Boost Talent Retention with a Scalable Onboarding Program

Talent Management matters because, on average, companies spend over one-third of revenue on employee salaries and benefits.

The fierce competition to attract and retain skilled professionals in the technology and engineering sector has never been more significant. According to a recent study from Microsoft, 41% of global workers are considering leaving their employer within the next 12 months, with 53% saying they are more likely to prioritise their health and wellbeing now than before the pandemic. This means that decision-makers need to keep rethinking the working environment.

COVID-19 changed the way we work and the way we think about work. The pandemic prompted a massive movement toward remote work, leading many companies to embrace a new hybrid environment quickly. The shift to hybrid work, where appropriate, was inevitable. While it carries beneficial opportunities to prioritise people’s skills over their geography, it creates new challenges for attracting and retaining talent. The drive for all businesses is to attract, develop, engage, and retain the top talent that fits the company’s culture and drives a business strategy forward to meet the objectives and targets.

Most effective businesses know how to get and keep the talent required. They think of talent as an asset they build and develop to create a unique advantage that their competition cannot duplicate. Their talent management foundations often fall into three key areas:

• Hire Right
• Encourage and Provide Opportunities for Learning and Growth
• Plan Ahead

Hire Right - Those less successful businesses often neglect employee onboarding with poor selection and onboarding practices costing millions in recruitment and employer brand value. A business is ‘only as good as its employees, and successful onboarding can create huge opportunities when companies ‘get it right’.

In the competitive jobs market, the war for talent is not won when a candidate accepts a job offer. According to the Harvard Business Review, 33% of new hires look for a new job within their first six months in a new position. The exit of new hires can be explained by the fact that some organisations are not investing enough resources in the onboarding process. Further research highlighted only 12% of people felt that their organisation was successful at employee onboarding, even though excellent employee onboarding could see 69% of employees stay with a company for three or more years.

Onboarding is the process of orientating new employees so they are fully prepared with the necessary knowledge and skills to become a valuable part of the business aiding overall employee retention. The process focuses on helping employees acclimate to their new workplace in a timely fashion and bringing them ‘on board’ regarding company culture, understanding of job function, and overall comfort level. According to SHRM, whether it is one day or ninety days, an engaging onboarding program can lead to 91% retention of employees through to the first year. Strategic onboarding adopts a standardised, consistent, and structured approach that goes beyond the first few days of orientation. It can provide organisations with higher rates of employee engagement, performance, and retention acts as a catalyst for employee satisfaction, helping to prevent early attrition.

The right onboarding process and experience determine how employees establish an important connection with a business. This experience, in turn, strongly influences an employee’s decision to stay with a company or to seek career opportunities elsewhere. An effective onboarding experience should be strategic, structured, connected to the employee’s company career, and designed with specific outcomes in mind. Redline’s Onboarding Toolkit is full of essential resources for every stage of the new hire process.

A scalable Onboarding process should focus on:

Build Meaningful Employee Relationships - There are many reasons someone might stay at a company, but employee retention is primarily driven by the motivation to contribute to the company’s purpose and culture.

So why do employees stay? The simple answer is often ’inertia’. Employees tend to remain with a company until some force causes them to leave. Some factors often force an individual to leave a business.

An employee’s inertia is strengthened or weakened by the degree of compatibility between their own work ethic and the values for which the company stands. The employee’s ethic derives from their own values and the actual conditions encountered on the job. These may include job satisfaction, company culture - the degree of comfort an individual employee feels within it.

This is why onboarding is important to build meaningful relationships with employees. It is important to highlight the role an employee will play within the company and how they will contribute to the overall purpose. This creates a bond between employer and employee and builds a team mentality between colleagues.

Put Compliance on Autopilot - There is much compliance to handle when onboarding a new employee, which should be structured as much as possible. Doing so gives a business the time and resources to prioritise meaningful relationships rather than legal and compliance matters.

Customise onboarding based on Location and Role – It is essential to have an onboarding program that can be scaled for different needs. This means being able to customise it depending on the employee’s location and role. Using additional workflows allows all areas of onboarding to be changed to suit the individual employee, such as highlighting any country or region-dependent benefits.

Utilise Remote Onboarding - If you are hiring employees who will be working remotely or in a hybrid way, a remote onboarding program may be the solution. Post pandemic, onboarding employees rely on their managers more than they did beforehand, and those working in remote positions might need extra onboarding support. Optimising remote onboarding means creating relevant work policies, creating touch points and encouraging regular check-ins between team members.

Personalise Onboarding Using Recruitment Data - The recruitment process should have already highlighted potential skills gaps, so additional training should already be planned as part of the onboarding process.

Collect Employee Feedback - Collecting data and feedback from employees during and after the onboarding process is essential, as this will assist with process improvements and enhance future experiences. The goal of onboarding is to connect employees to success. Its impact can be felt throughout the employee lifecycle - from the first touch. The benefits of strong onboarding programs include:

• Reduced turnover and overall hiring costs
• Reduced costs associated with learning and development
• Saving co-workers and supervisors in training new employees
• Strengthened morale

The goals of effective onboarding are to help the new hire feel comfortable in the workplace, earn their commitment to the organisation and help them start producing and contributing to the cause. If you would like more, advice, tips, inspiration or to discuss a knowledge-led recruitment approach, contact us on 01582 450054 or email info@RedlineGroup.com.

Redline Group - the UK’s most trusted Engineering, Electronics and High Technology recruitment specialist for professional Contract, Permanent and Executive positions.