Employee Onboarding – Everything That You Need To Know
The Employee Onboarding Process…
Just like employee engagement, the employee onboarding process strikes fear into the heart of HR and organizations since…forever. The employee onboarding experience is so valuable, yet often overlooked in getting new employees off on the right foot.
Want this guide in video form? Check out our video!
In most cases for employee onboarding, it’s simply giving new employee some documentation, documents to sign, and throwing them out into the water and letting them swim. See you at lunch newbie! Don’t worry, you’ll be an outsider for a bit, but you’ll learn about the unwritten rules of this organization.
At other organizations, it’s an insult to use the term “onboarding training”, as the organization can’t even find their desk that was assigned to them.
I’m sure we’ve all been part of bad onboarding experiences. I know I have. I’ve also been part of good onboarding experiences. Actually, make experiences singular. Experience. I’ve only had one quality experience. Even less have had what you can call one of the best employee onboarding experiences.
That has still stuck with me to this day, and has shaped why I help organizations with their employee onboarding experience. A quality employee onboarding experience helps address the issue of overwork that plagues many organizations (which we have written about here), and helps address loneliness that can arise in the workplace (something that we have also written about). I want your organization to fall under the category of “best employee onboarding experiences” that stick with employees.
What This Article Will Cover On Employee Onboarding:
- Problems With The Employee Onboarding Experience.
- The Value Of A Quality Employee Onboarding Experience.
- Stories From Around The Internet On The Best Employee Onboarding Experiences (Just Kidding, Most Of Them Are Terrible).
- What are Common Mistakes That Companies Make With Onboarding Training?
- How To Improve The Employee Onboarding Experience.
Looking for a more specific list on employee onboarding ideas? Check out our post below:
Ten Employee Onboarding Ideas Your Organization Can Use Right Now
1. Problems With The Employees Onboarding Process.
There’s a calculator online where you can input some numbers, and see the cost of employee turnover to give you a better idea of what can happen when you don’t invest in your onboarding.
Cost of Employee Turnover Calculator
A poor onboarding process will have a large impact on employee engagement. If you want to learn specifically about employee engagement, here is a post I did on the topic – A Guide To Employee Engagement Strategies That Don’t Stink.
Think Back To When You Had A Less Than Stellar Employee Onboarding Process.
If you can’t think of any, congratulations! You either:
- Have had extremely good luck.
- You’ve never worked anywhere in your life.
One employee onboarding process I got to experience was given some introductions, some basic documentation and links to wiki, and then, “here you go… now figure things out”. I did have to take matters into my own hands, and everyone joked about the lack of an onboarding process. Did anyone do anything about it? Nope. I was able over the course of a few weeks able to get in contact with enough people to get a sense of things, but shouldn’t that be more centralized? Shouldn’t there have been a better onboarding process in place?
Here’s everything you need to know, in document form! Bye! Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Of course, it’s easier said than done to fix up an onboarding process. At a large organization that is constantly bringing in new employees all the time, it’s difficult to keep up. People have so much work to do. How could they have the time to fix up something like the onboarding process? Well, as we’ll get to later, creating a better employee onboarding experience is a long-term investment that pays off dividends.
Before we get to that, let’s take a look at what happens when you put some time and effort into the onboarding process.
2. The Value Of A Quality Employee Onboarding Process.
Let’s take a look at some stats of what happens when organizations put a quality onboarding process into place.
- A quality onboarding process can contribute to 70% of employees remaining at an organization for up to three years, and increase employee performance up to 11%. Keeping quality staff at your organization can go a long way in the performance of your organization.
- Organizations with a quality onboarding process start onboarding even before day one, and see about a 34% increase in getting new employees proficient. It usually take about eight months for an employee to become proficient.
- Organizations that focused on developing a quality onboarding process saw increases in revenue in the last fiscal year, and 54% saw significant gains in employee engagement metrics.
- Studies show that the average amount of time to reach full performance (making critical decisions with the right information in hand and having the right people in place to help execute) can be reduced by a third, from six months to four.
So there you go. Invest in making your organization one of the best employee onboarding experiences and you’ll see the results.
I’ve Had One Quality Employee Onboarding Experience Through My Time In The Working World. Just One.
They did a great job of getting me settled in, not overwhelming me, and went going beyond the first week that most organizations seem to stop at, if they even go beyond a day. While it did stop after the third month mark, it was still leagues and miles better than others I have been a part of, and I felt I was able to be proficient far quicker. By no means perfect, but it stands head and shoulders above anywhere else I worked.
3. Stories From Around The Internet On The Best Employee Onboarding Experiences (Just Kidding, Most Of Them Are Terrible).
I pulled up a few stories (mostly from Reddit) on people’s experiences with onboarding. Here are a few of them (highlights added):
I realized I was hard pressed to remember a time when I had a GOOD onboarding experience, much less a GREAT one. I mean, they didn’t all go quite *that* awry, but I think there’s maybe one job where I didn’t come off the first week feeling completely out of place and unsure how to navigate new waters.
One time my onboarding training was this, “Here’s where you’ll be working”.That was it.I asked questions and I got an evil glare.
Now that the alternative workforce (freelancers, part-timers, etc.) is gaining steam, effective knowledge storage and transfer is more vital than ever—so I’m glad to see it mentioned as a way to help “fix” onboarding. I mean, the number of hours I’ve watched new workers and incumbent employees spend tracking down the most basic information is insane.
The last paragraph here I found is particularly noteworthy. With the rise of freelancers, having that knowledge storage and transfer becomes more important than ever. If people are coming and going, retraining and finding the basic information needs to be emphasized.
[Article] Employee Onboarding Is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It.
When I first graduated college, I joined a large company and they spent about 1 month training me for their project. However, most of the training consisted of reading old documentation and watching in-house videos about the product. You were expected to learn the technologies on your own time.
Here is another common problem – throwing documentation and nothing but documentation at new employees. I understand how that’s part of the process, but for many organizations, that’s the only part of the onboarding process.
And when I walked in…no one knew I was supposed to be there! Source: Pixabay
What companies have the best onboarding practices?
For most companies I’ve been at (80%), pretty much non-existent. At the smaller places I’ve worked (like startups and sub-60 people shops), I was pretty much thrust into work with maybe a couple pages of internal wiki documentation and told to take it from there.
I currently work for a small web company. My first day I signed papers about policies and the warehouse rules etc. That took about 10 mins then another dev helped me set up team foundations then I was thrown into work on a project I had no clue about. I got zero help, it took me 3 days to write an if statement that fixed the issue.
Throwing people straight into the lake without dipping their toes in the water is typical for organizations. I remember sitting in a meeting the first day on something I had less than zero clue about. Luckily I didn’t have to talk, just smile and nod politely.
What were your onboarding experiences like?
I don’t think I’ve had a pleasant onboarding experience yet
From the other side what often happens is that someone random basically gets told “oh by the way, we have a new hire coming in tomorrow, on-board him”. So the new hire now has to deal with some overworked person that didn’t take having to spend a day on-boarding someone in his planning.
A key thing to take from this story is the new hire dealing with an overworked person. It’s a constant struggle to bring someone up to speed when people are nose-deep in work.
“My new manager met me at the door and dropped me off at my desk without even bothering to show me around or introduce me to a soul. I had to ask someone to help me find the restrooms. I didn’t have a minute’s worth of training when she dropped off a file for me to work on with no explanation at all as to what I should do with it. I seriously felt like George Costanza being handed the Penske file!”
You’re not penske material!
EMPLOYEES SHARE THEIR ONBOARDING NIGHTMARE STORIES
I could go on and on here, but you get the point. A bad employee onboarding experience is the norm, and not the exception.
4. What are Common Mistakes That Companies Make With The Onboarding Process?
I shared the above stories on people’s experiences with the onboarding process to point out the common mistakes that organizations make when it comes to onboarding. Let’s go through a few of them.
The Paper Trail.
Sign this, sign that. Fill out this, fill out that. Oh, and here’s some documentation, go ahead and read it to get up to speed! See you at lunch!
Boy this is exciting and engaging! Said no one ever. I understand that yes, you have to fill out the paperwork, but dumping it all in front of new employees, and linking to some wikis isn’t going to cut it.Sadly, for many organizations, this is all they do for the onboarding process.
Onboarding Starts The Day Of Arrival.
