Making a positive first impression has always been important, whether you’re networking, meeting a prospective client or welcoming a new employee to your team. When it comes to first impressions for new employees, onboarding is incredibly important. Yet onboarding isn’t just about making a good first impression, it’s about creating a clear and well-defined on-ramp for your new hire to make sure they merge into your business culture with as little fraction as possible. A strong onboarding process can prevent some of the common fender benders that new hires experience in their first week, month or quarter. Before we get too far ahead however, let’s look at some onboarding statistics just to make the case for why this is such an important topic.
New Hires are More Likely to Leave Early On
Research shows that giving your employees a positive, attentive onboarding process when they are first hired directly correlates with performance and turnover rates. According to Mark Murphy, CEO of research and leadership training firm, Leadership IQ, 46 percent of new hires leave within the first 18 months at a new job. Additionally, 22 percent of staff turnover occurs within the first 45 days of employment. The best way to solve these high turnover rates early on? Improve the quality of your onboarding.
A Warm Welcome Will Make Them Want to Stay
The Society of Human Resources found that new employees who participated in a structured orientation program were 69 percent more likely to remain at a company up to three years. Additionally, onboarding programs have been shown to increase retention by 25 percent and even improve employee performance by up to 11 percent. An intentional onboarding process that orients new hires and involves them in the company culture will leave a positive lasting impression on them and help them feel at home right away.
Onboarding is a Growing Trend
As more employers learn the hard way that introducing new hires into company culture, policy and standards requires more than one day of training and a packet of information, orientation programs are being given more attention and refinement than ever before. Currently, about 93 percent of organizations use some form of orientation for new employees, whether in person or online. Beyond that, about half of companies that already have onboarding programs in place are working to improve them.
In our next post we’ll provide some questions that you’ll be able to use to take the temperature of your own onboarding program and identify (and address) any weak spots or holes in your process.
Want to dig deeper into onboarding statistics? Here are four great articles to get you started.
