Full-Service HR

What is Onboarding?

Ella Baker
What is Onboarding?
Reading time 5 Mins
Published on Jun 21
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Improve your new hire experience and set your company up for success

Learning more about what onboarding is and how a smooth onboarding process eases candidates’ transitions into your company can be the difference between retaining your new employees and falling back into the trap of high turnover. Help your new talent integrate into the culture of your company and become adept at their jobs by implementing a comprehensive onboarding process.

Onboarding defined

More than just a simple orientation, onboarding is the process that allows you to not only collect all the relevant human resources, payroll, and benefits forms necessary for your employees but also allows your employees to become integrated into your company culture while ramping-up to become productive workers.

A well-developed onboarding process can last as long as one to two years and conveys your company’s brand and values, your professional culture, and clearly explains how individual employee job expectations and performances contribute to the success of the company. Onboarding allows employees to more quickly become productive members of your company.

The onboarding process should include constant communication, feedback, and performance measurements designed to improve employee retention and loyalty. Your process should embrace mentoring and professional development activities that help your employees grow in their roles and develop their career goals.

If the onboarding process seems overwhelming, don’t worry. Your Sheakley human resources experts are ready to help you develop an onboarding process that will allow you to retain top talent long-term while boosting employee productivity. Get your free consultation with a Sheakley HR team member today.

Importance of employee onboarding process

The most recent onboarding study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reported that nearly half of all hourly workers leave their new positions within the first four months and half of outside senior manager hires washout within 18 months. Helping employees assimilate into your company and their new role is a key function of the onboarding process and helps you plug the talent drain.

With the hiring process costing an average of one-quarter of the target position’s salary, implementing strategies that keep employee turnover to a minimum is a important to the success of your company. The faster a new hire feels settled and prepared for their role, the faster they can begin to contribute to the productivity and bottom line of your company. Effective onboarding prevents employees from struggling with understanding job expectations and gives them the tools to be successful in their positions.

While your program should be well thought out and coordinated, you will also need to account for the unique needs of various employees. Depending on the level of their career, job function, and culture, your onboarding process will require some tweaking. No matter the factors, your program should focus on the new hire’s experience and be enriching to their education of your company and the goals of their position.

Goals of onboarding

The overarching goal of your onboarding process should be to acclimate new employees to allow them to become contributing members of your staff in the briefest period possible, while integrating them into the culture of your company. Both of these elements lead to increased employee retention rates.

Acclimating your new employees allows them to more quickly understand the personality of your company and helps them understand company expectations from them and their role in achieving team and company goals. Your employees will also learn what they can expect from the company in terms of management support, performance reviews, and the availability of resources to help new employees succeed.

A successful onboarding plan can also boost your employee engagement. By reinforcing your company’s commitment to employee growth and professional development and demonstrating that management recognizes employee talent, your onboarding process provides an ideal opportunity to boost engagement by fostering supportive relationships between new hires and management. When employees are more engaged, your company can expect greater profitability, lower turnover rates, a better safety record, decreased absenteeism, and higher customer ratings.

With workers today holding nearly twice as many positions in their career as the previous generation, improving employee retention is vital to your company’s success. Contributing to lower productivity and decreased morale among remaining employees, turnover costs your company far more than recruiting fees and job posting fees. A well-formulated onboarding process can help reduce the turnover rates in your company.

Let Sheakley help you create a better onboarding experience

If your turnover rates are high and you don’t have a successful onboarding process, Sheakley’s human resources and PEO experts can help you develop an onboarding strategy to ensure the success of your company and improve employee retention. Claim your free consultation with Sheakley today to help you develop an onboarding process for success.

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