Looking at some of the stories above: People are unaware that someone new is starting. To find the most basic of information, new employees have to go on a scavenger hunt. Where’s the computer that was assigned to them? Do they have their login credentials? What about a keycard? I’ve had an experience where I had to wait a couple of weeks for a keycard. Classic.
Onboarding Lasts For Day (If At That).
Looking at some of the stories above, the onboarding lasts half a day. Some are a day. What about a week? A month? Forget it. As I mentioned earlier in this article, the only quality onboarding process that I experienced lasted for about three months.
Everyone Gets The Same Approach.
It’s good enough. You may have had the same onboarding process for years, and it’s the same for everyone. It’s a set checklist, no deviation. You got work to do! They’ll get up to speed. Eventually.
Read more here to learn more on how to do this:
6. How To Improve The Employee Onboarding Experience.
Now that we have that all out of the way, let’s look at things you can do at your organization to improve your onboarding process.
I have a separate post on 11 onboarding ideas you can improve your employee onboarding experience. This is looking more at the overall experience.
separate post on 11 onboarding ideas you can improve your employee onboarding experience.
Understanding The Six Dimensions of Socialization Tactics.
Dimensions? Socialization tactics? Yes, we’re getting academic here for a time.
This comes from the excellent paper New Employee Onboarding Programs and Person Organization Fit: An Examination of Socialization Tactics
Don’t worry, I’m a weirdo and made my way through it (for an academic paper, it is quite readable)so you don’t have to. Let’s dive in, shall we?
There are two types of approaches an organization can use – institutionalized and individualized.
Instituionzlied is as follows:
- Collective
- Formal
- Sequential
- Fixed
- Serial
- Investiture
Individualized is as follows:
- Individual
- Informal
- Random
- Variable
- Disjunctive
- Divestiture
The names of most of them should be self-explanatory, except for the last couple of each. Let’s break down what they mean:
- Serial/Disjunctive: A serial tactic is when an individual receives a buddy/role model/mentor, while a disjunctive tactic, new hires are on their own to seek one out. From my personal experience, I’ve experienced both.
- Investiture/Divestiture: Investiture is when a new employee received positive feedback, while divestiture was when a new employee received negative feedback.
Which tactics were the most positively related to person-organization fit?
Of the formal tactics, sequential, fixed, serial, and investiture were positively related, with investiture having the strongest correlation.
The collective and formal approaches were not as effective as individual or informal.
So, what can we take from this information?
This should give you a good idea that going with a more institutionalized approach of best practices is, well, the best practice, but also allowing for some flexibility in the socialization process that happens with onboarding.
Determine The Goals Of Your Employee Onboarding Experience
This will vary depending on your organization, depending on size, on industry. Here’s a list of five goals that I find that can get you started in determining what your goals are:
- From day one, new employees know they’ve made the right choice in joining.
- Giving employees everything they need to know (but were afraid to ask).
- Ease them into your organization.
- Show them how your organization works (values).
- Show that their work matters.
Obtain Feedback From Employees Who Recently Went Through The Employee Onboarding Process.
In the section above that looked at people’s experiences with onboarding, one point that came up a couple of times was that these new employees took matters into their own hands and ended up creating some processes to make it easier for those that were hired afterwards.
As they experienced it recently firsthand, these individuals have an excellent idea of what went wrong, and what went right.
Starting with the most recent employees who went through the onboarding process is the best unbiased way to get feedback on it. You may think it’s well suited, but if you’ve been at an organization for awhile, and you know the ins out and outs of the organization, you’ve lost the beginner eyes that new employees have.
No, I’m not saying that you get these employees to build out the onboarding process for future employees. Get the feedback from them, and integrate it into your onboarding process. You’ll be able to collect more overtime as people come aboard.
Personalize The Onboarding Experience For Employees.
Everyone is different. Some of us are more outgoing, some are more introverted. Some like to be dropped into the thick of things, others want to dip their toes in the water before they swim.
How are you going to figure out what people want to see in their onboarding process?
You can figure out with an entry interview once they’ve started at your organization. A great question that you can ask is the following:
“For your first week/month/quarter/six months, what would you need in order to succeed and become proficient at your work?”
Invest in your onboarding process and watch the growth. Source: Pixabay
Make The Onboarding Process Last Several Months.
Look back at the reddit posts I included with the horror stories people had with onboarding. Most of them had onboarding that lasted half a day. Maybe a day. That’s not going to cut it. As I also mentioned earlier, the only good onboarding experience I had lasted three months. In that time, I began to feel a solid grasp of my role at that company.
What kind of things were done?
- Buddy system within the company.
- Weekly review for the first month, turning to bi-weekly review, and a long three month review.
- Monthly breakfasts with the executive team. They would take out the new employees to get to know us better.
I found these three aspects of their onboarding process was very helpful in getting me up to speed and finding my way in the organization.
Want more ideas? I wrote a post about ten employee onboarding ideas your organization can use.
Make The Onboarding Process Your Own.
It’s easy to look at what other organizations are doing and try to copy what works for them. How many organizations do you think have tried to copy what the big tech organizations like Facebook, Apple, or Netflix do when it comes to things like onboarding, and having it fail? This is what I call the FAANG Effect, which I’ve written about as well.
I’m not saying that you don’t copy what these organizations are doing, but the process they have in place is built with their values. It took them many iterations to get to where they are. Sure, you can look for inspiration of what others are doing, but at the end of the day, your onboarding process needs to fit the values of your organization.
These will get you started in creating a better onboarding process, and one day you can hopefully create one that ranks among the best employee onboarding experiences.
Conclusion and next steps.
We Discussed the following:
- Problems With The Employee Onboarding Experience.
- The Value Of A Quality Employee Onboarding Experience.
- Stories From Around The Internet On The Best Employee Onboarding Experiences (Just Kidding, Most Of Them Are Terrible).
- What are Common Mistakes That Companies Make With Onboarding Training?
- How To Improve The Employee Onboarding Experience.
What Should You Do Moving Forward With The Employee Onboarding Process?
- Think back to the onboarding experiences you have had in your life. What was the good? The bad? The ugly?
- At your current organization, what was the onboarding process like when you came aboard? What did you like? What didn’t you like? How long ago was that?
- Go talk with employees who recently went through the onboarding process. What was it like for them? What could have gone better?
This is the first image that pops up in pixabay when I type in “onboard”
With This, You Will Likely Have Come To One Of Two Conclusions:
- Your company does a great job with onboarding, and just needs to make constant tweaks to ensure it stays that way. You may find yourself ranking high among the best employee onboarding experiences.
- You have a long journey ahead of you, my friend.
Looking at stats, probability has you in the second category unfortunately. Maybe it’s not a priority at your organization. Maybe as you’re dealing with so much turnover, you don’t have time to build an onboarding process that would help reduce it. It starts with a reflection of looking into the mirror.
If You Take The Time To Sit Down And Make An Engaging Employee Onboarding Process With A Solid Foundation, It Will Pay For Itself In Droves.
Looking for inspiration for things you can do for onboarding? Check out our post below:
Ten Employee Onboarding Ideas Your Organization Can Use Right Now
The fantastic management and leadership blog lighthouse has a great post on improving the employee onboarding experience that covers some different territory than what was covered here.
How to Improve Your Employee Onboarding Process to Engage Your Hires & Prevent Turnover
Need some outside help with your onboarding? Please contact us and we will help you with your onboarding woes!
One of our core offerings is working on the employee onboarding process.
© Playficient 2019, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
There’s a calculator online where you can input some numbers, and see the cost of employee turnover to give you a better idea of what can happen when you don’t invest in your onboarding.
Cost of Employee Turnover Calculator
A poor onboarding process will have a large impact on employee engagement. If you want to learn specifically about employee engagement, here is a post I did on the topic – A Guide To Employee Engagement Strategies That Don’t Stink.
Think Back To When You Had A Less Than Stellar Employee Onboarding Process.
If you can’t think of any, congratulations! You either:
- Have had extremely good luck.
- You’ve never worked anywhere in your life.
One employee onboarding process I got to experience was given some introductions, some basic documentation and links to wiki, and then, “here you go… now figure things out”. I did have to take matters into my own hands, and everyone joked about the lack of an onboarding process. Did anyone do anything about it? Nope. I was able over the course of a few weeks able to get in contact with enough people to get a sense of things, but shouldn’t that be more centralized? Shouldn’t there have been a better onboarding process in place?
