How to boost retention with your onboarding practices
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20/06/2018
Losing staff is costly – all the investment you put into a new employee goes out the window as soon as they leave. While losses at any time are painful, a significant 22 per cent of staff turnover occurs in the first 45 days of employment, according to The Wynhurst Group. A positive candidate experience is all for nought if the new employee experience that follows it is unpleasant.
Once you’ve found the perfect hire with KLC Recruitment, don’t lose them by not integrating them into your team well. Here are four tips for making sure your onboarding process engages and excites your new employee.
1. Systemise the process
Don’t leave your onboarding to chance – if you have staff whose job it is to bring new employees up to speed, ensure they’re following a system. Not only is this beneficial for the employee (they get an experience that’s proven to work) it’s also useful for your staff, as they don’t have to reinvent the wheel every single time someone’s hired.
Another reason a system is important is because it’s difficult to diagnose problems in your onboarding efforts if they’re different every time. If you’re losing a tonne of staff early on, you need to know the potential culprits and a systematised onboarding process is easier to analyse than an improvised effort.
Whenever you bring new people on to the team, make sure it’s done with the same process every time.
2. Give a chance for social bonds to grow
Unless they happen to know someone in the office, new employees often lack a deeper personal connection with their co-workers. While this is inevitable in the early days, bonds need to be given the chance to grow.
It doesn’t have to involve alcohol, but regular work social functions are a great way for new employees to get to know their colleagues better. We all wear a different mask in the office than we do outside it, so forging those deeper bonds is worth it for making your new employee feel at home.
3. Ensure the little things are sorted
It’s disconcerting for a new employee to come to the office on their first day and find nobody’s ready to greet them, their office or workspace isn’t ready and there seems to be an all round feeling of chaos and miscommunication. Having those little work perks organised shows your new employee that you’ve taken the time to think about them and their experience at work.
4. Remember to communicate those things you might take for granted
When you’ve been working for a long time in an organisation, there are many things you’ll know that you take for granted. It’s very easy for new employees to feel lost so remember to communicate those taken-for-granted bits of knowledge to them.
There are a few simple ways to do this. One is to have a designated mentor, someone they can go to not necessarily for job related questions but for everyday things: what’s the protocol around leaving at the end of the day; how is space in the kitchen fridge allocated; who in the office does what? Another way you can do this is have an FAQ type document with answers to all the questions new employees might have. This has the advantage of making it easier to absorb a lot of information without feeling as though they’re asking too many questions. The downside is that it can easily become outdated – a new employee is more likely to get relevant information straight from another person.
Knowing how to onboard your new recruits is key for their long term success in your organisation, but how do you find them in the first place? That’s where KLC Recruitment can help – we’re experts at finding organisations the best candidates for their positions. Contact us today to learn more about what we can do for you.
