Do you remember your first day at work? Did your manager show you the ropes, or did you have to figure things out by yourself? Was your desk already set up, or did you wait a couple of days? All these questions are important in onboarding, or the process of orienting new employees for their productivity, retention, and overall growth in the company. The process includes completing documents, introducing the new hire to company culture, setting goals, and monitoring initial performance. It’s a tall order, and a really important one, for a couple of reasons.

First, hiring is expensive. This is the first truth of human resource management. However, companies that invest in hiring but not onboarding are effectively throwing their money away. Employees who have a poor initial experience with the organisation will be searching for another job within three months. A high turnover rate means ineffective management and heavy costs for the company.

Second, retention is profitable. Businesses that have great onboarding processes can expect to nearly double their corporate revenue growth and profit margins. This is because the better the onboarding process, the more invested employees are. Some of the biggest and most profitable companies in the world have the best onboarding processes. Among them are Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google, where new hires are immersed in employee culture by tailoring the experience to their role.

There is a very clear link between onboarding and business success. Still, many companies fail to create good onboarding programs, if any at all. In a survey by ALEX Asks, only 52.3% of respondents said they have an official onboarding program at their company. Whether it’s due to complacency or to the HR team simply having too much on their plate, a poor program means poor overall performance. So how can your company ensure that your onboarding process is a good experience for all your new hires?

Start before Day 1

Onboarding doesn’t begin on the first day of work. In fact, if you do this, then you’re already far too late. A manager or company representative needs to get in touch with the new hire weeks before their scheduled first day. What may seem like a regular day to the rest of the company is a milestone for the new hire. It helps to prepare them mentally and emotionally.

One important thing to get out of the way immediately is the submission of employment requirements. This includes social security numbers and permits, if necessary. Having a checklist of requirements helps, but paperless onboarding through mobile apps is a much faster way of doing it. No more data entry for managers, no more missing files, and progress can be tracked so you know if the new hire has already completed their details.

Companies with an elaborate set of requirements hesitate using software and apps because it limits what they can or cannot ask for. Some onboarding apps allow a custom onboarding system, providing a solution to this problem with a unique drag-and-drop system that lets managers choose which requirements will appear on the employee’s app. Managers are free to add what they need and remove what they don’t. Learn more about custom onboarding apps here.

Read more: Achieving Workforce Success: Becoming a Data-driven Workforce

Pull Out the Stops on Day 1

Making your new employee feel special only requires a few adjustments to your current program. For example, a simple welcome email goes a long way in making a great first impression. This may seem like a common sense concept, but according to ALEX Asks, 49.5% of new hires said their manager didn’t send a welcome message, while 22.8% of respondents didn’t receive a welcome from anyone at all.

Managers should also be available to welcome the new hires and introduce them to the rest of the team. The same ALEX Asks survey revealed that 12.3% of new hires didn’t meet their managers on their first day. While scheduling conflict is sometimes unavoidable, HR teams should work out a good schedule for a new hire to start. Employees are more likely to feel confident and motivated if they get the proper welcome from their manager.

But managers don’t need to do everything themselves. The entire team has a stake in getting the new hire integrated as fast as possible, so onboarding responsibilities can be spread out. As the week progresses, you can schedule one-on-one lunches with the new hire and other employees. They can use the time to discuss serious matters like KPIs, and less serious ones like where the best place to get coffee is. All this contributes to helping the new hire fit in.

Read more:  William Gooderson’s 8 Characteristics of Good Managers

Keep Going! (Don’t Stop at Just 1 Week)

Most employers stop the recruitment process once they’ve got a signed contract, a major blunder that has negative consequences on an employee’s growth and the company’s bottom line. Conventional wisdom suggests 100 days of onboarding is ideal, but one month or less is more realistic for many of today’s companies. A 2017 CareerBuilder survey showed that 21% of companies have a month-long onboarding process, while 25% only take a day. Only 11% are closer to having a 100-day process.

It is unrealistic to expect an employee to be able to fully understand their role and fit in after just one week. Becoming immersed in employee culture takes time and resources, and the entire team needs to get involved. Plan activities for the new hire that will show them, rather than tell them, about what your company stands for. As time progresses, goal setting for the employee and initial monitoring should still be considered part of the onboarding process. Other company initiatives like mentorship can also be incorporated into the onboarding checklist.

While the length of onboarding time may differ across companies, the principles remain the same: ensure retention and productivity in the most efficient way possible. It may seem like a tall order to create a stellar onboarding process, but it helps to invest in a workforce management system that handles some of the work for you. That way, you can save money on tedious tasks, and allocate more resources into developing the newest member of your workforce.

Curious to know more about a workforce management system that provides custom onboarding? Book your free demo today.