Here’s everything you need to know, in document form! Bye! Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Of course, it’s easier said than done to fix up an onboarding process. At a large organization that is constantly bringing in new employees all the time, it’s difficult to keep up. People have so much work to do. How could they have the time to fix up something like the onboarding process? Well, as we’ll get to later, creating a better employee onboarding experience is a long-term investment that pays off dividends.
Before we get to that, let’s take a look at what happens when you put some time and effort into the onboarding process.
2. The Value Of A Quality Employee Onboarding Process.
Let’s take a look at some stats of what happens when organizations put a quality onboarding process into place.
- A quality onboarding process can contribute to 70% of employees remaining at an organization for up to three years, and increase employee performance up to 11%. Keeping quality staff at your organization can go a long way in the performance of your organization.
- Organizations with a quality onboarding process start onboarding even before day one, and see about a 34% increase in getting new employees proficient. It usually take about eight months for an employee to become proficient.
- Organizations that focused on developing a quality onboarding process saw increases in revenue in the last fiscal year, and 54% saw significant gains in employee engagement metrics.
- Studies show that the average amount of time to reach full performance (making critical decisions with the right information in hand and having the right people in place to help execute) can be reduced by a third, from six months to four.
So there you go. Invest in making your organization one of the best employee onboarding experiences and you’ll see the results.
I’ve Had One Quality Employee Onboarding Experience Through My Time In The Working World. Just One.
They did a great job of getting me settled in, not overwhelming me, and went going beyond the first week that most organizations seem to stop at, if they even go beyond a day. While it did stop after the third month mark, it was still leagues and miles better than others I have been a part of, and I felt I was able to be proficient far quicker. By no means perfect, but it stands head and shoulders above anywhere else I worked.
3. Stories From Around The Internet On The Best Employee Onboarding Experiences (Just Kidding, Most Of Them Are Terrible).
I pulled up a few stories (mostly from Reddit) on people’s experiences with onboarding. Here are a few of them (highlights added):
I realized I was hard pressed to remember a time when I had a GOOD onboarding experience, much less a GREAT one. I mean, they didn’t all go quite *that* awry, but I think there’s maybe one job where I didn’t come off the first week feeling completely out of place and unsure how to navigate new waters.
One time my onboarding training was this, “Here’s where you’ll be working”.That was it.I asked questions and I got an evil glare.
Now that the alternative workforce (freelancers, part-timers, etc.) is gaining steam, effective knowledge storage and transfer is more vital than ever—so I’m glad to see it mentioned as a way to help “fix” onboarding. I mean, the number of hours I’ve watched new workers and incumbent employees spend tracking down the most basic information is insane.
The last paragraph here I found is particularly noteworthy. With the rise of freelancers, having that knowledge storage and transfer becomes more important than ever. If people are coming and going, retraining and finding the basic information needs to be emphasized.
[Article] Employee Onboarding Is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It.
When I first graduated college, I joined a large company and they spent about 1 month training me for their project. However, most of the training consisted of reading old documentation and watching in-house videos about the product. You were expected to learn the technologies on your own time.
Here is another common problem – throwing documentation and nothing but documentation at new employees. I understand how that’s part of the process, but for many organizations, that’s the only part of the onboarding process.
And when I walked in…no one knew I was supposed to be there! Source: Pixabay
What companies have the best onboarding practices?
For most companies I’ve been at (80%), pretty much non-existent. At the smaller places I’ve worked (like startups and sub-60 people shops), I was pretty much thrust into work with maybe a couple pages of internal wiki documentation and told to take it from there.
I currently work for a small web company. My first day I signed papers about policies and the warehouse rules etc. That took about 10 mins then another dev helped me set up team foundations then I was thrown into work on a project I had no clue about. I got zero help, it took me 3 days to write an if statement that fixed the issue.
Throwing people straight into the lake without dipping their toes in the water is typical for organizations. I remember sitting in a meeting the first day on something I had less than zero clue about. Luckily I didn’t have to talk, just smile and nod politely.
What were your onboarding experiences like?
I don’t think I’ve had a pleasant onboarding experience yet
From the other side what often happens is that someone random basically gets told “oh by the way, we have a new hire coming in tomorrow, on-board him”. So the new hire now has to deal with some overworked person that didn’t take having to spend a day on-boarding someone in his planning.
A key thing to take from this story is the new hire dealing with an overworked person. It’s a constant struggle to bring someone up to speed when people are nose-deep in work.
“My new manager met me at the door and dropped me off at my desk without even bothering to show me around or introduce me to a soul. I had to ask someone to help me find the restrooms. I didn’t have a minute’s worth of training when she dropped off a file for me to work on with no explanation at all as to what I should do with it. I seriously felt like George Costanza being handed the Penske file!”
You’re not penske material!
EMPLOYEES SHARE THEIR ONBOARDING NIGHTMARE STORIES
I could go on and on here, but you get the point. A bad employee onboarding experience is the norm, and not the exception.
4. What are Common Mistakes That Companies Make With The Onboarding Process?
I shared the above stories on people’s experiences with the onboarding process to point out the common mistakes that organizations make when it comes to onboarding. Let’s go through a few of them.
The Paper Trail.
Sign this, sign that. Fill out this, fill out that. Oh, and here’s some documentation, go ahead and read it to get up to speed! See you at lunch!
Boy this is exciting and engaging! Said no one ever. I understand that yes, you have to fill out the paperwork, but dumping it all in front of new employees, and linking to some wikis isn’t going to cut it.Sadly, for many organizations, this is all they do for the onboarding process.
Onboarding Starts The Day Of Arrival.
Looking at some of the stories above: People are unaware that someone new is starting. To find the most basic of information, new employees have to go on a scavenger hunt. Where’s the computer that was assigned to them? Do they have their login credentials? What about a keycard? I’ve had an experience where I had to wait a couple of weeks for a keycard. Classic.
Onboarding Lasts For Day (If At That).
Looking at some of the stories above, the onboarding lasts half a day. Some are a day. What about a week? A month? Forget it. As I mentioned earlier in this article, the only quality onboarding process that I experienced lasted for about three months.
Everyone Gets The Same Approach.
It’s good enough. You may have had the same onboarding process for years, and it’s the same for everyone. It’s a set checklist, no deviation. You got work to do! They’ll get up to speed. Eventually.
Read more here to learn more on how to do this:
6. How To Improve The Employee Onboarding Experience.
Now that we have that all out of the way, let’s look at things you can do at your organization to improve your onboarding process.
I have a separate post on 11 onboarding ideas you can improve your employee onboarding experience. This is looking more at the overall experience.
separate post on 11 onboarding ideas you can improve your employee onboarding experience.
Understanding The Six Dimensions of Socialization Tactics.
Dimensions? Socialization tactics? Yes, we’re getting academic here for a time.
This comes from the excellent paper New Employee Onboarding Programs and Person Organization Fit: An Examination of Socialization Tactics
Don’t worry, I’m a weirdo and made my way through it (for an academic paper, it is quite readable)so you don’t have to. Let’s dive in, shall we?
There are two types of approaches an organization can use – institutionalized and individualized.
Instituionzlied is as follows:
- Collective
- Formal
- Sequential
- Fixed
- Serial
- Investiture
Individualized is as follows:
- Individual
- Informal
- Random
- Variable
- Disjunctive
- Divestiture
The names of most of them should be self-explanatory, except for the last couple of each. Let’s break down what they mean:
- Serial/Disjunctive: A serial tactic is when an individual receives a buddy/role model/mentor, while a disjunctive tactic, new hires are on their own to seek one out. From my personal experience, I’ve experienced both.
- Investiture/Divestiture: Investiture is when a new employee received positive feedback, while divestiture was when a new employee received negative feedback.
Which tactics were the most positively related to person-organization fit?
Of the formal tactics, sequential, fixed, serial, and investiture were positively related, with investiture having the strongest correlation.
The collective and formal approaches were not as effective as individual or informal.
So, what can we take from this information?
This should give you a good idea that going with a more institutionalized approach of best practices is, well, the best practice, but also allowing for some flexibility in the socialization process that happens with onboarding.
Determine The Goals Of Your Employee Onboarding Experience
This will vary depending on your organization, depending on size, on industry. Here’s a list of five goals that I find that can get you started in determining what your goals are:
- From day one, new employees know they’ve made the right choice in joining.
- Giving employees everything they need to know (but were afraid to ask).
