Your company's data regarding retention, engagement, and time to proficiency will likely make the case for a stronger onboarding program.
Organizations with effective onboarding programs typically have decreased turnover, higher employee satisfaction, and increased employee engagement. A 2009 study for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), conducted by the Aberdeen Group, reported that "66 percent of companies with onboarding programs claimed a higher rate of successful assimilation of new hires into company culture." But just having an onboarding program isn't enough to retain employees in a time where there is increased optimism about the job market.
Gallup's State of the American Workplace reports: "In the U.S., only 33% of employees are engaged in their job. Many workers have incentives to explore their options and plan to do so. Slightly more than half of employees (51%) say they are actively looking for a new job or watching for openings, and 35% of workers report changing jobs within the past three years."
What can you do to ensure your organization is holding on to your new hires, and bring them in the organization in a way that helps to promote engagement and productivity? Start by measuring where you are, and use metrics to back up your plans for improved onboarding in your company.
Assess your current state: Is it broken?
As talent development professionals, it may be obvious to us when program processes in the employee development realm need to be improved. Our communication with employees at all levels of the organization often help us quickly recognize the need for improvement.
We may recognize that managers' expectations for new hires do not match the results that are currently tracked. Or we might get feedback from exit surveys completed by employees who leave our company, and see themes that show a trend as to why employees leave.
But what should we do to test our assumptions and uncover the root causes of the issues we face? To build the business case for investing in improvements to your organization's new-hire processes, start with testing your assumptions, and gather data around metrics related to onboarding. Some of the more common measurements include retention, engagement, and time to proficiency.
An Aberdeen Group study for SHRM reveals that "about one third of new hires who had quit said they'd had barely any onboarding or none at all." Another study by the Wynhurst Group found that newly hired employees are 58 percent more likely to be at the company three years later if they completed a structured onboarding process.
So, where to begin?
Employee retention and turnover
According to SHRM, "turnover rate is calculated by taking the number of employee separations during a month divided by the average number of employees, multiplied by 100."
What is the average length of tenure for employees in your organization? How does that compare to similar companies and positions? Your human resource department can be an important partner in uncovering this information.
If the insights that your HR partners have gathered further define the retention rates within different departments of the organization (home office, sales, customer serve, IT, etc.), even more scrutiny can be applied to the numbers.
Maybe your company, on average, loses 20 percent of the workforce each year. But with more detailed information, you may find that this may illustrate that some departments or areas experience higher retention rates than others.
Consider also any data that can shed light on the percentage of employees moving within the organization. Just because an employee leaves a position, is not necessarily an indicator that he was unhappy with his role.
If an employee is promoted within the company or elects to take a position in a different department, take that into account when analyzing the numbers. Certainly, an employee who enjoys an organization's culture and opportunities but elects to move up or within the company isn't necessarily displeased. The employee may be quite the opposite and sees the potential for growth and movement within the organization.
Employee engagement
Gallup research shows that "engaged workers stand apart from their not-engaged and actively disengaged counterparts because of the discretionary effort they consistently bring to their roles."
Further, Gallup has "discovered links between employee engagement at the business-unit level and vital performance indicators, including customer ratings; higher profitability, productivity, and quality (fewer defects); lower turnover; less absenteeism and shrinkage (i.e., theft); and fewer safety incidents."
If improved employee engagement drives a company's bottom, the executives take notice.
Consider these best practices from industry leaders in measuring engagement:
- Select the right tool to measure engagement.
- Communicate the engagement initiative in a way that invites discussion and transparency.
- Couple the survey or measurement tools with focus groups and one-on-one or small-group conversations to verify and add narrative to the data collected.
- Define what engagement means to your organization.
You may see trends in various departments in your organization. Some areas may have vastly different engagement numbers than others. Use this information as an opportunity to dig deeper and uncover what drives particularly low (or high) scores.
Time to proficiency
There often is a disconnect between what managers expect new employees to do and how well they should do it, as well as the timeframe they expect it to happen. By clarifying manager expectations, and comparing that data to new-hire perceptions about the process, you can begin to outline a framework for more robust onboarding.
Gather information from managers throughout the organization. Ask them:
- What do you expect new hires to know before they begin?
- What are the three to five key job responsibilities that are most important for new hires to learn when they begin?
- Of those responsibilities, how do you rank their importance?
- How do you know when the new hires are proficient?
- What do you observe that helps you to know they are truly proficient? In other words, what does proficient look like?
- How are you communicating your expectations to new hires? How is that working?
Those questions can provide a starting point for creating an onboarding process that aims to meet managers' expectations.
It can be helpful to involve new hires in this process as well. Consider inviting employees hired within the past 90 days to share their experiences. By asking similar questions, you may learn there is a disconnect. Ask new employees:
- What did you know about your position before you began working here? How was that communicated to you?
- What are the three to five key job responsibilities that seemed to be most important for you to learn when you first began?
- Of those responsibilities, how do you rank their importance?
- How long did it take for you to feel like you were proficient in your role?
- What could be done to make the transition into our company and culture easier?
- How are expectations communicated to you?
Comparing managers' responses to the data and insight gathered from conversations with new hires may uncover a disconnect between what is assumed and expected from managers and what is communicated to new hires.
Make the case
In "Are Your Star Employees Slipping Away?" Jim Harter and Amy Adkins write, "Workers want to feel connected to their jobs, managers and companies. If those ties are not there, they have more incentive to quit, leaving their organizations to start the costly recruitment, hiring, and onboarding dance all over again."
Reporting data to executives that outline your current measurements around retention, engagement, and time to proficiency (and explaining why they matter) can help create a business case for the importance of effective onboarding.
As you work within your organization to craft a plan for ongoing measurement and reporting results, you can tie these results to numbers that speak the language of executives.
