Employee Onboarding : Is it necessary for all companies?

Understand the importance of employee onboarding

It was Neha’s first day at work. She reached office in time, met the HR contact person, signed some papers and was taken to her workstation. So far so good, but after that… She looked here and there in despair because she didn’t know how to log in to her system. She didn’t know the people sitting around her. Her supervisor was nowhere and she had no idea about what she was expected to do on her first day. Half a day is passed; she was sitting idly.

She then remembered to get some photocopies of her certificates and documents she was required to submit to the HR department. She asked a stranger for help with the printer, only to later discover that the stranger was the CFO. She felt highly embarrassed!

This is the story from the perspective of a new employee; a common scenario for new hires, if you do not invest in employee onboarding. Even if you own a small company, it is important that a new employee is properly introduced to the company through an effective new hire orientation process. Effective employee onboarding programs may be time consuming but they help in retaining employees.

According to a survey, 90% of the employees who leave the organization decide to leave the organization in the first six months of their employment. Hiring new employees is three time costlier than retaining old employees. Spending time and money on on boarding to retain employees is substantially less expensive compared to hiring new talent within a year again.

Effective employee onboarding suggests that the organization is committed and fully prepared to put new hires in their roles effectively. A new hire orientation process also allows new hires to feel comfortable, valued, supported and welcomed in the organization, which leads to increased employee engagement, increased productivity and high performance results. When employees connect to the organization, they want to do good work and as a result, add value to the organization.

Few Tips to make Employee onboarding Simple and Effective

• – Make new hire orientation personal for each employee by making it more interactive rather than full of paper work. Consider assigning mentors to each new employee who can guide them with their roles and responsibilities and make them feel the culture of your organization.
• – Each company offers a range of benefits and perks to its employee. The eligibility of these perks in addition to the company’s rules, regulations and policies should be made available on the company’s intranet site. This allows easy accessibility of these important documents to new hires. Verbal communication is sometimes left unheard and also cannot be referred again, if required.
• – Internet is the most powerful tool that you can use to allow convenient employee onboarding in your company. You can use a web based application to standardize, streamline and track each step of the on boarding process in your organization. The web based on boarding applications allow paperless onboarding, save time, ensure error free processes and also reduce administrative overhead.

Try Empxtrack Onboarding module to enhance the employee onboarding experience in your company with e-form submissions that are automatically routed to HR for joining and orientation purposes.

View our presentation on employee onboarding.