Lean

Onboarding and Orientation…. why is it rarely done well?

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Onboarding, Orientation and Productivity

Onboarding of employees is a crucial step in any business, but is often overlooked or executed poorly.

Unfortunately this step falls under the management and responsibility of HR, but the issues and problems of execution actually lie with the business. Its a crucial period, as during this phase, business expectations are established and values and conduct are learned. From an EVP and candidate engagement POV, you need to get this right to make sure that your employees don’t start their journey with you on the wrong foot. With services like glass door and social media, a disgruntled employee can cause a lot of noise. We’ve discussed the candidate experience, what about the books…hiring someone can cost at least 30% of the employees salary, thats over £8000 in the UK on an average £27000 salary. We need to make sure these people are not only productive but want to stay, and don’t take our IP with them

onboarding

Common issues:

  • No hardware on day 1
  • No logins or access on day 1
  • No planned work for the new starter
  • No understanding of the business, department or goals
  • Hiring Manager doesn’t have enough time for the new starter
  • New starter is not introduced to relevant stakeholders

Onboarding and Orientation tips:

  • Pre-Onboard – Have your new starters read and complete content before Day 1 to ensure they are prepared and ready for work
  • Go Digital – Have a digital/online onboarding process which will free up HR and other resources
  • Metrics – Make sure you measure your on boarding process. How many, how long, which departments, during which times, what happened, who didn’t…. all the usual W’s and H. Only you will know which W’s and H work for your process. If you don’t measure and get a baseline, how can you expect to improve it.
  • Hiring Manage prep – Make sure the Hiring Manager is prepared for the new starter and has introductions and meetings booked in the diary…. not back to back meetings every day in the first week though, they need to come up for air!
  • The hiring manager will also have a lot of work and time to invest; ensure that the manager has booked in enough facetime with the new starter to check in on them. Its important to micro manage a little at the beginning as there will be a lot to learn.
  • Evaluate and communicate – with the groups that have tasks before and after your process, ie HR admin and IT. What do they need from the process and what outputs do they need from you. What do IT need to get thelaptop and log ins set up, what do HR admin need from Recruitment to set them up in the system as early as possible. WhVOCat do the training team need to set up on-boarding modules in the system etc
  • Cost – When you measure, make sure you turn this into a cost and monetary value, to ensure that the business understands the importance of this process. Eg, unproductive time X hourly rate, or increased productivity X usual employee output.
  • VOC – Speak to your employees or at least survey them to get an understanding of their experience
  • Speak to your hiring managers and stakeholders and get their input and experience.
  • BIGGEST TIP – Build your process around what your stakeholders want and calculate a cost saving, profit increase figure to win the business over. If you do this, things will improve…. don’t forget to measure it!

You don’t need a new piece of software or an RPO, fix it yourself!