Onboarding new employees effectively is critical as the recruitment process is among some of the most complex processes any business has.
AN EFFECTIVE ONBOARDING PROCESS IS CRITICAL TO ENSURE POST-HIRE VALUE
A recent 2013 study published by the CIPD found that more than 20% of UK and Irish employees experience some type of career transition each year. There has been a significant upshot in market activity since 2012 across chiefly the IT, financial and pharma industries. In Fortune 500 companies alone, about 500,000 managers take on new roles each year. What is hugely interesting is that half of all senior outside hires fail within 18 months in a new position, according to the CIPD study.
RECRUITMENT SHOULD BE ONGOING
The recruitment process is complex, the practice does not end at finding the perfect candidate for the role, recruitment should be ongoing, starting at sourcing the perfect candidate and ending when that perfect candidate is 100% embedded into the organisation through effective onboarding programs. The recruitment process requires solid input from all concerned stakeholders. It requires deep assimilation of recruiters/agencies (when applicable of course) with HR or talent management functions, hiring managers, senior management, and candidates. Failure to preserve these relations across the board often results in misaligned recruiting and poor employee relations.
FAILED ONBOARDING OF EMPLOYEES CAN HAVE SIGNIFICANT IMPLICATIONS
The implications for a failed on-boarded employee can be significant from a direct and indirect perspective. Lost interviewer hours, wasted internal recruitment resources, training costs, and paid invoices to recruitment agencies are just some of the direct costs organisations endure when hiring an employee. On the other hand having to refill the role (lost production, advertising the advert), on some occasions brand damage limitation are just some indirect costs. A failed or poor employee onboarding is a lose-lose situation for all concerned parties.
Hiring the right employees the first time round can aid the onboarding changes of success as replacements and rehiring can be costly. See here the REAL Cost Of A Bad Hire.
ONBOARDING NEW EMPLOYEES IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT
Investing resources in the onboarding process is just as important as investing in recruitment, successful onboarding has a significant positive effect on financial and operational performance. Having formal onboarding practices in place coupled with direct and constant communication between HR, managers and the employee is key to embedding an employee and getting a quicker ROI. Below are three short steps or guidelines in developing a value adding onboarding program;
1: Continual Engagement
HR or the talent team needs to endeavor to maintain contact with the employee after they have started with the business in order to create a friendly, supportive and personal approach, investing in retention should be at the forefront of priorities.
2: Open Communication Channels
Open and effective avenues of communication are critically important with the managers you are hiring for throughout the process, from recruitment to on-boarding. Determining their future recruitment plans, what went wrong or right in previous processes and their expectations of your role are what need to be established. This will form parts of the ingredients that make an excellent on-boarding program, make it clear your involvement is beneficial for them.
3: Reporting
Backing up your onboarding program with tangible data will add serious weight to it; surveying new hires satisfaction levels, social integration, collaboration, and engagement levels is crucial. Periodical reporting (say every 1,3,6, 9 months) is important also to ensure valid and consistent data. Improving the onboarding program will in turn help to sustain a better retention rate.
A FORMAL ONBOARDING PROGRAMME IS WORTH IT’S WEIGHT IN GOLD
It is clear that recruitment is a complex, costly and time consuming process, not only does the business consume a great deal of internal resources, the potential effects of not successfully onboarding a candidate can paint a negative public image of the company causing perhaps brand damage through the candidate talking about their negative experience to colleagues, friends and family. As such, investing in a formal onboarding programme will hold it’s weight in gold and prove to be a real strategic bow in the arsenal of the HR professional.
