Editor’s Note: It’s a TLNT holiday tradition to count down the most popular posts of the year. This is No. 24. Our regular content will return on Monday.
We all remember that feeling you get before the first day of school — nervous, excited, and very concerned over which outfit to wear. For new students, there is also the added pressure of finding your way around, meeting your teachers, and making friends.
The first day of school can be rough, but thankfully we’re all adults now and don’t have to go through that again. Or do we? The answer is yes.
Onboarding at a new job is the adult equivalent of the first day of school, and it can be just as nerve-wracking for us grown-ups.
Many of us picture it as a necessary evil, a day spent inside a training room filling out forms and watching corporate videos. That’s why organizations are taking a new approach toward onboarding, and realizing its potential to create more engaged employees along the way.
According to a study by Impact Instruction Group, “Onboarding has become a strategic priority for a growing number of companies for 2013 and beyond.” They credit recent technology advances, a more geographically dispersed employee population, and strong competition for talent as the catalysts for the shift in perception.
Moreover, they found that:
So what’s wrong with these onboarding programs?
Allied HRIQ conducted a recruitment study in 2012 and found that 60 percent of companies don’t set any milestones or goals for new hires, 25 percent don’t include any kind of training, and almost 30 percent of companies report that it takes a year or longer for new hires to reach full productivity.
Companies are realizing that by putting a little more effort into engaging employees early on, they get better returns, simple as that.
However companies can engage and hold the attention of new hires, it’s being tried somewhere.
Updating your onboarding initiative doesn’t have to be difficult either. Microsoft, which has an entire HR team devoted to keeping their onboarding program up-to-date, came up with these wonderfully simple rules that everyone should take to heart:
In a recent SHRM study authored by Talya N. Bauer, she described four elements every onboarding program must have, dubbed the “Four C’s”:
If you can achieve all of these things in a fun, engaging way, you’re already way ahead. Onboarding is, at its core, a human connection.
The right tools only get you so far. There has to be a commitment from everyone in the organization to make new employees feel welcome, and that first connection is the most important.
This was originally published on the Michael C. Fina blog.
