NEW EMPLOYEE ONBOARDING

© ASTD DBA the Association for Talent

Development (ATD)

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Onboarding is increasingly seen as a cornerstone of integrated talent management and a launching pad for successful employee engagement and development initiatives. The ATD research report

Onboard, Engage, and Develop: How Organizations Improve Effectiveness found that 91 percent of the study’s more than 700 respondents thought that onboarding was currently important to their organization, and 96 percent thought it would be important to their organization in the next five years.

This information aligns with SHRM and Globoforce’s findings in their survey Influencing Workplace Culture Through Employee Recognition and Other Efforts, which found that employee turnover and retention are the top challenges faced by human resources professionals. In 2016, 46 percent of respondents named this as their top workforce management challenge, compared to only 25 percent who listed this as a top challenge in 2012.

Clearly employee turnover and retention is an increasingly major challenge for HR. Given that employees often make their decisions about whether to stay with a company for the long term during their first few weeks of employment, it’s no surprise that onboarding has grown in importance as well.

While HR and talent development professionals may understand onboarding’s importance, they often still have questions about what onboarding is, how long it should last, what components it should include, and who should be responsible for it.

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WHAT IS ONBOARDING?

Onboarding is the process through which organizations equip new employees with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed at their jobs. Unlike new employee orientation, which is usually an isolated, single-day event, the onboarding process should start as soon as the candidate accepts the job and continue through the new employee’s first year.

Onboarding is an essential component of an organization’s talent acquisition, development, and retention strategy. Research conducted by the Wynhurst Group and presented to SHRM in April 2007 found that nearly a quarter (22 percent) of new hires quit after only 45 days in their new role, and 4 percent leave after a disastrous first day. In their work with PepsiAmericas, O.C. Tanner (2008) found that a negative onboarding experience resulted in more than two-thirds of new hires leaving the company in less than three years. Of those who left, almost half did so within their first 12 months. This is concerning because research from Bersin by Deloitte conducted in 2014 found that the cost of losing an employee in the first year is at least three times that employee’s salary.

Conversely, positive onboarding experiences are crucial in helping employees feel truly invested in their new roles, thereby improving retention and reducing the costs associated with turnover. According to BambooHR’s May 2018 report The New Definitive Guide to Onboarding, employees who felt their onboarding experience was effective were over 29 times more likely to feel satisfied with their jobs. In addition to building job-related skills, a strong onboarding program helps employees become familiar with their new organization’s culture and norms.

In their November 2017 TD at Work “Onboarding for Business Success,” George Bradt and Mary Vonnegut propose seeing onboarding as a time of opportunity. Some of these opportunities are for the new employee—to have conversations and establish good relationships with important stakeholders, and to ensure these stakeholders are aligned about the major responsibilities the new employee will be taking on. Some of these opportunities involve benefits to the organization itself.

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Employees can use the changes associated with onboarding a new employee as an impetus to break down organizational barriers and bring people together across silos. Onboarding can also help teams reinvent themselves, adjusting ways of working and communicating together and rethinking workplace responsibilities. Finally, onboarding provides a valuable opportunity to see the organization through the new employee’s eyes and learn from their perspective.

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WHAT ARE THE MAJOR COMPONENTS OF ONBOARDING?

There are a variety of onboarding frameworks that divide onboarding into different parts. In their book Effective Onboarding (ATD 2018), Norma Dávila and Wanda Piña-Ramírez outline one framework that divides onboarding into three major components:

Pre-onboarding. This component of onboarding comprises all the activities that take place before the new employee receives the employment offer. This includes the recruitment and selection process. It can also include communicating with the new employee prior to their arrival so they know what to expect; announcing the new employee’s arrival within the organization; and completing paperwork related to the hiring process.

General onboarding. This stage of onboarding is when employees start to form an emotional connection with the organization. It is also when new employees are introduced to written and unwritten cultural rules that exist within every organization. Companies should ensure that their internal and external brands are aligned, and that the organizational culture presented to the new employee during onboarding is not a departure from that presented during the hiring process.

Role-specific onboarding. This stage of onboarding provides an employee with the opportunity to assimilate into their department’s culture and master their new role. General and tailored learning experiences help employees acquire specific technical skills and competencies related to their new role. Employees can observe the members of their team to learn how people communicate and interact with one another.

