Mindy
Honcoop
Published on
April 13, 2023
In today's competitive business world, it is crucial to have a talented workforce to succeed. However, attracting top talent is only the beginning. The next critical step is activating workplace talent, particularly during onboarding. It sets the foundation for employee success. By providing a positive and engaging experience, workplaces can help employees feel valued, motivated, and invested in their roles. — leading to higher job satisfaction, retention, and productivity.
Additionally, effective onboarding also helps current employees who may have moved into new roles within the organization. Overall, investing in onboarding can have a significant impact on an organization's bottom line and long-term success.
Onboarding is the process of integrating employees into an organization at all stages of the employee lifecycle. Whether new-hire or continuous onboarding, it involves orientation, training, and providing employees with the necessary tools and information to be successful in their roles. The goal is to make sure emplyees feel welcomed, informed, and prepared to contribute to the organization's mission and goals.
Founder of Aptitude Research, Madeline Laurano, recently published research on the importance of onboarding.
“Eighty-six percent (86%) of employers believe that new hires decide to stay at a company in their first 90 days. Yet, companies are twice as likely to invest in talent acquisition and employee experience than onboarding, and 42% do not have a dedicated onboarding solution”
Source: 2022 Aptitude Research: Onboarding - Are We Doing Enough
“42% of companies do not have a dedicated onboarding Solution, and only 26% of companies are fully automating the onboarding process”.
Source: 2022 Aptitude Research: Onboarding - Are We Doing Enough
Yet, she found that companies are not spending time or budget to solve their onboarding gap.
Onboarding is not only overlooked; workplaces often don’t accurately define the process and thus don’t clarify clear ownership for it.
Many companies still provide an onboarding experience focusing on pre-onboarding tasks and first-day employment activities. Additionally, while companies have moved to automate their processes, a high percentage have not.
Before activating onboarding, companies need to do the following:
Now that the basics are in place, talent activation is about taking the onboarding stage into 2023 and beyond. Activation of each stage along the employee lifecycle fuels employers to reframe mental models for work. Moving from directing people in jobs to orchestrating skills and capability proficiency levels within workforce ecosystems. Elevating work processes from automated to augmentated.
In onboarding, it is essential to personalize the experience to meet new hires' unique needs. Onboarding a university graduate should look and feel different from an executive. It should also create a meaningful two-way connection. Providing everyone with the opportunity to learn about the company and team and for them to share about themselves.
First impressions are essential, and a warm welcome can go a long way in making new employees feel comfortable and appreciated. To create a warm welcome during onboarding:
Setting clear expectations during onboarding can be done by providing the following:
Having a buddy or mentor assigned to the new employee can help them feel supported and connected to the team. This person can answer questions, provide guidance, and act as a sounding board during the onboard stage.
There are several ways to provide training and development opportunities during onboarding:
Collaboration and communication are critical components of a successful team. Encouraging new employees to work with others and communicate openly can help them feel connected and engaged. Here are some ways to encourage collaboration and communication during onboarding:
Empowering employees by offering decision-making abilities and control over their work leads to increased job satisfaction and a sense of ownership. Offering opportunities for autonomy by:
Augment the onboarding experience with a digital conversational AI chatbot. Available at any moment, a chatbot walks alongside an employee's flow of work and points them to the right person, document, or technology tool. Like any good guide or coach, an AI intelligent assistant obtains feedback and delivers it to the service delivery team for continuous improvement. Coaches also augment workplace training to reinforce learning and positive habit change — specifically through pulse surveys and tailored communication nudges.
Before implementing any onboarding program changes, take a moment to understand your current baseline program success measures. If you don’t currently measure your onboarding program, try to identify some key metrics that align with supporting key business objectives. Why is this important? To confirm if the time and money invested in improving the onboarding program is delivering the outcomes and increased value intended. Employees are customers of HR. Customer success teams determine their program success measures with metrics like time to value. HR can apply employee time to value metrics to measure their talent activation efforts. You can use a conversational AI Chatbot to conduct a quick employee onboarding pulse survey.
To obtain your baseline measure of onboarding success, maintain a close connection with how employees feel about their work, team members, and managers. Build an employee pulse survey with such questions as:
Onboarding Success Survey Template_04-12-2023-FINALDownload
Once you have your baseline, you can implement changes to your program and see how responses change over time. This data can inform future program iterations and drive continuous improvement efforts.