- Ease them into your organization.
- Show them how your organization works (values).
- Show that their work matters.
Obtain Feedback From Employees Who Recently Went Through The Employee Onboarding Process.
In the section above that looked at people’s experiences with onboarding, one point that came up a couple of times was that these new employees took matters into their own hands and ended up creating some processes to make it easier for those that were hired afterwards.
As they experienced it recently firsthand, these individuals have an excellent idea of what went wrong, and what went right.
Starting with the most recent employees who went through the onboarding process is the best unbiased way to get feedback on it. You may think it’s well suited, but if you’ve been at an organization for awhile, and you know the ins out and outs of the organization, you’ve lost the beginner eyes that new employees have.
No, I’m not saying that you get these employees to build out the onboarding process for future employees. Get the feedback from them, and integrate it into your onboarding process. You’ll be able to collect more overtime as people come aboard.
Personalize The Onboarding Experience For Employees.
Everyone is different. Some of us are more outgoing, some are more introverted. Some like to be dropped into the thick of things, others want to dip their toes in the water before they swim.
How are you going to figure out what people want to see in their onboarding process?
You can figure out with an entry interview once they’ve started at your organization. A great question that you can ask is the following:
“For your first week/month/quarter/six months, what would you need in order to succeed and become proficient at your work?”
Invest in your onboarding process and watch the growth. Source: Pixabay
Make The Onboarding Process Last Several Months.
Look back at the reddit posts I included with the horror stories people had with onboarding. Most of them had onboarding that lasted half a day. Maybe a day. That’s not going to cut it. As I also mentioned earlier, the only good onboarding experience I had lasted three months. In that time, I began to feel a solid grasp of my role at that company.
What kind of things were done?
- Buddy system within the company.
- Weekly review for the first month, turning to bi-weekly review, and a long three month review.
- Monthly breakfasts with the executive team. They would take out the new employees to get to know us better.
I found these three aspects of their onboarding process was very helpful in getting me up to speed and finding my way in the organization.
Want more ideas? I wrote a post about ten employee onboarding ideas your organization can use.
Make The Onboarding Process Your Own.
It’s easy to look at what other organizations are doing and try to copy what works for them. How many organizations do you think have tried to copy what the big tech organizations like Facebook, Apple, or Netflix do when it comes to things like onboarding, and having it fail? This is what I call the FAANG Effect, which I’ve written about as well.
I’m not saying that you don’t copy what these organizations are doing, but the process they have in place is built with their values. It took them many iterations to get to where they are. Sure, you can look for inspiration of what others are doing, but at the end of the day, your onboarding process needs to fit the values of your organization.
These will get you started in creating a better onboarding process, and one day you can hopefully create one that ranks among the best employee onboarding experiences.
Conclusion and next steps.
We Discussed the following:
- Problems With The Employee Onboarding Experience.
- The Value Of A Quality Employee Onboarding Experience.
- Stories From Around The Internet On The Best Employee Onboarding Experiences (Just Kidding, Most Of Them Are Terrible).
- What are Common Mistakes That Companies Make With Onboarding Training?
- How To Improve The Employee Onboarding Experience.
What Should You Do Moving Forward With The Employee Onboarding Process?
- Think back to the onboarding experiences you have had in your life. What was the good? The bad? The ugly?
- At your current organization, what was the onboarding process like when you came aboard? What did you like? What didn’t you like? How long ago was that?
- Go talk with employees who recently went through the onboarding process. What was it like for them? What could have gone better?
This is the first image that pops up in pixabay when I type in “onboard”
With This, You Will Likely Have Come To One Of Two Conclusions:
- Your company does a great job with onboarding, and just needs to make constant tweaks to ensure it stays that way. You may find yourself ranking high among the best employee onboarding experiences.
- You have a long journey ahead of you, my friend.
Looking at stats, probability has you in the second category unfortunately. Maybe it’s not a priority at your organization. Maybe as you’re dealing with so much turnover, you don’t have time to build an onboarding process that would help reduce it. It starts with a reflection of looking into the mirror.
If You Take The Time To Sit Down And Make An Engaging Employee Onboarding Process With A Solid Foundation, It Will Pay For Itself In Droves.
Looking for inspiration for things you can do for onboarding? Check out our post below:
Ten Employee Onboarding Ideas Your Organization Can Use Right Now
The fantastic management and leadership blog lighthouse has a great post on improving the employee onboarding experience that covers some different territory than what was covered here.
How to Improve Your Employee Onboarding Process to Engage Your Hires & Prevent Turnover
Need some outside help with your onboarding? Please contact us and we will help you with your onboarding woes!
One of our core offerings is working on the employee onboarding process.
Let’s take a look at some stats of what happens when organizations put a quality onboarding process into place.
- A quality onboarding process can contribute to 70% of employees remaining at an organization for up to three years, and increase employee performance up to 11%. Keeping quality staff at your organization can go a long way in the performance of your organization.
- Organizations with a quality onboarding process start onboarding even before day one, and see about a 34% increase in getting new employees proficient. It usually take about eight months for an employee to become proficient.
- Organizations that focused on developing a quality onboarding process saw increases in revenue in the last fiscal year, and 54% saw significant gains in employee engagement metrics.
- Studies show that the average amount of time to reach full performance (making critical decisions with the right information in hand and having the right people in place to help execute) can be reduced by a third, from six months to four.
So there you go. Invest in making your organization one of the best employee onboarding experiences and you’ll see the results.
I’ve Had One Quality Employee Onboarding Experience Through My Time In The Working World. Just One.
They did a great job of getting me settled in, not overwhelming me, and went going beyond the first week that most organizations seem to stop at, if they even go beyond a day. While it did stop after the third month mark, it was still leagues and miles better than others I have been a part of, and I felt I was able to be proficient far quicker. By no means perfect, but it stands head and shoulders above anywhere else I worked.
3. Stories From Around The Internet On The Best Employee Onboarding Experiences (Just Kidding, Most Of Them Are Terrible).
I pulled up a few stories (mostly from Reddit) on people’s experiences with onboarding. Here are a few of them (highlights added):
I realized I was hard pressed to remember a time when I had a GOOD onboarding experience, much less a GREAT one. I mean, they didn’t all go quite *that* awry, but I think there’s maybe one job where I didn’t come off the first week feeling completely out of place and unsure how to navigate new waters.
One time my onboarding training was this, “Here’s where you’ll be working”.That was it.I asked questions and I got an evil glare.
Now that the alternative workforce (freelancers, part-timers, etc.) is gaining steam, effective knowledge storage and transfer is more vital than ever—so I’m glad to see it mentioned as a way to help “fix” onboarding. I mean, the number of hours I’ve watched new workers and incumbent employees spend tracking down the most basic information is insane.
The last paragraph here I found is particularly noteworthy. With the rise of freelancers, having that knowledge storage and transfer becomes more important than ever. If people are coming and going, retraining and finding the basic information needs to be emphasized.
[Article] Employee Onboarding Is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It.
When I first graduated college, I joined a large company and they spent about 1 month training me for their project. However, most of the training consisted of reading old documentation and watching in-house videos about the product. You were expected to learn the technologies on your own time.
Here is another common problem – throwing documentation and nothing but documentation at new employees. I understand how that’s part of the process, but for many organizations, that’s the only part of the onboarding process.
And when I walked in…no one knew I was supposed to be there! Source: Pixabay
What companies have the best onboarding practices?
For most companies I’ve been at (80%), pretty much non-existent. At the smaller places I’ve worked (like startups and sub-60 people shops), I was pretty much thrust into work with maybe a couple pages of internal wiki documentation and told to take it from there.
I currently work for a small web company. My first day I signed papers about policies and the warehouse rules etc. That took about 10 mins then another dev helped me set up team foundations then I was thrown into work on a project I had no clue about. I got zero help, it took me 3 days to write an if statement that fixed the issue.
Throwing people straight into the lake without dipping their toes in the water is typical for organizations. I remember sitting in a meeting the first day on something I had less than zero clue about. Luckily I didn’t have to talk, just smile and nod politely.
What were your onboarding experiences like?
I don’t think I’ve had a pleasant onboarding experience yet
From the other side what often happens is that someone random basically gets told “oh by the way, we have a new hire coming in tomorrow, on-board him”. So the new hire now has to deal with some overworked person that didn’t take having to spend a day on-boarding someone in his planning.