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There are other experts who structure onboarding based on what the employee is learning. In his December 2018 article for the Harvard Business Review entitled “To Retain New Hires, Spend More Time Onboarding Them,” Ron Carucci divided onboarding into organizational onboarding (helping employees learn the organization’s history and culture as well as organizational procedures), technical onboarding (helping them learn how to do their new job), and social onboarding (helping them acclimate to their new team and its social dynamics).

INFOGRAPHIC

Adventures in OnboardingCreating a Competitive Advantage Through Workplace Culture

Click to Learn More

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SUCCESSFUL ONBOARDING EXAMPLES

There are several companies known for their effective onboarding practices. For example, LinkedIn has a one-month onboarding program that includes a day one orientation with icebreakers and general learning about company culture, followed by a new employee road map. Twitter’s onboarding process has 75 steps with handoffs between recruiting, HR, IT, and facilities. Specific components include breakfast with the CEO, a new hire happy hour with senior leadership, and opportunities for the new employees to provide feedback about the process.

ATD’s onboarding research report also found that New York Community Bank has a strong onboarding program. Their talent development team created an onboarding program for retail-banking employees at all levels. They offered frequent training sessions at multiple locations to make it easy for employees to receive the training they needed. Their program was eight days long, with the first day consisting of a general introduction to the company from HR, followed by seven days of training that included content on the history of banking and NYCB, branch-opening procedures, product training, sales and services, and check fraud.

At the end of this eight-day program, new employees were given access to an online discussion board for the next 90 days where they could communicate and share information with other new employees (NYCB has since made this discussion board open to all employees). As a result of the program, onboarding for retail-banking employees began on their first day instead of sometime during their first 30 days on the job. Employees trained under the new program have been able to perform their job duties at a pace that is 74 percent faster than those trained under the previous program.

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WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR ONBOARDING?

Onboard, Engage, and Develop: How Organizations Improve Effectiveness asked talent development professionals about their role in job- and function-specific onboarding as well as general organizational onboarding. The report found that job- or function-specific onboarding was owned or co-owned by talent development in 56 percent of organizations and that talent development was a participant in the onboarding process in 23 percent of organizations. Over three quarters of talent development professionals reported owning or co-owning general organizational onboarding that focuses on company values, culture, history, and organization-wide policies.

Effective onboarding needs to be coordinated between HR, managers, and the new employees themselves. The model “Everyone Has a Role” breaks out each person’s onboarding responsibilities at different checkpoints throughout the onboarding process: before the employee’s first day; on their first day; and at 90-day, six-month, and 12-month checkpoints throughout the employee’s first year.

Job or function-specific onboarding

General organizationonboarding

Owner Co-Owner Participant

Not involved; This area exists formally

Not involved; This area doesn’t formally exist

14% 42% 23% 14% 7%

7% 3%41%35% 16%

What is talent development’s role in each of the following areas?

ROLE OF TALENT DEVELOPMENT IN ONBOARDING

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For example, before a new employee starts, HR might be responsible for sending the offer letter, providing relocation information if applicable, and sending other items such as a welcome card or company swag. The new employee’s manager might be responsible for contacting IT to make sure the new employee has a computer and other equipment on their first day, preparing the employee’s workstation, and checking in with the employee as needed. The new employee might be responsible for checking in if they have unanswered questions and notifying their new employer if any changes occur for them before their start date.

On the employee’s first day, HR might be responsible for coordinating the employee’s benefits paperwork, going through the employee handbook with them, and conducting the organizational orientation session. The manager would be responsible for taking the employee to lunch, giving the employee a tour of the office, and explaining the training plan for the new position. The new employee would be responsible for creating an intranet profile and completing their benefits paperwork.

Taking this role-specific approach to onboarding makes the task of onboarding feel more manageable, and also serves as a reminder that acclimating an employee to their new role and organization is a team effort.

WHO Pre-Day Day 1 90 Days 6 Months 1 Year

Post-Day 1

Human Resources

Manager/Supervisor

Employee

ONBOARDING TIMELINE AND RESPONSIBILITIES

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WHAT MAKES ONBOARDING EFFECTIVE?

