If you don’t have an effective employee onboarding program, you could be saying goodbye to new hires before they even have a chance to make an impact at your company.

Your onboarding program creates the first impression new hires form of your company. Of course they will see some of your operations and what you do during the new hire orientation, however, the onboarding program is going to give them the first taste of how your business operates, how it works, and how they will fit into the organization.

In short, the onboarding process will be their first experience of your company in action and you can’t afford for them to have a bad experience.

Poor onboarding processes are a bigger problem than people realize. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, a survey of 350 human resource managers revealed 49% experienced losing new hires because of poor employee onboarding.

To minimize this fallout at your company, you should have a proactive employee onboarding program that properly introduces your company culture and sets the tone for success.

What You Need To Consider When Creating A New Onboarding Program For Employees

First, you should understand that onboarding is different than orientation. Orientation is the first step in onboarding. It involves getting the employee settled into the surroundings of their new job, showing them your facilities or campus, making some initial introductions, and handling all of the first day paperwork for salary, benefits, and policies and procedures.

The next step in the onboarding process is getting the new hire prepared to become a fully functioning member of your organization. This is when you introduce them to your company work and production flow, train them with new skills, transfer the knowledge they will need to perform their job, and introduce their closest colleagues.

Most importantly, this is also the time when new hires will learn about your company’s culture, mission, vision, values, and organizational behavior. The new hires will get a taste of their new work life and (hopefully) begin their assimilation into your company.

If you don’t have a set process or procedures to make this happen there are important steps that can be minimized or missed all together.

To assess your onboarding effectiveness, ask yourself, and your managers, what are you currently seeing at the end of onboarding and how that compares to what you would like to see. Since different managers from various departments will likely have different expectations. So, ask each department head what they want from a successful onboarding program before you begin revising your employee onboarding process,

The onboarding process for a new manager is going to be different than one for a new member of the tech department or marketing team. Consider developing an onboarding checklist for each department. This ensures your new employees receive training specific to their critical job tasks.

While different positions may require different elements of the onboarding process, there should be consistency in the review and delivery of your company mission, vision and values – and ultimately, company culture.

Equal Parts Consulting works with companies to develop custom onboarding programs. We have seen how a robust onboarding program can boost the productivity of new employees. If you have any questions or comments about this subject, we invite you to contact us.