A key thing to take from this story is the new hire dealing with an overworked person. It’s a constant struggle to bring someone up to speed when people are nose-deep in work.
“My new manager met me at the door and dropped me off at my desk without even bothering to show me around or introduce me to a soul. I had to ask someone to help me find the restrooms. I didn’t have a minute’s worth of training when she dropped off a file for me to work on with no explanation at all as to what I should do with it. I seriously felt like George Costanza being handed the Penske file!”
You’re not penske material!
EMPLOYEES SHARE THEIR ONBOARDING NIGHTMARE STORIES
I could go on and on here, but you get the point. A bad employee onboarding experience is the norm, and not the exception.
4. What are Common Mistakes That Companies Make With The Onboarding Process?
I shared the above stories on people’s experiences with the onboarding process to point out the common mistakes that organizations make when it comes to onboarding. Let’s go through a few of them.
The Paper Trail.
Sign this, sign that. Fill out this, fill out that. Oh, and here’s some documentation, go ahead and read it to get up to speed! See you at lunch!
Boy this is exciting and engaging! Said no one ever. I understand that yes, you have to fill out the paperwork, but dumping it all in front of new employees, and linking to some wikis isn’t going to cut it.Sadly, for many organizations, this is all they do for the onboarding process.
Onboarding Starts The Day Of Arrival.
Looking at some of the stories above: People are unaware that someone new is starting. To find the most basic of information, new employees have to go on a scavenger hunt. Where’s the computer that was assigned to them? Do they have their login credentials? What about a keycard? I’ve had an experience where I had to wait a couple of weeks for a keycard. Classic.
Onboarding Lasts For Day (If At That).
Looking at some of the stories above, the onboarding lasts half a day. Some are a day. What about a week? A month? Forget it. As I mentioned earlier in this article, the only quality onboarding process that I experienced lasted for about three months.
Everyone Gets The Same Approach.
It’s good enough. You may have had the same onboarding process for years, and it’s the same for everyone. It’s a set checklist, no deviation. You got work to do! They’ll get up to speed. Eventually.
Read more here to learn more on how to do this:
6. How To Improve The Employee Onboarding Experience.
Now that we have that all out of the way, let’s look at things you can do at your organization to improve your onboarding process.
I have a separate post on 11 onboarding ideas you can improve your employee onboarding experience. This is looking more at the overall experience.
separate post on 11 onboarding ideas you can improve your employee onboarding experience.
Understanding The Six Dimensions of Socialization Tactics.
Dimensions? Socialization tactics? Yes, we’re getting academic here for a time.
This comes from the excellent paper New Employee Onboarding Programs and Person Organization Fit: An Examination of Socialization Tactics
Don’t worry, I’m a weirdo and made my way through it (for an academic paper, it is quite readable)so you don’t have to. Let’s dive in, shall we?
There are two types of approaches an organization can use – institutionalized and individualized.
Instituionzlied is as follows:
- Collective
- Formal
- Sequential
- Fixed
- Serial
- Investiture
Individualized is as follows:
- Individual
- Informal
- Random
- Variable
- Disjunctive
- Divestiture
The names of most of them should be self-explanatory, except for the last couple of each. Let’s break down what they mean:
- Serial/Disjunctive: A serial tactic is when an individual receives a buddy/role model/mentor, while a disjunctive tactic, new hires are on their own to seek one out. From my personal experience, I’ve experienced both.
- Investiture/Divestiture: Investiture is when a new employee received positive feedback, while divestiture was when a new employee received negative feedback.
Which tactics were the most positively related to person-organization fit?
Of the formal tactics, sequential, fixed, serial, and investiture were positively related, with investiture having the strongest correlation.
The collective and formal approaches were not as effective as individual or informal.
So, what can we take from this information?
This should give you a good idea that going with a more institutionalized approach of best practices is, well, the best practice, but also allowing for some flexibility in the socialization process that happens with onboarding.
Determine The Goals Of Your Employee Onboarding Experience
This will vary depending on your organization, depending on size, on industry. Here’s a list of five goals that I find that can get you started in determining what your goals are:
- From day one, new employees know they’ve made the right choice in joining.
- Giving employees everything they need to know (but were afraid to ask).
- Ease them into your organization.
- Show them how your organization works (values).
- Show that their work matters.
Obtain Feedback From Employees Who Recently Went Through The Employee Onboarding Process.
In the section above that looked at people’s experiences with onboarding, one point that came up a couple of times was that these new employees took matters into their own hands and ended up creating some processes to make it easier for those that were hired afterwards.
As they experienced it recently firsthand, these individuals have an excellent idea of what went wrong, and what went right.
Starting with the most recent employees who went through the onboarding process is the best unbiased way to get feedback on it. You may think it’s well suited, but if you’ve been at an organization for awhile, and you know the ins out and outs of the organization, you’ve lost the beginner eyes that new employees have.
No, I’m not saying that you get these employees to build out the onboarding process for future employees. Get the feedback from them, and integrate it into your onboarding process. You’ll be able to collect more overtime as people come aboard.
Personalize The Onboarding Experience For Employees.
Everyone is different. Some of us are more outgoing, some are more introverted. Some like to be dropped into the thick of things, others want to dip their toes in the water before they swim.
How are you going to figure out what people want to see in their onboarding process?
You can figure out with an entry interview once they’ve started at your organization. A great question that you can ask is the following:
“For your first week/month/quarter/six months, what would you need in order to succeed and become proficient at your work?”
Invest in your onboarding process and watch the growth. Source: Pixabay
Make The Onboarding Process Last Several Months.
Look back at the reddit posts I included with the horror stories people had with onboarding. Most of them had onboarding that lasted half a day. Maybe a day. That’s not going to cut it. As I also mentioned earlier, the only good onboarding experience I had lasted three months. In that time, I began to feel a solid grasp of my role at that company.
What kind of things were done?
- Buddy system within the company.
- Weekly review for the first month, turning to bi-weekly review, and a long three month review.
- Monthly breakfasts with the executive team. They would take out the new employees to get to know us better.
I found these three aspects of their onboarding process was very helpful in getting me up to speed and finding my way in the organization.
Want more ideas? I wrote a post about ten employee onboarding ideas your organization can use.
Make The Onboarding Process Your Own.
It’s easy to look at what other organizations are doing and try to copy what works for them. How many organizations do you think have tried to copy what the big tech organizations like Facebook, Apple, or Netflix do when it comes to things like onboarding, and having it fail? This is what I call the FAANG Effect, which I’ve written about as well.
I’m not saying that you don’t copy what these organizations are doing, but the process they have in place is built with their values. It took them many iterations to get to where they are. Sure, you can look for inspiration of what others are doing, but at the end of the day, your onboarding process needs to fit the values of your organization.
These will get you started in creating a better onboarding process, and one day you can hopefully create one that ranks among the best employee onboarding experiences.
Conclusion and next steps.
We Discussed the following:
- Problems With The Employee Onboarding Experience.
- The Value Of A Quality Employee Onboarding Experience.
- Stories From Around The Internet On The Best Employee Onboarding Experiences (Just Kidding, Most Of Them Are Terrible).
- What are Common Mistakes That Companies Make With Onboarding Training?
- How To Improve The Employee Onboarding Experience.
What Should You Do Moving Forward With The Employee Onboarding Process?
- Think back to the onboarding experiences you have had in your life. What was the good? The bad? The ugly?
- At your current organization, what was the onboarding process like when you came aboard? What did you like? What didn’t you like? How long ago was that?
- Go talk with employees who recently went through the onboarding process. What was it like for them? What could have gone better?
This is the first image that pops up in pixabay when I type in “onboard”
With This, You Will Likely Have Come To One Of Two Conclusions:
- Your company does a great job with onboarding, and just needs to make constant tweaks to ensure it stays that way. You may find yourself ranking high among the best employee onboarding experiences.
- You have a long journey ahead of you, my friend.
Looking at stats, probability has you in the second category unfortunately. Maybe it’s not a priority at your organization. Maybe as you’re dealing with so much turnover, you don’t have time to build an onboarding process that would help reduce it. It starts with a reflection of looking into the mirror.
If You Take The Time To Sit Down And Make An Engaging Employee Onboarding Process With A Solid Foundation, It Will Pay For Itself In Droves.