A common theme in onboarding effectiveness is to move it beyond “one and done” onboarding that consists only of an orientation session during the employee’s first day or two. Many practitioners agreed that to improve onboarding effectiveness, programs should last between three months and a full year.

Another important component of effective onboarding is senior leader involvement. Onboard, Engage, and Develop: How Organizations Improve Effectiveness found that talent development professionals thought getting senior leadership involved in onboarding would help improve onboarding’s effectiveness. Only 56 percent of respondents believed their organization’s senior business leaders saw value in onboarding programs. Additionally, only 20 percent of respondents said their senior leaders were directly involved in onboarding. This low level of involvement represents a big opportunity for organizations; the more senior leaders are involved in onboarding programs, the more effective these programs are.

Additional research conducted in 2012 by Jason Sturges at a biotech company in Salt Lake City found that the three things employees most value during onboarding are early and consistent communication, clear expectations, and appropriate training. The researcher arrived at this finding by comparing employees’ experiences with three different types of onboarding programs. The first was a 30- to 60-minute orientation from HR that focused on benefits paperwork and policy reviews. The second was a two-day orientation with socialization elements and micro-courses on becoming successful employees. The third was a condensed one-day version without the socialization elements and with fewer micro-courses.

This research found that employees preferred the second and third iterations over the first one. While the researchers had expected this finding, they were surprised by an additional finding: There was no statistical difference between employees’ satisfaction with version 2 and version 3, even though version 3 was shorter and did not include socialization. This showed that the common elements between versions 2 and 3—communication, clear expectations, and training—are the ones most critical in making onboarding effective.

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EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF ONBOARDING

ATD’s onboarding research report found that 27 percent of talent development professionals evaluate their onboarding programs using either the Kirkpatrick or the Phillips levels of evaluation. Of those who were using one of these evaluation methods, only 25 percent thought their program measurement efforts were highly effective, while 29 percent thought that their organization’s measurement efforts were not effective or effective only to a small extent. Clearly there is room for improvement.

In their December 2018 TD magazine article “Let’s Talk About Onboarding Metrics,” Dávila and Piña-Ramírez discuss the importance of being clear about what you want to measure, why, and for whom before starting the process. What you choose to measure should be related to the goal of the onboarding program. For example, if your goal is to improve employee retention, then employee turnover would be an appropriate metric. If the goal is employee engagement, the rate of employer referrals might be a good metric.

Dávila and Piña-Ramírez list a number of short- and long-term metrics organizations can use to help measure onboarding’s effectiveness and suggest establishing checkpoints to measure impact after program milestones, such as the completion of a day one orientation session, at the end of the general onboarding program, and at 30, 60, 90, and 180 days of the new employee’s tenure.

SHORT-TERM METRICS • Selection and recruitment costs per employee• Terminations at 90 and 180 days• Total cost of new hires• Participant satisfaction with the onboarding program• Evaluations of program components, such as

sessions within the general orientation, using Kirkpatrick’s model at the reaction and learning levels

• Onboarding participants’ impressions of the organization

• Average time spent in online onboarding content• Participant ratings of program quality, content, and

relevance of online onboarding• Completion rate of online onboarding walk-throughs

or courses• User-friendliness ratings of the online onboarding

program• On-the-job application of specific online onboarding

content• New-employee and new-to-role employee survey

scores and feedback

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• Attend OrgDev 2019.

• Check out our new Onboarding Certificate.

• Read Effective Onboarding from ATD’s What Works in Talent Development series.

LONG-TERM METRICS • Employee cultural fit of those who stay versus those

who leave• Employee retention, including resignations and

terminations• Participant time to proficiency versus team average• Results of manager stay interviews after 90 and

180 days focused on how onboarding contributed to the program participant’s decision to remain at the organization

• Turnover rate• Cost of employee turnover

• Changes in number of employee candidate referrals who receive offers

• Employee productivity• New-employee engagement• Role-related business outcomes, such as customer

claims, product conversion rates, and quality issues• Results of exit interviews among employees who

leave the organization focused on whether their onboarding experience prepared them for their roles

• 360-degree assessments• Program ROI

RESOURCES