Effective employee onboarding programs and retention strategies

11 Orientation: Training For New Employees Introduction An effective onboarding program is essential when it comes to companies reducing their turnover rates. Onboarding is the method by which an organization introduces a new hire to the firm and gives that hire a real sense of the role that he or she will perform and why it is valuable to the company (Wolper, 2017). As the term itself suggests, onboarding is the means by which a company helps the new employee to literally “get on board” with what the organization is trying to achieve. The new employee is give a sense of purpose and a sense of being invested in the future and direction of the company through the onboarding process, which is why the process is so essential to a company and its aims. If a company has to continuously re-hire new people for the same role or position year in and year out, it is an indication that the company is lacking an adequate orientation program. This paper will describe how the onboarding process should work, what metrics can be used to make sure the orientation process is working effectively, what indicators a company should look for to let it know it needs to make a change, how such a company can improve its orientation process, and what companies in general should do to help new employees feel like they are part of the big picture. New Employee Orientation / Onboarding New employees want to feel like they are part of the team, and that is why onboarding works: it allows the employer the opportunity to help the new hire fit right in with the work going on. Some of the basic onboarding activities that companies can are as simple as “clearly explaining job importance, responsibilities and performance objectives, as well as introducing new hires to other new employees” (Weekes, 2010). But onboarding can be as involved as a company wants it to be and can last for up to a year as well. New employee orientation so often consists of a single session, which is typically perfunctory, formal and without any real personalization. Onboarding on the other hand “begins at the point of job offer by acclimatizing the employee to the new company and can continue for three, six or even 12 months afterwards as the person gets up to speed in their new role” (Weekes, 2010). It is a way of welcoming the new employee into the fold so that the new worker feels at home, comfortable, and like he belongs. Onboarding contributes to better retention rates for companies, but it also helps to increase worker engagement and effort (Weekes, 2010; Sullivan, 2015). Orientation is the initial step at which most companies stop: it consists of giving information about the job to the new employee and introducing the worker to the role. Onboarding focuses on aligning the worker with the aims of the company and getting the worker to invest in the vision that the organization holds. Orientation can involve a lot of paperwork—the mandatory record-keeping steps that do little to actually promote the actual culture of the workplace. Onboarding goes further: it addresses “the social, political and performance realities of the new job” (Sullivan, 2015). Orientation sets the tone of the workplace experience, and onboarding delivers the goods: as Sullivan (2015) notes, it should be a “structured, fun and energy-driven process for engaging and integrating new employees” into the workplace culture introduced to them through the orientation phase. Orientation: Evaluation and Metrics

Orientation and onboarding are important concepts, which is why it is crucial that a company have in place a way to evaluation and measure how effectively they are being implemented. As Krasman (2015) shows, the metrics available to evaluate the adequacy of a firm’s onboarding process are quite simple: “By soliciting feedback from new employees and developing quantitative measurements, you can judge the impact of the onboarding process and increase its success over time” (p. 10-11). One of the easiest ways to solicit this information is to interview the new hire directly or to use the survey method to obtain a quantifiable set of data (using a Likert scale for measuring responses) to see how well the new worker is acclimating to the workplace environment, how confident and comfortable the worker feels, whether the worker is in need of anything in terms of information, motivation, incentives or support and so on. The goal of evaluating onboarding and the orientation process is to help the organization to reduce turnover rates and ensure that new employees will feel both empowered to work and incentivized to perform at a high level. An evaluation process such as this is crucial because the research shows that job loyalty among new workers of the incoming generation is not a top priority: “91 percent of millennials expect to stay in a job for less than three years—a statistic that can destroy your ability to develop a first-class workforce” (Krasman, 2015, p. 11). That means 9 out of 10 new workers entering the workforce today are not intending to stay in their jobs for the entirety of their careers. Almost all of them have an eye towards moving upward or moving out of whatever starter position they feel they are in—and if companies are looking for long-term commitments in order to reduce the cost of having to repeatedly recruit, scout for, hire and train new workers, the toll that they can pay for not retaining workers can be very high. Thus, when forming the evaluation and metrics system to be used for assessing how well the orientation and onboarding process is working, an organization should develop the review by putting itself in the worker’s shoes and asking questions that the worker would like to be asked rather than ones that HR might think are important (Krasman, 2015). After all, the orientation and onboarding processes are designed to make the new employee feel comfortable, and that means when a company evaluates its onboarding processe it should be mindful of what the employee is likely to be thinking and feeling. Indicators for Change How does a company know when it is time to change its orientation methods? A key indicator will be its retention rates and whatever metrics it uses for measuring and monitoring employee engagement levels. If an organization is losing employees at a high rate year over year and finding that employee engagement levels at low with respect to industry standards, the time for enhancing the orientation process is at hand. What this means is that an organization should look to upgrade its orientation process to include onboarding, so that managers can more effectively engage with new workers over a longer period of time. The key to onboarding is that it should inspire engagement in the worker—and that comes by getting the new employee to feel engaged by those around him or her. If worker engagement is low, employee morale is likely to be low, and that means that managers are not doing their job in terms of creating an upbeat and positive workplace culture. Managers have to be involved in supporting workers on the job, showing that they care, and offering assistance and guidance whenever needed. Managers have to display more than just management skills—they also have to show leadership skills. A lack of leadership skills in management will be another indicator for organizations looking to see where they falling behind and why employees are losing interest in staying with the company. Onboarding can be a way to motivate both managers and new employees to work more closely together and align themselves with the priorities and values of the organization so that both are inspired to want to commit long-term to the organization and its goals. Improving the Orientation Process As Hamburg and Harris-Thompson (2017) show, leadership matters: “By empowering leadership behaviors at all levels of the organization, individuals can define a reality aligned with the organization’s desired state.” This means that in order to enhance the