Looking for inspiration for things you can do for onboarding? Check out our post below:
Ten Employee Onboarding Ideas Your Organization Can Use Right Now
The fantastic management and leadership blog lighthouse has a great post on improving the employee onboarding experience that covers some different territory than what was covered here.
How to Improve Your Employee Onboarding Process to Engage Your Hires & Prevent Turnover
Need some outside help with your onboarding? Please contact us and we will help you with your onboarding woes!
One of our core offerings is working on the employee onboarding process.
I pulled up a few stories (mostly from Reddit) on people’s experiences with onboarding. Here are a few of them (highlights added):
One time my onboarding training was this, “Here’s where you’ll be working”.That was it.I asked questions and I got an evil glare.
Now that the alternative workforce (freelancers, part-timers, etc.) is gaining steam, effective knowledge storage and transfer is more vital than ever—so I’m glad to see it mentioned as a way to help “fix” onboarding. I mean, the number of hours I’ve watched new workers and incumbent employees spend tracking down the most basic information is insane.
The last paragraph here I found is particularly noteworthy. With the rise of freelancers, having that knowledge storage and transfer becomes more important than ever. If people are coming and going, retraining and finding the basic information needs to be emphasized.
[Article] Employee Onboarding Is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It.
Here is another common problem – throwing documentation and nothing but documentation at new employees. I understand how that’s part of the process, but for many organizations, that’s the only part of the onboarding process.
And when I walked in…no one knew I was supposed to be there! Source: Pixabay
What companies have the best onboarding practices?
I currently work for a small web company. My first day I signed papers about policies and the warehouse rules etc. That took about 10 mins then another dev helped me set up team foundations then I was thrown into work on a project I had no clue about. I got zero help, it took me 3 days to write an if statement that fixed the issue.
Throwing people straight into the lake without dipping their toes in the water is typical for organizations. I remember sitting in a meeting the first day on something I had less than zero clue about. Luckily I didn’t have to talk, just smile and nod politely.
What were your onboarding experiences like?
From the other side what often happens is that someone random basically gets told “oh by the way, we have a new hire coming in tomorrow, on-board him”. So the new hire now has to deal with some overworked person that didn’t take having to spend a day on-boarding someone in his planning.
A key thing to take from this story is the new hire dealing with an overworked person. It’s a constant struggle to bring someone up to speed when people are nose-deep in work.
You’re not penske material!
EMPLOYEES SHARE THEIR ONBOARDING NIGHTMARE STORIES
I could go on and on here, but you get the point. A bad employee onboarding experience is the norm, and not the exception.
4. What are Common Mistakes That Companies Make With The Onboarding Process?
I shared the above stories on people’s experiences with the onboarding process to point out the common mistakes that organizations make when it comes to onboarding. Let’s go through a few of them.
The Paper Trail.
Sign this, sign that. Fill out this, fill out that. Oh, and here’s some documentation, go ahead and read it to get up to speed! See you at lunch!
Boy this is exciting and engaging! Said no one ever. I understand that yes, you have to fill out the paperwork, but dumping it all in front of new employees, and linking to some wikis isn’t going to cut it.Sadly, for many organizations, this is all they do for the onboarding process.
Onboarding Starts The Day Of Arrival.
Looking at some of the stories above: People are unaware that someone new is starting. To find the most basic of information, new employees have to go on a scavenger hunt. Where’s the computer that was assigned to them? Do they have their login credentials? What about a keycard? I’ve had an experience where I had to wait a couple of weeks for a keycard. Classic.
Onboarding Lasts For Day (If At That).
Looking at some of the stories above, the onboarding lasts half a day. Some are a day. What about a week? A month? Forget it. As I mentioned earlier in this article, the only quality onboarding process that I experienced lasted for about three months.
Everyone Gets The Same Approach.
It’s good enough. You may have had the same onboarding process for years, and it’s the same for everyone. It’s a set checklist, no deviation. You got work to do! They’ll get up to speed. Eventually.
Read more here to learn more on how to do this:
6. How To Improve The Employee Onboarding Experience.
Now that we have that all out of the way, let’s look at things you can do at your organization to improve your onboarding process.
I have a separate post on 11 onboarding ideas you can improve your employee onboarding experience. This is looking more at the overall experience.
separate post on 11 onboarding ideas you can improve your employee onboarding experience.
Understanding The Six Dimensions of Socialization Tactics.
Dimensions? Socialization tactics? Yes, we’re getting academic here for a time.
This comes from the excellent paper New Employee Onboarding Programs and Person Organization Fit: An Examination of Socialization Tactics
Don’t worry, I’m a weirdo and made my way through it (for an academic paper, it is quite readable)so you don’t have to. Let’s dive in, shall we?
There are two types of approaches an organization can use – institutionalized and individualized.
Instituionzlied is as follows:
- Collective
- Formal
- Sequential
- Fixed
- Serial
- Investiture
Individualized is as follows:
- Individual
- Informal
- Random
- Variable
- Disjunctive
- Divestiture
The names of most of them should be self-explanatory, except for the last couple of each. Let’s break down what they mean:
- Serial/Disjunctive: A serial tactic is when an individual receives a buddy/role model/mentor, while a disjunctive tactic, new hires are on their own to seek one out. From my personal experience, I’ve experienced both.
- Investiture/Divestiture: Investiture is when a new employee received positive feedback, while divestiture was when a new employee received negative feedback.
Which tactics were the most positively related to person-organization fit?
Of the formal tactics, sequential, fixed, serial, and investiture were positively related, with investiture having the strongest correlation.
The collective and formal approaches were not as effective as individual or informal.
So, what can we take from this information?
This should give you a good idea that going with a more institutionalized approach of best practices is, well, the best practice, but also allowing for some flexibility in the socialization process that happens with onboarding.
Determine The Goals Of Your Employee Onboarding Experience
This will vary depending on your organization, depending on size, on industry. Here’s a list of five goals that I find that can get you started in determining what your goals are:
- From day one, new employees know they’ve made the right choice in joining.
- Giving employees everything they need to know (but were afraid to ask).
- Ease them into your organization.
- Show them how your organization works (values).
- Show that their work matters.
Obtain Feedback From Employees Who Recently Went Through The Employee Onboarding Process.
In the section above that looked at people’s experiences with onboarding, one point that came up a couple of times was that these new employees took matters into their own hands and ended up creating some processes to make it easier for those that were hired afterwards.
As they experienced it recently firsthand, these individuals have an excellent idea of what went wrong, and what went right.
Starting with the most recent employees who went through the onboarding process is the best unbiased way to get feedback on it. You may think it’s well suited, but if you’ve been at an organization for awhile, and you know the ins out and outs of the organization, you’ve lost the beginner eyes that new employees have.
No, I’m not saying that you get these employees to build out the onboarding process for future employees. Get the feedback from them, and integrate it into your onboarding process. You’ll be able to collect more overtime as people come aboard.
Personalize The Onboarding Experience For Employees.
Everyone is different. Some of us are more outgoing, some are more introverted. Some like to be dropped into the thick of things, others want to dip their toes in the water before they swim.
How are you going to figure out what people want to see in their onboarding process?
You can figure out with an entry interview once they’ve started at your organization. A great question that you can ask is the following:
“For your first week/month/quarter/six months, what would you need in order to succeed and become proficient at your work?”
Invest in your onboarding process and watch the growth. Source: Pixabay
Make The Onboarding Process Last Several Months.
Look back at the reddit posts I included with the horror stories people had with onboarding. Most of them had onboarding that lasted half a day. Maybe a day. That’s not going to cut it. As I also mentioned earlier, the only good onboarding experience I had lasted three months. In that time, I began to feel a solid grasp of my role at that company.
What kind of things were done?
- Buddy system within the company.
- Weekly review for the first month, turning to bi-weekly review, and a long three month review.
- Monthly breakfasts with the executive team. They would take out the new employees to get to know us better.
I found these three aspects of their onboarding process was very helpful in getting me up to speed and finding my way in the organization.
Want more ideas? I wrote a post about ten employee onboarding ideas your organization can use.
Make The Onboarding Process Your Own.
It’s easy to look at what other organizations are doing and try to copy what works for them. How many organizations do you think have tried to copy what the big tech organizations like Facebook, Apple, or Netflix do when it comes to things like onboarding, and having it fail? This is what I call the FAANG Effect, which I’ve written about as well.
