Employee onboarding is the process of setting up new hires within your organization. It can sound fairly straightforward – and is, when in expert hands.
But don’t mistake straightforward for unimportant. Again and again, studies show that strong onboarding is one of the most certain ways to ensure not only an employee’s job satisfaction, but their job performance during their time with your organization. Consider these powerful numbers that illustrate employee onboarding benefits:
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Effective onboarding can improve employee retention and productivity by an astounding 52% and 60%, respectively.[1]
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69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they have a positive onboarding experience.[2]
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70% of employees who like their jobs had a streamlined onboarding experience.[3]
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While only 12% of employees feel their company did a great job with onboarding, those employees were nearly three times as likely to say they have the best possible job.[4]
Leading brands such as Zappos, Netflix, and Square are known for their robust onboarding. However, strong onboarding isn’t exclusive to multimillion-dollar companies. In fact, we see onboarding as a relatively economical way to level up and poise your business for success, no matter your size or current market share.
Of course, creating a strong employee onboarding process starts by understanding exactly what new employee onboarding entails.
The HR Onboarding Process for New Employees
Onboarding typically starts when a candidate returns a signed offer letter. Most job offers are contingent upon the successful completion of applicable pre-employment screenings, which are timely and therefore need to be kicked off right away. Pre-employment screenings can include background and credit checks, child abuse clearances, FBI fingerprinting, drug screening, and physicals.
Next comes onboarding paperwork, which is ideally organized, accessible, and completed within a company’s human resources information system (HRIS). Contents and processes can include:
- A welcome letter outlining the forms and paperwork at hand, with clear instructions for completing and returning them
- An employee information form for collecting essentials such as demographic information and emergency contact information
- Form I-9 Employee Eligibility Verification
- Form W-4, an employee’s withholding certificate
- Applicable state and local tax forms
- Direct deposit authorization form, if applicable
- Your company’s employee handbook and any necessary addendums based on the state(s) in which the company and employee are based
- Employee handbook acknowledgement form
- Any additional polices and documents not included in the employee handbook but relevant to the employee
- State required disclosures, if applicable
- E-verify, if applicable
- Employee benefits information, enrollment forms, and required distribution, if applicable (if there’s a waiting period for benefits, these might be reviewed closer to the date of eligibility)
“What Could Go Wrong?”
While many onboarding checklist items are relatively objective, how they’re executed is where companies can miss the mark. Remember, onboarding is your new hire’s first sense of life as an employee of your organization. You don’t get a second chance to make this first impression. Outside of a smooth process that demonstrates organization and professionalism (the bare minimum), onboarding is your chance to show a level of care, compassion, and support that makes new hires feel valued and confident in their decision to accept a job with your organization. One recent survey found that only 52% of new hires feel satisfied with their onboarding process; 32% found it confusing and 22% said it was disorganized. This sobering fact is the perfect transition to common mistakes to avoid when onboarding new hires:
- Duplicate requests. Take all measures to ensure that a new hire isn’t asked the same things twice.
- Unclear or conflicting direction. Paperwork can be overwhelming. Look at yours with fresh eyes. Is the process for accessing, completing, and returning it straightforward? Are forms themselves polished, clear, and compatible with one another? Does the new hire have login information needed to access necessary information and forms?
- Lack of humanity. Background and credit checks, physicals, and drug screenings in particular can make a new hire feel vulnerable, even when they check out. Lead with care and kindness. It bears repeating: the tone you set during onboarding is your new hire’s first impression of how your company treats its employees.
- Lack of compliance. Federal, state, and local employee laws and taxes can be complex. Avoid complications and penalties by making sure onboarding is in the hands of a true expert who can ensure legal compliance from start to finish.
Is Orientation Part of Onboarding?
Orientation is the process of formally acclimating a new hire to the culture, community, and expectations of the organization and their new role. It is typically viewed as a separate process from onboarding; however, a strong and clear handoff between onboarding and orientation is critical.
During the onboarding process, be sure to let a new employee know what’s to come. Communicate with all necessary internal contacts to confidently explain to your new hire:
- How orientation will be structured
- How long it will last
- What it entails. Introductions, tours, shadowing, mentorships, and training (state-required and industry-required in addition to high-level company training and role-specific training) are all crucial building blocks of orientation.
Keep in mind, too: Orientation is a great opportunity for HR to spearhead interdepartmental collaboration among human resources, high-level management and ownership, the employee’s direct supervisor, and other employees – those who have been identified as standouts and those who will work closely with the new hire. When these individuals convene, a new hire gets a much broader sense of names and faces as well as expectations, and can see more clearly how their role factors into larger operations and objectives. New hire buy-in is especially boosted when top-level leadership takes the time to participate in their orientation.
Ready to ensure compliance and professionalism across all aspects of your employee onboarding, setting up your new hires for success? Experience the power of myHR Partner. Our expert team goes to great lengths and takes great pride in creating a fully compliant onboarding process that is authentic to your organization, just like we did for our longtime client, Keystone Precision Solutions.
Using your systems of choice and aligning with your unique culture and objectives, we infuse your new hire onboarding process with compliance, expertise, and consistency – items crucial not only to onboarding, but to larger company success.
Reach out today for a complimentary myHR Partner consultation.
[1] https://www.devlinpeck.com/content/employee-onboarding-statistics#:~:text=Effective%20onboarding%20can%20improve%20employee,52%25%20and%2060%25%2C%20respectively&text=A%20strong%20onboarding%20framework%20improves,satisfaction%20also%20improves%20by%2053%25.
[2] https://www.appical.com/resources/blog/employee-onboarding-statistics#:~:text=On%20the%20positive%20side%2C%20organizations,%25%20by%202024%20(At&t).
[3] https://www.google.com/search?q=employee+onboarding+statistics&sca_esv=6002dbc0d746c933&source=hp&ei=SBE-Z9q7KIyqptQPx7LrgAY&iflsig=AL9hbdgAAAAAZz4fWMW6fcEIrGa4n030EZxmajXSAA03&ved=0ahUKEwja
[4] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/247172/problems-onboarding-program.aspx
