Onboarding will gain the same status as recruitment within the world of HR. This is because the onboarding period of the newly appointed employee is, in many ways, the most important. This period shapes the employee’s impression of the company, it articulates the tasks and responsibilities, it establishes knowledge about the company culture and it keeps the employee motivated.
Unfortunately, onboarding is still a fairly young branch within HR which causes most companies to dismiss its importance. This is evidently shown in the statistics; one in four employees leave their position within the first year. 22% of them leave before they make it to workday no. 45. For first time applicants who attain a job, 46% search for a new job within just 18 months. These numbers are frightening and goes to show that it would benefit any company to optimise their recruitment strategies.
A well-structured onboarding program can help reduce those discouraging numbers. 9 out of 10 decide whether they want to stay on and keep their position or not within the first year. 69% are more likely to stay in their position if they have experienced an efficient onboarding module.
What is onboarding?
Onboarding is a transition – a change from one state to another. A new job, role, company, culture and colleagues must all be digested and that calls for support. Great onboarding is about controlling the process of change that the new employee inevitably goes through; starting from the moment the contract is signed and trough the first course of employment.
It is about controlling the way the employee experiences the company culture, and it is about creating the appropriate relations. It is also about placing the correct demands for effort, responsibility and results which make the employee bring out their best. Successful onboarding is also found in the simple things such as chocolate or flowers on the desk, a comfy chair, a phone and computer, passwords and welcoming colleagues. To put it in an abstract way, onboarding is about controlling the emotions surrounding the employee when they first meet the company, the job and the culture.
The objective is to make the employee feel like a part of the team and as a key player who is contributing to and liked by the team. If your onboarding is successful, it will increase employee involvement, shorten the time-to-performance and reduce stress. The benefit of investing in onboarding will quickly surpass the cost of either losing employees or employing uncommitted workers.
How Garuda facilitates your onboarding
Garuda can help your onboarding in three ways:
The first option is to use one of our profiling tools, e.g. the BasisProfile, the FocusProfile, the CompetenceProfile or Garuda Logic. They all provide thorough knowledge about the candidates that you have selected for your round of job interviews. What are their main strengths and limitations? How do they communicate? How do you motivate them in the best possible way? How do they prefer to do their job? These are just some of the questions that will be answered when using Garuda’s tools, which then institutes the base of your onboarding procedure.
The second way in which Garuda can help your company’s onboarding is to make use of the CompetenceProfile’s module. The onboarding module will, based on the candidate’s personality traits, generate clear and concise counsel on what the candidates and their closest manager must be aware of to ensure quality onboarding.
The third and final option is based on the two previous ones. Here, a Garuda consultant will be assisting you through the entire hiring process; from recruiting, through onboarding, to employee development and retention – or just through the onboarding process if a customised module is needed.