I’m not saying that you don’t copy what these organizations are doing, but the process they have in place is built with their values. It took them many iterations to get to where they are. Sure, you can look for inspiration of what others are doing, but at the end of the day, your onboarding process needs to fit the values of your organization.
These will get you started in creating a better onboarding process, and one day you can hopefully create one that ranks among the best employee onboarding experiences.
Conclusion and next steps.
We Discussed the following:
- Problems With The Employee Onboarding Experience.
- The Value Of A Quality Employee Onboarding Experience.
- Stories From Around The Internet On The Best Employee Onboarding Experiences (Just Kidding, Most Of Them Are Terrible).
- What are Common Mistakes That Companies Make With Onboarding Training?
- How To Improve The Employee Onboarding Experience.
What Should You Do Moving Forward With The Employee Onboarding Process?
- Think back to the onboarding experiences you have had in your life. What was the good? The bad? The ugly?
- At your current organization, what was the onboarding process like when you came aboard? What did you like? What didn’t you like? How long ago was that?
- Go talk with employees who recently went through the onboarding process. What was it like for them? What could have gone better?
This is the first image that pops up in pixabay when I type in “onboard”
With This, You Will Likely Have Come To One Of Two Conclusions:
- Your company does a great job with onboarding, and just needs to make constant tweaks to ensure it stays that way. You may find yourself ranking high among the best employee onboarding experiences.
- You have a long journey ahead of you, my friend.
Looking at stats, probability has you in the second category unfortunately. Maybe it’s not a priority at your organization. Maybe as you’re dealing with so much turnover, you don’t have time to build an onboarding process that would help reduce it. It starts with a reflection of looking into the mirror.
If You Take The Time To Sit Down And Make An Engaging Employee Onboarding Process With A Solid Foundation, It Will Pay For Itself In Droves.
Looking for inspiration for things you can do for onboarding? Check out our post below:
Ten Employee Onboarding Ideas Your Organization Can Use Right Now
The fantastic management and leadership blog lighthouse has a great post on improving the employee onboarding experience that covers some different territory than what was covered here.
How to Improve Your Employee Onboarding Process to Engage Your Hires & Prevent Turnover
Need some outside help with your onboarding? Please contact us and we will help you with your onboarding woes!
One of our core offerings is working on the employee onboarding process.
I shared the above stories on people’s experiences with the onboarding process to point out the common mistakes that organizations make when it comes to onboarding. Let’s go through a few of them.
The Paper Trail.
Sign this, sign that. Fill out this, fill out that. Oh, and here’s some documentation, go ahead and read it to get up to speed! See you at lunch!
Boy this is exciting and engaging! Said no one ever. I understand that yes, you have to fill out the paperwork, but dumping it all in front of new employees, and linking to some wikis isn’t going to cut it.Sadly, for many organizations, this is all they do for the onboarding process.
Onboarding Starts The Day Of Arrival.
Looking at some of the stories above: People are unaware that someone new is starting. To find the most basic of information, new employees have to go on a scavenger hunt. Where’s the computer that was assigned to them? Do they have their login credentials? What about a keycard? I’ve had an experience where I had to wait a couple of weeks for a keycard. Classic.
Onboarding Lasts For Day (If At That).
Looking at some of the stories above, the onboarding lasts half a day. Some are a day. What about a week? A month? Forget it. As I mentioned earlier in this article, the only quality onboarding process that I experienced lasted for about three months.
Everyone Gets The Same Approach.
It’s good enough. You may have had the same onboarding process for years, and it’s the same for everyone. It’s a set checklist, no deviation. You got work to do! They’ll get up to speed. Eventually.
Read more here to learn more on how to do this:
6. How To Improve The Employee Onboarding Experience.
Now that we have that all out of the way, let’s look at things you can do at your organization to improve your onboarding process.
I have a separate post on 11 onboarding ideas you can improve your employee onboarding experience. This is looking more at the overall experience.
separate post on 11 onboarding ideas you can improve your employee onboarding experience.
Understanding The Six Dimensions of Socialization Tactics.
Dimensions? Socialization tactics? Yes, we’re getting academic here for a time.
This comes from the excellent paper New Employee Onboarding Programs and Person Organization Fit: An Examination of Socialization Tactics
Don’t worry, I’m a weirdo and made my way through it (for an academic paper, it is quite readable)so you don’t have to. Let’s dive in, shall we?
There are two types of approaches an organization can use – institutionalized and individualized.
Instituionzlied is as follows:
- Collective
- Formal
- Sequential
- Fixed
- Serial
- Investiture
Individualized is as follows:
- Individual
- Informal
- Random
- Variable
- Disjunctive
- Divestiture
The names of most of them should be self-explanatory, except for the last couple of each. Let’s break down what they mean:
- Serial/Disjunctive: A serial tactic is when an individual receives a buddy/role model/mentor, while a disjunctive tactic, new hires are on their own to seek one out. From my personal experience, I’ve experienced both.
- Investiture/Divestiture: Investiture is when a new employee received positive feedback, while divestiture was when a new employee received negative feedback.
Which tactics were the most positively related to person-organization fit?
Of the formal tactics, sequential, fixed, serial, and investiture were positively related, with investiture having the strongest correlation.
The collective and formal approaches were not as effective as individual or informal.
So, what can we take from this information?
This should give you a good idea that going with a more institutionalized approach of best practices is, well, the best practice, but also allowing for some flexibility in the socialization process that happens with onboarding.
Determine The Goals Of Your Employee Onboarding Experience
This will vary depending on your organization, depending on size, on industry. Here’s a list of five goals that I find that can get you started in determining what your goals are:
- From day one, new employees know they’ve made the right choice in joining.
- Giving employees everything they need to know (but were afraid to ask).
- Ease them into your organization.
- Show them how your organization works (values).
- Show that their work matters.
Obtain Feedback From Employees Who Recently Went Through The Employee Onboarding Process.
In the section above that looked at people’s experiences with onboarding, one point that came up a couple of times was that these new employees took matters into their own hands and ended up creating some processes to make it easier for those that were hired afterwards.
As they experienced it recently firsthand, these individuals have an excellent idea of what went wrong, and what went right.
Starting with the most recent employees who went through the onboarding process is the best unbiased way to get feedback on it. You may think it’s well suited, but if you’ve been at an organization for awhile, and you know the ins out and outs of the organization, you’ve lost the beginner eyes that new employees have.
No, I’m not saying that you get these employees to build out the onboarding process for future employees. Get the feedback from them, and integrate it into your onboarding process. You’ll be able to collect more overtime as people come aboard.
Personalize The Onboarding Experience For Employees.
Everyone is different. Some of us are more outgoing, some are more introverted. Some like to be dropped into the thick of things, others want to dip their toes in the water before they swim.
How are you going to figure out what people want to see in their onboarding process?
You can figure out with an entry interview once they’ve started at your organization. A great question that you can ask is the following:
“For your first week/month/quarter/six months, what would you need in order to succeed and become proficient at your work?”
Invest in your onboarding process and watch the growth. Source: Pixabay
Make The Onboarding Process Last Several Months.
Look back at the reddit posts I included with the horror stories people had with onboarding. Most of them had onboarding that lasted half a day. Maybe a day. That’s not going to cut it. As I also mentioned earlier, the only good onboarding experience I had lasted three months. In that time, I began to feel a solid grasp of my role at that company.
What kind of things were done?
- Buddy system within the company.
- Weekly review for the first month, turning to bi-weekly review, and a long three month review.
- Monthly breakfasts with the executive team. They would take out the new employees to get to know us better.
I found these three aspects of their onboarding process was very helpful in getting me up to speed and finding my way in the organization.
Want more ideas? I wrote a post about ten employee onboarding ideas your organization can use.
Make The Onboarding Process Your Own.
It’s easy to look at what other organizations are doing and try to copy what works for them. How many organizations do you think have tried to copy what the big tech organizations like Facebook, Apple, or Netflix do when it comes to things like onboarding, and having it fail? This is what I call the FAANG Effect, which I’ve written about as well.
I’m not saying that you don’t copy what these organizations are doing, but the process they have in place is built with their values. It took them many iterations to get to where they are. Sure, you can look for inspiration of what others are doing, but at the end of the day, your onboarding process needs to fit the values of your organization.
These will get you started in creating a better onboarding process, and one day you can hopefully create one that ranks among the best employee onboarding experiences.
Conclusion and next steps.
We Discussed the following:
- Problems With The Employee Onboarding Experience.
