Your new hire’s expectations for the whole employee-employer relationship are set during the onboarding process. If it sets low expectations, you’ll notice that new hires leave your organization sooner than expected. Keep an eye on your best-fit applicants, if you see that some of the people who you think would be excellent for your company are leaving in the middle or shortly after onboarding, it’s time to reconsider what makes an excellent new hire experience.
New hires must go through a bunch of paperwork, background checks, interviews, onboarding, training, credentials, and employee policies, yet so many HR professionals consider onboarding as merely the procedure of filling seats in the office. Every onboarding process is unique, but there are certain common major hurdles you can avoid to guarantee a smooth transition for your new staff. Here’s what you need to be aware of for a flawless and automated onboarding process.
- High turnover rate
A high turnover rate for new workers is the biggest red flag for any onboarding procedure. Employees will leave within just two months, and the problem isn’t always attributable to poor hiring methods. People are frequently turned off by their first experiences working for the company.
High turnover rates indicate that new employees are disengaged with the organization and do not believe it will meet their goals or expectations, which can be especially troublesome in positions where competition for talent is high. It reminds people that finding the appropriate application is only the beginning of the job; you must also satisfy them once they walk through the door.
- A lot of paperwork
Is a new hire’s first day at work spent filling out onboarding paperwork before being given a stack of written training manuals? If this is the case, you should review your strategy, as it creates a poor impression and gives employees the sense that the organization isn’t forward-thinking or progressive.
While some documentation will be required, you can streamline and automate the process by allowing new workers to enter crucial details digitally as part of the preboarding process before they ever start. Replacing traditional handbooks with more interactive, digital alternatives helps new hires stay motivated and engaged with the information on a larger scale.
- Poor communication
Poor communication, both in terms of what you say and how you say it, is one of the quickest ways to ruin a positive onboarding experience.
When candidates come across an uncertain item on a form, they should be able to quickly contact the HR expert in charge of their onboarding to get clarification. Furthermore, it should be feasible to contact the candidate using the method that they prefer, whether that is a text message, email, or phone call.
Conclusion
Regardless of how you transmit information to the applicant, there should be a common process in place that keeps a record of those discussions so everyone can see what has been covered and what has not. This not only avoids the issue of ambiguous requirements noted above but also makes things easier in the case of a future staffing audit. Taking care of these difficulties is an excellent first step toward improving the onboarding process.
Using technology and automation to treat onboarding as more than a process and paperwork offers your company the base it needs to succeed. Investing in automation will enable a more engaging, communication-focused work experience, which will help everyone who joins your company succeed. Finally, you’ll provide a positive onboarding experience for new workers, expand that experience across your entire business, and track your progress to continue enhancing onboarding in the future.