Don’t Make Good Employees Turn Bad with Poor Onboarding

Onboarding is the first real glimpse into an organization – after the polished interviewing experience. It gives new employees a sense of the company culture, expectations, and norms. Your new hires are looking at everything with a keen eye, trying to understand the organization and assimilate as quickly as possible.

What do you suppose an antiquated onboarding process filled with paperwork and broken lines of communication tells them? If your onboarding is poorly managed, it could easily (and inadvertently!) give new employees the wrong impression and skew their perception of what’s acceptable in the company.

Employees rise to the level of expectation you set for them and your employees will work the way you onboard them. A seamless, modern, and consistent onboarding process sets the stage for engaged employees who can zoom to full productivity. You’ve spent a ton of time, money, and resources wooing the ideal candidate, don’t accidentally lull them into laziness with bad onboarding habits.  

Manage the perception of your new hires by making sure your onboarding process is NOT:

Old-fashioned

Paperwork-based onboarding appears dated and makes the company seem complacent, unwilling to change, and unlikely to embrace innovation. This could inadvertently stifle new employee’s ideas and creativity.

Poorly Communicated

If your new hire shows up the first day after not hearing from anyone after the background check, they’ll assume that radio silence and nonengagement is OK.

Inconsistent

Some employees get the red carpet. Some hear nothing. Onboarding should be consistent but also curated to the individual. This inconsistency speaks to the organization not placing importance on the details – certainly not a trait you want your new employees to emulate!

Ineffective

Is everything ready for your new hire on their first day – equipment, security, log-in? Does everyone know who they are and when they’re starting? If it’s a scramble to get everything together on a new employee’s first day, it’ll make them think that disorganization and chaos is the norm instead of efficient cross-functional processes.

Slow & Boring

There’s no need to greet your employees with a stack of stagnant paperwork. Engage them on their phone with a custom onboarding experience that’s a breeze to zip through and filled with company culture and information to help them feel comfortable. Clinging to old, slow processes will encourage your new employees to just stick with the status quo.   

Don’t risk losing good employees to bad onboarding. Review your process today and make sure your onboarding is none of these!

Mobilize Your Company to Create Great Onboarding

According to SHRM, new hires with a well-structured onboarding program are 69% more likely to remain at a company for up to three years. Great onboarding isn’t just about filling out forms. It’s about making new hires feel amazing about their decision to join the company, seamlessly ushering them through an efficient and effective process, and helping them feel connected and included. 

A successful and sustainable onboarding program requires an enterprise-level commitment to an automated cross-functional process. It requires the coordination of different departments providing their pieces at the right time, and the key is to develop and implement an automated process that begins the moment a new employee accepts an offer.

Wondering where to start?

Start with an audit of your current onboarding process, noting all the gaps between your current state and desired future state. Here are some specific questions to get you started:

1. People

– Who is involved in your onboarding process?

– Who should be involved but isn’t? Consider all functional teams, such as facilities/ security, IT, and HR

– How is your team made aware of new hires?

– How are you interacting with your new employee between offer acceptance and their first day?

– Are you giving your new hire all the information they need for a successful and welcoming first day? (i.e. team lunch, information on what to wear/ where to go)

– How are you making your new employee feel during your current onboarding process? How does that match up with your company values and how you want to make them feel?

– How are you connecting your new hires with a mentor? 

– How are you getting your new hire’s feedback on the process and measuring their engagement? Do you have 30, 60, 90-day onboarding surveys?

2. Process

– What are the steps of your current onboarding process?

– What are the triggers, actions, and touch points? Which functional teams and systems are involved? Which steps are manual? What can be improved?

– How are you ensuring new employees are paid on time and accurately and that their benefits are set up on time?

– How are you ensuring your new employees receive the right tools to perform their role (i.e. cell phone, laptop)? Are they getting these tools on time? 

– How are you ensuring your team is using the most up to date and accurate local, state, and federal tax forms?

3. Technology

– How is new hire data being transmitted, processed, and stored?

– How is new employee information flowing from your ATS to your HRIS?

– Is additional technology needed to keep your new employee data secure and bridge the gap between your ATS and HRIS?

– Is your onboarding paperwork actual paperwork or a mobile-first, guided platform that protects employee data and is SOC 2 Type 2 and GDPR compliant?

– What technology do you need to set up an automated process and effective triggers?

Next Steps

Use the output from these questions to create a cross-functional process of your ideal onboarding process, clearly defining who is responsible for what, when, and how and what technology is needed to enable and support the process.