieved. Here are five other benefits of implementing a customised onboarding programme within your business.
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Makes new starters feel more productive faster
With a planned onboarding programme using structured training materials and activities, employees are trained faster in a formal and focused way. A focused onboarding process, delivering what new starters need to learn at the right time, ensures a more productive learning curve, and in turn, your employees will demonstrate their value to your company faster.
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Attracts and retains top talent
It is widely publicised that a structured onboarding programme increases employee retention. 59% of HR professionals think that the next few years will bring a major battle to retain talented and top-performing candidates. While it’s easy to match perks, it’s much harder to deliver on the intangible reasons why employees stick around. Create an onboarding programme that empowers people to get on with the job and to feel connected to their colleagues. This supports these intangible elements creating an amazing work culture, which both retains and attracts top talent.
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Enhances performance
Through onboarding, your employees become aware of their responsibilities and how to correctly fulfill their role. There is less chance for miscommunication or feelings of uncertainty, allowing new starters to feel more confident in their ability to perform at their job. An informed and connected new starter is a springboard to becoming a high performing team member.
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Reduces costs
There are substantial costs associated with the new hire process as well as the time it takes for a new employee to become productive. More senior staff and management need to spend time with new starters in order to get them up to speed. If they leave we need to go through the whole process again. This is especially expensive if they leave within the first year, as they leave just as they are becoming fully productive.
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Makes them feel valued
Employees who are guided from their first day on the job feel valued and supported. According to research conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), employees who receive a structured orientation process are 69% more likely to continue working for your company for 3 years. Onboarding staff could lead to a better and stronger connection among team members and result in a happier workforce as employees feel the need and desire to stay with the company they currently work for, for longer.
Overall you can see investing in a formal onboarding programme will hold it’s weight in gold. If you want to learn How to get employee onboarding right just follow the link to the second part of our onboarding series.