Elevate Your Onboarding By Leveraging Psychology

World-renowned author and life coach Tony Robbins teaches about the importance of the six human needs and how they drive us. He shares how certainty, uncertainty/variety, significance, connection/love, growth, and contribution fuel our motivation and influence how we interact with the world.

Our needs for each of the six vary. For example, some people need complete certainty and others thrive off the allure of the crazy unknown spontaneity of life, but the universal truth is that we are all affected by these needs.

By understanding this, HR and Hiring Managers can develop incredible onboarding programs that make new hires feel great about joining the company while accelerating their productivity and integration.

1. Certainty

New hires want to be sure they are doing precisely what they need to be doing. They want to complete all the forms and show up in the right place at the right time in the right attire. Don’t make them have to worry or question anything.

2. Uncertainty / Variety

This is your chance to wow your new hire with an unexpected gesture. Think of a welcome box shipped to their home or a thoughtful treat that shows up on their desk on their first day. 

3. Significance

Your new hire wants to know that they matter – whether you are a company of 10 or 100K. Curate the onboarding experience to their situation and make them feel like more than just a number.

4. Connection/Love

Link your new employee up with a welcome buddy and/or a mentor. Make sure there’s a team lunch planned their first day and keep an eye out to make sure they’re finding their way through the organization.

5. Growth

Curated, on demand learning opportunities are one of the best ways to enable new hires to grow and become stronger contributors.

6. Contribution

Inform your new hire about the many ways to get involved in your organization, such as volunteer opportunities and networking events. Even though they are new, providing them with ways to give back helps ground them in the organization and cement their commitment to the company.

Great onboarding has been proven to increase engagement and retention. Have a look through your current onboarding process and make sure you are addressing the 6 human needs!

Top 5 Ways Companies Are Affected by Onboarding

Modern onboarding has been a boon to the employee experience – it improves engagement, decreases the learning curve to full productivity, and accelerates new hire integration and team cohesion. However, the benefits (and potential pitfalls) of onboarding don’t stop at the employee level, there are many ways the entire company is influenced by onboarding.

Here are the top 5:

1. Brand Perception

In the age of instantaneous internet reviews, your employees are talking. New hires could be tweeting about the incredibly thoughtful welcome box they received, filled with company swag and thoughtful treats or about how lousy their first day was. Being intentional about your onboarding helps positively solidify your brand in your new hire’s mind.

2. Employee Data

Employers are responsible for collecting significant personal data from each employee, and most of it is collected during the onboarding period. Once collected, the employer is responsible and liable for protecting the data and keeping it safe. Email and manual storage screams for an audit and/or a data breach which yields hefty fines and negative publicity. A centralized, cloud-based, secure repository that is GDPR and SOC 2 Type 2 compliant is an employer’s best bet to prevent a data breach.

3. Employee Churn

Employees like interviewing for new jobs about as much as employers like spending the time and effort to find ideal candidates. However, poor onboarding makes new employees question their decision to join the company and increases the likelihood of them leaving. Great onboarding makes new hires feel good about their decision, helps them get acclimated, and makes them want to stick around. This provides you with a steady state of loyal employees, instead of a revolving door of candidates.

4. Compliance Exposure

Between local and state tax regulations, remote worker considerations, and the many required forms, being compliant is a constant and ongoing challenge with high stakes. An automated system with best practice workflows and forms built in can mitigate these risks but a paper-based, manual system leaves companies perpetually at risk.

5. Pay Day

New hires rely on HR to process their employee profile so they can be paid on time. Manual onboarding can lead to delays in profiles being entered into HRIS systems, which leads to payroll delays, unhappy new hires, and compliance issues. Not to mention – what a terrible first impression! Don’t kid yourself, one of the main reasons your new hire got a job was for a paycheck! Automated onboarding ensures all employee data flows seamlessly between systems so new hires are never paid late.

Onboarding is so much more than an HR function. The effects of onboarding, good or bad, ripple out in waves, leaving trails of consequences for poor onboarding and happy new hires in the wake of great onboarding.