Learn How to Up Your Onboarding Game

Here’s a question for you: What is the value of an effective onboarding process?

That could be a tough one to answer because regardless of how much you evaluate it at, an efficient onboarding process is most likely worth much more.

As is known, the first day or week of a new employee is what can set the tone for their impression of the company. This means an inadequate onboarding experience may lead to reduced employee retention and a weakened company culture.

Besides, poor onboarding can result in slower skill development, which can lead to new hires taking a longer time to adjust to their responsibilities. Consider how hard hiring managers work to finalize start dates and how critical it is to fill essential positions quickly. By improving your onboarding process, you can expedite a new employee’s start date by enabling them to hit the ground running and contribute faster.

As per a Gallup report, only about 12% of employees strongly believe that their company provides an exceptional onboarding experience for new hires. In addition, only 29% of newly recruited employees feel fully equipped to excel in their new role after completing the onboarding process.

Apart from insufficient investment in their onboarding program, most organizations significantly undervalue the impact of employee ramp time on business performance. The reality is that the effectiveness of your employee onboarding process has a significant effect on your company’s success in meeting its objectives. By enhancing your onboarding process, you can decrease ramp time and achieve notable performance improvements.

In this blog, we will look at various ways in which you can optimize your employee onboarding process and in turn improve new hires productivity.

Why Onboarding Goes Beyond Just Performance

It is common for new employees to require time to adjust to their roles, which can vary depending on their individual capabilities and the nature of their work. For instance, Bridge Group’s research reveals that sales team members take roughly three months to complete onboarding and ramp up.

Conversely, according to Gallup’s research, it takes around 12 months of onboarding for a new hire to attain their maximum performance potential. This brings forth the question – why is there a disparity between the two findings?

This is because onboarding is not limited to only equipping new hires with the necessary skills and information to perform their job effectively. True that it initially does involve these plus product training, introduction to the system, and an overview of their responsibilities and workflow.

However, there is an entire realm of onboarding and learning that extends beyond these basics. It encompasses fostering social connections among employees, making them feel psychologically secure and valued, and most importantly, helping them understand the company’s values. Although these factors may not hold the same value as attainment, they can influence job satisfaction and retention, which, can significantly impact the bottom line.

How Onboarding can Help Improve Employee Retention

Here are a few best practices to help:

Choose the Right LMS

Your onboarding program is a crucial aspect of your organization’s overall L&D plan. As it is a process that every employee interacts with, it needs to be exceptional. An effective LMS can help in providing the necessary support to establish and administer a comprehensive onboarding program. With an LMS, companies can establish a structured end-to-end onboarding strategy.

A robust LMS can aid in providing new hires with the content they require, connect them with their team, and empower the experts within your organization. It can integrate well into your work process and systems. Additionally, it can provide you with valuable data to make sense of the complexities of onboarding. The personalized learning delivered by an LMS will ensure that every user gets a tailored learning experience from their very first day, which can significantly reduce ramp time and improve retention.

Kickstart ASAP

The importance of a positive first impression on a new hire cannot be overstated. A bad start can lead to an overall negative impression that is difficult to overcome later on. To avoid this, it is crucial to schedule frequent check-ins between the new hire and their manager during the first few days and weeks.

Additionally, providing the right resources and systems to set them up for success can help ensure a smooth onboarding process.

Focus on Social Learning

Although formal training is vital to the success of an onboarding program, the value of informal Learning through Social Media and Knowledge Collaboration tools cannot be overlooked. Social Learning provides the necessary informal learning environment where learners can connect, share, collaborate, exchange ideas and knowledge, and solve problems by going beyond the limitations of roles, designations, and structured training programs.

This aspect of an LMS is particularly important in the onboarding process because it enables new learners to interact with their colleagues and learn from them. Forward-thinking organizations recognize the importance of keeping their new employees engaged in training beyond traditional training hours.

Incorporate ‘Always on’ Learning Culture

When an existing employee changes teams or roles, they require onboarding too. Neglecting this crucial process can have disastrous consequences. It’s a waste of an exceptional performer’s potential to put them in a new role where they aren’t set up to succeed. This not only leads to a drop in productivity but also increases the risk of losing one of your most valuable employees. To avoid such scenarios, it’s crucial to foster an ‘always-on’ learning culture.

Leverage Reporting & Analytics

To evaluate the effectiveness of your onboarding and training initiatives, it’s crucial to track quantitative metrics such as ramp-up time, product knowledge, performance, and productivity. Having an LMS that includes features such as Reporting and Analytics is essential for measuring the ROI of your training program.

These tools provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of the program for learners and how well the strategy meets the learning goals and objectives. In addition, reporting data offers better learner management capabilities by identifying who excels in certain areas and which areas need more focus.

Takeaway

To sum up, it is crucial for companies to keep in mind that their employee onboarding process establishes the initial atmosphere for newly hired individuals in the organization, thereby creating a significant first impression. An LMS significantly enhances this experience by providing an engaging and learner-centric environment for new employees.

The time to invest in a robust LMS for onboarding is today!