Great employee onboarding isn’t just about feeling good. It’s directly correlated to your business growth.
You’ve been running around trying to get things done without the support needed. After weeks of conducting interviews with various candidates, you’ve finally found the (right) one. Thank goodness!
Now you’re wondering how to get them up to scratch as fast as possible so you and your team can jump on other urgent tasks. After all, you’ve got growth targets to achieve!
Hang on. It’s worth creating a great onboarding experience for new hires.
Did you know a seamless and enjoyable employee onboarding experience is a significant contributor to growth in a business?
Here’s how great employee onboarding:
- Impacts employee performance
- Results in faster ramp uptime and productivity
- Ensures better employee retention
- Fosters relationship building
- And the ONE quick WIN you can implement today!
Great employee onboarding impacts employee performance
To get exceptional employee outcomes, you need exceptional input from the get-go. The more secure a team member feels within their role, team, and organization, the more likely they are to contribute.
“Poor onboarding can leave your employees with lower confidence in their new roles..and an increased risk of jumping ship…” (Harvard Business Review)
So, onboarding team members well is crucial for the business.
Having processes and procedures in place leads to better employee engagement in a shorter time as new team members are equipped with the information they need to feel secure and to contribute and deliver.
Great employee onboarding results in faster ramp uptime and productivity
“Effective onboarding can get employees to full productivity up to 34% faster.” (eLearning) And yet only 29% of new hires say they feel fully prepared and supported to excel in their role after their onboarding experience.” (Gallup)
When employee onboarding is unstructured, it leads to employees floundering in the face of uncertainty.
Everyone wants to be helpful, but there’s nothing worse than wanting to help but not being able to because you don’t have the correct information.
New employees are also often less confident about asking questions so they may remain quiet instead of asking. Even if new hires ask, information from different sources tends to be siloed and inconsistent: one manager may answer customer queries in one way and another manager another.
This lack of consistency leads to more wasted time and less productivity.
We recently spoke to John Elder, Director of Business Blocks on "How to ensure optimal productivity when onboarding new team members."
Great employee onboarding results in better employee retention
“Great Employee Onboarding Can Improve Employee Retention By 82%.” (Gallup)
Employees who had a great onboarding experience are more likely to be satisfied with their workplace and, consequently, far more likely to stay put!
Consider a new hire and the associated costs, including recruitment and training.
Peoplekeep states that some studies predict that every time a business replaces a salaried employee, it costs 6 to 9 months’ salary, on average. “For a manager making $60,000 a year, that’s $30,000 to $45,000 in recruiting and training expenses.” 
It’s a lot! As the cost of replacing employees is significantly higher than retention, you want to keep your team engaged! The best way to do that is from the get-go.
Apart from that, every time a team member leaves, it affects the morale of the team.
Great employee onboarding fosters relationship building
“Employees with inclusive teams outperform their less inclusive peers by 27%” (BetterUp)
Human beings are social by nature. As much as the quality of our relationships influences our personal lives, so this is true also in the workplace.
Employees who have a great onboarding experience are more likely to engage with colleagues AND customers due to inclusion and increased levels of confidence.
It could mean the difference between a team member making a client pitch that results in hitting your targets for the year. Or not.
The bottom line (excuse the pun) goes something like this:
Seamless great employee onboarding = 
employee confidence = employee engagement = 
ramp-up time + productivity AND a happier, more engaged team 
So this all sounds great, but how do you consistently ensure an excellent onboarding process as you scale? It becomes so difficult to keep track of everyone and everyone’s progress. Even if you have an HR manager or VP of People, how do they keep track?
The ONE quick WIN you can implement today!
We’re BIG on actionable advice that can be implemented to result in massive impact, hence the launch of our Chaos to Clarity podcast.
So now that you know that great employee onboarding impacts business success, what’s the ONE quick win, you can implement, today?
A great way to help new hires feel welcome is by providing them with a platform to share their
knowledge and experiences. This helps them to feel more confident in their skills, whilst also encouraging a collaborative working environment.
ACTION TIP
Get new team members to introduce themselves in a team meeting within the first week and ask all new team members to contribute one piece of best practice to your current procedures and processes in your knowledge management and training platform.
Remember you don’t have to do it all yourself
To solve the challenges associated with scaling, you can’t repeat the same behavior that led you there. At a point, it’s vital to adopt technology to scale.
Trying to do everything yourself or putting the responsibility on one or two team members to onboard new hires isn’t the best approach and will only lead to burnout.
The more you can systemize and automate certain tasks including all documentation and processes needed for new hires, the more you can have time for things like fun team meet-ups or brainstorming sessions.
Want to access Whale’s Onboarding Best Practice Checklist?
Download our eBook below!
Future-Ready HR:
A Guide to Using AI and Automation for Training
We interviewed the top human resource experts to discover AI and HR trends for the future.
Download the whitepaper to discover how AI and automation can revolutionize onboarding and training, empowering you to develop a future-ready workforce today!
