Recruitment can be particularly stressful for employers and employees, despite both parties aiming to make the process as seamless as possible.
It can also be challenging to ensure working relationships start off on the right foot.
The best way to guarantee successful role transitions is to have a program in place to initiate new recruits.
Onboarding is an effective way of ensuring new employees have a productive and sustained period of employment.
In the early stages of recruitment, it is crucial to recognise and optimise the value onboarding can bring to enhancing employee engagement, and helping organisational success.
Here are two ways HR managers should be assessing how onboarding can futureproof their business.
1. Onboarding can help prioritise the stages of the recruitment process
The cost of recruiting, hiring and training new employees can be expensive, so it’s crucial for businesses to get this process right and started as soon as possible. Orientation can also be a time-consuming endeavour, but new recruits can help ease this burden by doing much of the preparation work before their first day.
For example, ensuring the organisation’s website has adequate information for potential recruits can extend the orientation process to interviewees. They can use this information to help familiarise themselves with the organisation, which can then benefit them in later stages of the interview process.
Shifting orientation responsibilities can help organisations focus their efforts on ensuring new hires succeed, which is critical considering only 30% of first-year employees at laggard organisations were retained, according to a global study by Aberdeen Group.
Aberdeen Group also found that the lack of organisations with a formal onboarding process in place (37%) was attributed to the high number of failed hires.
Onboarding can make a huge difference to this early-stage turnover by ensuring the workplace is equipped for new arrivals.
New employees starting their first day would be disenfranchised by a disorganised, chaotic orientation period, and leave a negative lasting impression of the organisation.
Presenting a professional (but still an accessible and enjoyable) working environment is the ideal kick-off to a career at your organisation.
2. Automated onboarding technology can enable new hires to make stronger impacts faster
Use of the latest technologies can help accelerate the process of complex procedures, and deliver further value from the onboarding process.
Getting new employees settled requires a large amount of effort and logistical work; from setting up access to computer systems and email accounts, to going through workplace health and safety policies and procedures.
These steps in the process are not always the most efficient, and there is likely to be little variation between recruits at this early stage of onboarding.
Solutions such as automation technologies can help improve efficiency of these steps, and ensure compliance from each and every new hire.
Once employees have progressed through the automated stage of onboarding, the important face-to-face element of the process can begin. Beyond compliance, a seamless onboarding process also sets the stage for a successful, engaged relationship.
Onboarding technology is designed with the goal of improving the experience and retention of new employees in your organisation, by making the onboarding process as smooth as possible.
People analytics can also be used beyond the onboarding process to measure impact on the business and ensure continual improvement.
Karen Evans is the Managing Director of Acendre
Source: L&D
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