orientation process, an organization has to start with its leaders and managers as they are the ones ultimately responsible for overseeing the orientation and onboarding of new workers. If onboarding is not already a process that is integrated with the orientation of new workers, the organization should be discussing this issue with management to find out why it isn’t and what needs to be done to see that it is integrated in the future. Onboarding is the best way to enhance the orientation process because it extends the process over the course of days, weeks, and months, helping the new employee to be involved in a deeper way in the company’s tasks, its culture, and its aims. One of the ways to enhance this process is to spend less time focusing on the role and the expectations of the company and more time focusing on the new employee and finding out what the worker is really good at: “When people start with what they’re good at, they feel strong, capable, and ready to tackle any challenge” (Hamburg & Harris-Thompson, 2017). The more confident and comfortable that new workers feel in the workplace, the more likely the manager is to be able to build momentum around them and increase the organization’s return on investment in the new employees. The workers feel great because the company is taking so much time not only to train them but also to get to know them and find out where their real skills lie and how they can best be put to use. Workers want to feel challenged, useful, and like they are growing and being of real service to a company—and onboarding is the perfect opportunity for managers and workers to come together, get to know one another, and see where both can be of the most use to the organization. Hamburg and Harris-Thompson (2017) put it best when they state that “helping people understand why they were hired, what strengths they bring to a team, and how the team will use those strengths helps people see how they contribute to the team’s success”—and that is the whole point of the onboarding process, which is why every organization should include it as part of the orientation process. Analysis Mota (2016) notes that hiring a new worker is just the first step in a very important process: the next steps are just as crucial, if not more, because they actually involve incorporating the worker into the company. As the saying goes, first impressions make the biggest impact. The orientation and onboarding process is essentially the new worker’s first impression—and it leaves the deepest impression. A new worker, especially a millennial, might be thinking of only staying with the company for a year or two tops. However, if the onboarding process is effectively applied, that new worker should be thinking about staying with the company long-term. Why? The answer is that the onboarding process will make the new worker feel like he is home—like there is nowhere he would rather be working. For this reason, “the entire process, from recruiting to training, [is] even more mportant because it can make the difference between losing or keeping that valued employee” (Mota, 2016). The organization has to develop and apply clearly defined steps that will allow the new worker to see the bigger picture, the longer-term vision, and his or her role in accomplishing that vision. The process is all about bringing the new worker on board with the company in an intimate way. Organizations should not see workers as just another new hire that is expected to do a job and never really be anything more than a bit role player. New workers should be viewed as major role players even if they are only low level employees. Every worker must be made to feel special so that every worker is motivated to give 100% while on the job and is inspired to be committed to the company’s objectives for the long haul. If companies do not develop an appropriate onboarding process, they stand to lose $10,000 to $20,000 every time they have to replace a worker—and that can add up quickly no matter the size of the company (Mota, 2016). For that reason, an analysis of the impact of an effective orientation and onboarding process will show that these are tools that a company must invest in for its own sake. In other words, by investing in its workers and engaging them in a way that shows that the organization is interested in tapping their potential, identifying their skills and seeing those skills developed, applied and grown, the organization and the employee can be winners. After all, the new employee wants to grow as a professional just as much as the organization wants to grow as a firm—and onboarding helps them both to grow together. Recommendations An organization should develop and implement an onboarding process in order to complement and make its orientation process more effective over the long run. This will necessitate that a proper evaluation tool also be developed so that appropriate metrics can be obtained to see how well the orientation and onboarding process is being implemented. If the desired results are not appearing after an initial round of testing, the onboarding process should be enhanced or tweaked until the expected returns begin to appear. The expected returns should include a high level of employee engagement, which can easily be assessed through a number of different measurement techniques, such as direct observation, interviews and surveys. The expected returns should also include a reduction in turnover year over year. Improving retention rates is critical and the organization should proceed with this goal in mind especially as this is the area where companies routinely lose the most money. The simple steps that an organization can take to develop the orientation and onboarding process include: 1) Developing the tools to measure working engagement, productivity, confidence, motivation and retention; 2) Budgeting for the development and implementation of effective onboarding programs—this will include training for managers so that they can be more hands-on in working with new employees, helping them to feel included in the new workplace environment and to feel acclimated to their surroundings and the overall workplace culture; 3) Providing appropriate guidance and mentoring for workers at a routine pace, so that new employee knows where to go with questions or who to see when support is needed; 4) Implementing effective training strategies as a complementary part of onboarding so that new workers associate their training with the care and concern demonstrated by management; 5) Establishing both clearly defined expectations and an interest in the skills and unique talents that the new worker possesses that could potentially be applied at the organization so that the worker can feel like her or she is really making a big difference both at the workplace and in his or her own life; 6) Working with new employees to boost their job satisfaction by creating an enjoyable workplace culture and ensuring that all the needs of new workers are met, which will help to decrease their desire to look for employment elsewhere in the future (Mota, 2016). Conclusion Orientation and onboarding are critical processes that an organization must think deeply about if it truly wishes to become more effective and efficient in its hiring. Selecting the right worker for the job is only part of the battle; the next phase is also crucial—that is the stage wherein the new employee is brought into the fold and made to feel like he or she is one with the company. This is not a process that can be completed in a single afternoon but rather is something that must continue well into the new worker’s first year with the organization. By providing the new employee with the right balance of guidance, leadership, interest, training, support and evaluative methods for ensuring that workers are achieving a high level of job satisfaction and engagement, companies can reduce turnover rates and more effectively manager new workers so that they produce according to the potential they possess.