Why don’t more companies up their game on the onboarding experience? Study after study shows that companies that invest in the quality of their onboarding processes have more engaged employees, less turnover, and greater productivity.
In its 2014 State of Talent Acquisition Study, Brandon Hall Group reported that a whopping 40 percent of surveyed organizations rated their onboarding programs as less than moderately effective. While the companies that had invested time and resources to improve the quality and scope of their onboarding process — the 27 percent that rated their onboarding process as more than moderately effective — are consistently outperforming the rest:
78 percent saw increases in revenue in the previous fiscal year (1 in 3 saw increases of more than 10 percent).
64 percent saw positive gains in the majority of their organizational KPIs.
54 percent saw significant gains in employee engagement metrics, including employee turnover, absenteeism, productivity, and employee satisfaction.
So, companies know they’re not doing onboarding well, if they’re doing it at all. A recent infographic created by Onboardia, with statistics from companies ranging from ADP to ALEX to the Society for Human Resource Management, included these highlights:
Perhaps not surprisingly, the things that employees want from an onboarding experience are exactly the things that a Brandon Hall Group report, “High-performance Onboarding: A New Model for Excellence,” says are the five essential elements that the most effective employee onboarding programs share. Those elements are momentum, enablement, collaboration, assimilation, and connection. These elements, the report says, “breathe life into traditional administrative processes.” Here’s how it sees those five elements in practice.
Momentum. At high-performing organizations, preboarding — when new-hire forms and paperwork are completed and workstations are ready before employees’ first day — is standard practice. New hires’ first days are well organized and orchestrated, and often spent learning about the company and workplace.
Collaboration. The goal is to show new hires how your company works, how it makes money, and how the different parts fit together. Cross-instruction, often in groups, is a widely popular method of fostering collaboration in onboarding.
Assimilation. Role-based workflow during onboarding allows companies to automate not only the collection of key new-employee data, but also direct them to resources, obtain policy acknowledgements, and present the company’s brand.
Connection. Establishing meaningful connections with the people your new employees are working with serves two purposes: It reinforces a sense of belonging and gives them access to subject-matter experts who can guide them through the first months of their tenure.
Workterra couldn’t agree more with all of that. Those are very much the elements we deliver in our OnBoard module, created to develop engaged and productive employees from the very start. Workterra OnBoard lets companies of any size create efficient and effective processes for the administration and employee completion of all onboarding task, all through one cloud-based application.
The Workterra platform offers:
Personalized tours and interactive content for preboarding and onboarding
Employees get connected with the people and information they need in advance, ensuring seamless transitions and greater collaboration.
Simplified, streamlined online preboarding
New hires complete all state, local, and federal tax forms online, collect data for background checks, credit checks, and any customized forms, for a hassle-free, error-free onboarding experience.
Learn about the company and connect
Through documents and videos, employees can learn about the company culture, take surveys, and connect with colleagues.
Certified U.S. Department of Homeland Security agency and I-9 electronic processing
E-verification with full compliance and reporting eases administrative burdens and reduces risk.
Complete a range of tasks to better prepare for the first days on the job
New hires can order business cards; learn the location of their office, cube, or desk; and complete direct deposit information and other forms, all stored automatically in their employee record.
Seamless transfer from preboarding to onboarding
After completing all preboarding tasks, the Workterra application automatically transfers new hires to the onboarding process, easily and seamlessly.
Workterra believes it’s time to transform HCM, and making it easy and efficient for companies of any size to up their onboarding game is one way we’re doing that.