The Employee Onboarding Process: Best Practices, Challenges And Solutions [Latest 2022]

With the Great Resignation impacting the corporate world on a global level, organizations have started looking for ways to retain their employees. The job of an organization’s hiring manager is no more limited to hiring new recruits. Now, it also requires them to retain the new employees for the long run. But, what if a new entrant turns up on the date of joining and does not return the next day?

Unfortunately, not welcoming a new employee to your organization can also contribute to the problem of the Great Resignation. So, understanding employee onboarding can help an organization retain their best talent and survive these challenging times. Come! Let us see what this process is all about.

What Is Employee Onboarding?

It is the process of introducing new employees to how an organization functions. However, this process varies from one organization to the next. Some treat it as a one-day affair while others give new recruits a year to get familiar with their working style and environment. Hiring managers should know that the onboarding process can make or break an organization’s reputation. So, let us find out what makes having the best employee onboarding process so important.

The Importance Of The Right Onboarding Process

After going through a lengthy interview, the onboarding process gives new employees a chance to interact with the organization and its various departments. An efficient onboarding experience is beneficial not only for the organization but also for the new employee. So, given below are four reasons why having a well-planned onboarding process is necessary for an organization’s success.

1. Improves Productivity

The onboarding process is more than a formal introduction of the new employee to the organization. It is an opportunity for the organization to retain quality talent with proper support, training, and feedback. A major benefit of a quality employee onboarding process is it helps a new employee know their roles and responsibilities in the organization. In short, the faster they understand what needs to be done, the sooner they become contributing members of the organization. How an organization welcomes new recruits also has an impact on their remote and freelancing teams’ productivity levels [1].

2. Promotes Transparency

In an ideal corporate scenario, everyone has their roles and responsibilities clearly laid out. In reality, it is an efficient onboarding process which makes this possible. A well-planned onboarding process helps new recruits not only understand their role but also engage with everyone in the organization. This way, it minimizes the risk of miscommunication down the line.

3. Helps Develop Trust

A well-planned onboarding process with focus on communication and training makes new employees feel welcome in the organization. It helps new employees develop a relationship of trust with the organization. The process gives them the confidence to give their best in day-to-day tasks to produce the desired result.

On the contrary, a lousy onboarding experience will not only waste the time, money, and efforts an organization puts into hiring a new talent. It will also drive away the new employee. Thus, a lack of trust in the organization and senior management will inevitably affect its future growth and reputation.

4. Improves Employee Retention

Employee turnover is an expensive affair for every organization, especially when one takes into consideration factors like the cost of vacancy and the time it takes to backfill the position [1]. Finding a new employee after every 90 days is more expensive for an organization in comparison to having a tenured employee.

A stronger employee onboarding process can easily change that situation for the better. However, as easy as it may seem to welcome new employees onboard, there are a couple of challenges that make it harder for hiring managers to do it smoothly.

Challenges To And Solutions For Efficient Employee Onboarding

Given below are the five major challenges affecting this process pf employee onboarding, and what hiring managers can do to resolve them.

1. Information Overload On Day One

The worst mistake a hiring manager can make with new recruits on their first day is to bombard them with loads of information. Sharing excess information not only leads to a poor experience for the new recruits, it can also make them rethink their decision to join the organization.

Solution
To get over this challenge, hiring managers should go slow with the onboarding process. They should ensure that information is shared over a period of a few days or weeks. Also, sharing information should be carried out through the digital medium as opposed to asking every department to meet the new recruits.

2. Unclear Expectations And Goals

The employee onboarding process is an opportunity for HR to share their organization’s expectations with the new recruit. It also gives them a chance to share the parameters on which an employee’s performance is measured. Thus, any confusion regarding the organization’s expectations from a new recruit is never a good thing.

Solution
It is the hiring manager’s job to highlight the new employee’s role and responsibilities. There must be clear communication regarding the organization’s goal, and what the new recruit needs to do to meet the same.

3. Failure To Collect Feedback

An important aspect of welcoming new employees, which many HR managers miss out on, is not collecting feedback from the new recruits.

Solution
Feedback gives hiring managers a chance to ask the employees what worked in the organization’s favor and what didn’t. Doing this also lets the new recruit know their opinion is valued by the employer. This has a positive impact on the new employee’s morale to work harder for the organization.

4. Inaccurate Job Description

Similar to unclear expectations, a lack of clarity in the job description can spell doom for an organization’s employee retention plans. So, if a new employee were to discover that the job they are doing does not justify the role they were hired for, they will most likely quit their job.

Solution
It is the employer’s responsibility to share with the new recruit the organization’s expectations regarding their job role during the onboarding process.

5. Low Investment In Onboarding

The process of welcoming new employees has a significant impact on a company’s growth and future. An organization’s success depends largely on the hiring manager’s ability to hire and retain fresh and skilled talent.

Solution
The best organizations in the world are those which understand that the onboarding process is not a formal introduction but an investment that pays well in the future. With time, there has been a tremendous change in how companies welcome new employees.

So, let us check out the current trends in the domain of the employee onboarding process.

Top 5 Employee Onboarding Trends Of 2022

A great employee onboarding process can improve retention by 82% [2].
35% of organizations spend no money on onboarding new recruits.
88% of organizations fail when it comes to onboarding new employees [2].
58% of organizations state their onboarding process comprises paperwork and processes [2].
One in five new hires is unlikely to recommend an employer [2].

Conclusion

Developing an effective employee onboarding process is not a one-time task but a continuous process of error and learning. With time, hiring managers will come to find areas in the process that need improvement. However, with growth, one would be able to understand how to create the best onboarding process.

Organizations need to understand that investing in new employees comes back manifold in the form of positive growth and increased revenue. In the long run, employee satisfaction and happiness will help an organization become a leader in the industry it serves.