- The Value Of A Quality Employee Onboarding Experience.
- Stories From Around The Internet On The Best Employee Onboarding Experiences (Just Kidding, Most Of Them Are Terrible).
- What are Common Mistakes That Companies Make With Onboarding Training?
- How To Improve The Employee Onboarding Experience.
What Should You Do Moving Forward With The Employee Onboarding Process?
- Think back to the onboarding experiences you have had in your life. What was the good? The bad? The ugly?
- At your current organization, what was the onboarding process like when you came aboard? What did you like? What didn’t you like? How long ago was that?
- Go talk with employees who recently went through the onboarding process. What was it like for them? What could have gone better?
This is the first image that pops up in pixabay when I type in “onboard”
With This, You Will Likely Have Come To One Of Two Conclusions:
- Your company does a great job with onboarding, and just needs to make constant tweaks to ensure it stays that way. You may find yourself ranking high among the best employee onboarding experiences.
- You have a long journey ahead of you, my friend.
Looking at stats, probability has you in the second category unfortunately. Maybe it’s not a priority at your organization. Maybe as you’re dealing with so much turnover, you don’t have time to build an onboarding process that would help reduce it. It starts with a reflection of looking into the mirror.
If You Take The Time To Sit Down And Make An Engaging Employee Onboarding Process With A Solid Foundation, It Will Pay For Itself In Droves.
Looking for inspiration for things you can do for onboarding? Check out our post below:
Ten Employee Onboarding Ideas Your Organization Can Use Right Now
The fantastic management and leadership blog lighthouse has a great post on improving the employee onboarding experience that covers some different territory than what was covered here.
How to Improve Your Employee Onboarding Process to Engage Your Hires & Prevent Turnover
Need some outside help with your onboarding? Please contact us and we will help you with your onboarding woes!
One of our core offerings is working on the employee onboarding process.
Now that we have that all out of the way, let’s look at things you can do at your organization to improve your onboarding process.
I have a separate post on 11 onboarding ideas you can improve your employee onboarding experience. This is looking more at the overall experience.
separate post on 11 onboarding ideas you can improve your employee onboarding experience.
Understanding The Six Dimensions of Socialization Tactics.
Dimensions? Socialization tactics? Yes, we’re getting academic here for a time.
This comes from the excellent paper New Employee Onboarding Programs and Person Organization Fit: An Examination of Socialization Tactics
Don’t worry, I’m a weirdo and made my way through it (for an academic paper, it is quite readable)so you don’t have to. Let’s dive in, shall we?
There are two types of approaches an organization can use – institutionalized and individualized.
Instituionzlied is as follows:
- Collective
- Formal
- Sequential
- Fixed
- Serial
- Investiture
Individualized is as follows:
- Individual
- Informal
- Random
- Variable
- Disjunctive
- Divestiture
The names of most of them should be self-explanatory, except for the last couple of each. Let’s break down what they mean:
- Serial/Disjunctive: A serial tactic is when an individual receives a buddy/role model/mentor, while a disjunctive tactic, new hires are on their own to seek one out. From my personal experience, I’ve experienced both.
- Investiture/Divestiture: Investiture is when a new employee received positive feedback, while divestiture was when a new employee received negative feedback.
Which tactics were the most positively related to person-organization fit?
Of the formal tactics, sequential, fixed, serial, and investiture were positively related, with investiture having the strongest correlation.
The collective and formal approaches were not as effective as individual or informal.
So, what can we take from this information?
This should give you a good idea that going with a more institutionalized approach of best practices is, well, the best practice, but also allowing for some flexibility in the socialization process that happens with onboarding.
Determine The Goals Of Your Employee Onboarding Experience
This will vary depending on your organization, depending on size, on industry. Here’s a list of five goals that I find that can get you started in determining what your goals are:
- From day one, new employees know they’ve made the right choice in joining.
- Giving employees everything they need to know (but were afraid to ask).
- Ease them into your organization.
- Show them how your organization works (values).
- Show that their work matters.
Obtain Feedback From Employees Who Recently Went Through The Employee Onboarding Process.
In the section above that looked at people’s experiences with onboarding, one point that came up a couple of times was that these new employees took matters into their own hands and ended up creating some processes to make it easier for those that were hired afterwards.
As they experienced it recently firsthand, these individuals have an excellent idea of what went wrong, and what went right.
Starting with the most recent employees who went through the onboarding process is the best unbiased way to get feedback on it. You may think it’s well suited, but if you’ve been at an organization for awhile, and you know the ins out and outs of the organization, you’ve lost the beginner eyes that new employees have.
No, I’m not saying that you get these employees to build out the onboarding process for future employees. Get the feedback from them, and integrate it into your onboarding process. You’ll be able to collect more overtime as people come aboard.
Personalize The Onboarding Experience For Employees.
Everyone is different. Some of us are more outgoing, some are more introverted. Some like to be dropped into the thick of things, others want to dip their toes in the water before they swim.
How are you going to figure out what people want to see in their onboarding process?
You can figure out with an entry interview once they’ve started at your organization. A great question that you can ask is the following:
Invest in your onboarding process and watch the growth. Source: Pixabay
Make The Onboarding Process Last Several Months.
Look back at the reddit posts I included with the horror stories people had with onboarding. Most of them had onboarding that lasted half a day. Maybe a day. That’s not going to cut it. As I also mentioned earlier, the only good onboarding experience I had lasted three months. In that time, I began to feel a solid grasp of my role at that company.
What kind of things were done?
- Buddy system within the company.
- Weekly review for the first month, turning to bi-weekly review, and a long three month review.
- Monthly breakfasts with the executive team. They would take out the new employees to get to know us better.
I found these three aspects of their onboarding process was very helpful in getting me up to speed and finding my way in the organization.
Want more ideas? I wrote a post about ten employee onboarding ideas your organization can use.
Make The Onboarding Process Your Own.
It’s easy to look at what other organizations are doing and try to copy what works for them. How many organizations do you think have tried to copy what the big tech organizations like Facebook, Apple, or Netflix do when it comes to things like onboarding, and having it fail? This is what I call the FAANG Effect, which I’ve written about as well.
I’m not saying that you don’t copy what these organizations are doing, but the process they have in place is built with their values. It took them many iterations to get to where they are. Sure, you can look for inspiration of what others are doing, but at the end of the day, your onboarding process needs to fit the values of your organization.
These will get you started in creating a better onboarding process, and one day you can hopefully create one that ranks among the best employee onboarding experiences.
Conclusion and next steps.
We Discussed the following:
- Problems With The Employee Onboarding Experience.
- The Value Of A Quality Employee Onboarding Experience.
- Stories From Around The Internet On The Best Employee Onboarding Experiences (Just Kidding, Most Of Them Are Terrible).
- What are Common Mistakes That Companies Make With Onboarding Training?
- How To Improve The Employee Onboarding Experience.
What Should You Do Moving Forward With The Employee Onboarding Process?
- Think back to the onboarding experiences you have had in your life. What was the good? The bad? The ugly?
- At your current organization, what was the onboarding process like when you came aboard? What did you like? What didn’t you like? How long ago was that?
- Go talk with employees who recently went through the onboarding process. What was it like for them? What could have gone better?
This is the first image that pops up in pixabay when I type in “onboard”
With This, You Will Likely Have Come To One Of Two Conclusions:
- Your company does a great job with onboarding, and just needs to make constant tweaks to ensure it stays that way. You may find yourself ranking high among the best employee onboarding experiences.
- You have a long journey ahead of you, my friend.
Looking at stats, probability has you in the second category unfortunately. Maybe it’s not a priority at your organization. Maybe as you’re dealing with so much turnover, you don’t have time to build an onboarding process that would help reduce it. It starts with a reflection of looking into the mirror.
If You Take The Time To Sit Down And Make An Engaging Employee Onboarding Process With A Solid Foundation, It Will Pay For Itself In Droves.
Looking for inspiration for things you can do for onboarding? Check out our post below:
Ten Employee Onboarding Ideas Your Organization Can Use Right Now
The fantastic management and leadership blog lighthouse has a great post on improving the employee onboarding experience that covers some different territory than what was covered here.
How to Improve Your Employee Onboarding Process to Engage Your Hires & Prevent Turnover
Need some outside help with your onboarding? Please contact us and we will help you with your onboarding woes!
One of our core offerings is working on the employee onboarding process.
