Onboarding employees is an important responsibility of your company’s HR function. However, onboarding processes and strategies are often neglected or disregarded completely. 

Creating an effective strategy for onboarding can help jump-start your employees’ time with your company and help them settle into new professional and organizational rhythms as quickly as possible.

Here are three implications of successful onboarding to consider as you develop your business’ unique onboarding strategy.

In a 2009 study from the Aberdeen Group, 86% percent of the respondents stated that they made a decision to stay with a company long term within the first six months of employment. Another study from BambooHR in 2014 found that 17% of the 1,000 respondents quit a job within the first 90 days because of poor onboarding. According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) the cost of filling a position is between $3,000 and $18,000. Poor onboarding can be a costly practice when you account for the increased turnover rate and costs to fill a position. Following best practices can help secure top talent for the longest portion of their career.

In addition to retaining talent, you will also find that a proper onboarding program increases employee performance. The SHRM study “Onboarding New Employees: Maximizing Success” found that performance increased 11% when employees completed an onboarding program. The same study found that the long term outcome of an onboarding program resulted in reducing the time from training to full productivity by 60%.

In a recent study by Kronos Inc. and Human Capital Institute, 350 HR leaders from various industries and company sizes were surveyed. The study concluded that there are three key elements to onboarding: people, performance, and paperwork. The area which received the most attention was paperwork (new hire forms, employee handbooks, tax forms, benefits, etc.). Interestingly, 62% percent of the respondents believe that the goal of onboarding is to integrate the employee into the company’s culture. 

If most HR professionals are focused on paperwork, but 62% are concerned with integrating new employees culturally, there is a significant gap between their priorities and actual activities. Additionally, this study also showed that the actual onboarding time focused on “people” was only 30% percent for managers and 27% for non-managers. It’s crucial to recognize that successful onboarding is not only about forms and processes, it involves communicating cultural values, integrating teams through community building activities, and ensuring that new employees understand what will make them successful in their new role.

We recognize that developing and executing an effective onboarding process requires a lot of time, energy, and expertise. At Axios HR, we have created a simple step-by-step checklist that has helped many of our clients find blind-spots within their onboarding systems. If you’d would like access to that checklist, or would like to chat with an HR expert at Axios about how we can help you develop that process for your company, send us an email at info@axioshr.com