Bersin Research Discovers Utility of Strategic Onboarding in Employee Success
“The business case is strong for software that can get an employee productive quickly while bringing that employee into the cultural fold with the goals of increased engagement and retention,” said Katherine Jones, Ph.D., vice president at Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP. Jones leads research on human capital management technologies for the firm. “Research tells us that 4 percent of new employees leave a job after a disastrous first day and 22 percent of staff turnovers occur in the first 45 days of employment. These losses can add up, given estimates that losing an employee in the first year costs at least three times that employee’s salary.”
The industry study provides an overview of onboarding functionality as it resides in hiring management systems today. It also shows that in organizations of any size, there are four starting guidelines:
- Onboarding programs should be customized for various job roles and generational groups. Those solutions providing strategic onboarding include employee-specific and customized onboarding task lists.
- Providing a consistent experience and messaging throughout the entire organization is equally crucial. Lack of consistency can lead to divergent new hire views of an organization’s culture, mission, and values.
- Automation is critical to both the efficiency and consistency necessary for successful onboarding programs. Virtual onboarding allows new hires across the enterprise to have a uniform and timely introduction to the company.
- To optimize new employee engagement, onboarding should begin immediately upon the candidate’s acceptance of the job and last as long as it takes for the new hire to become integrated in the culture and productive on the job.