Employee turnover is the bane of HR and payroll. Every time an employee leaves, the departure initiates a cascade of events that cost time and money. For this reason alone, retention is important. It costs employers far less in the long run to retain employees than having to constantly replace them.
How is your company doing? Do you feel like you are losing the turnover war? If so, take a look at whether or not your salaries and benefits are competitive. Also take a look at things like company culture and work environment. If everything seems up to snuff, your turnover problem could be an onboarding problem.
Onboarding is not just a small list of tasks to be completed on a new employee’s first day. It is more than just filling out paperwork and being introduced to other team members. Onboarding is actually a process that takes most companies at least several weeks to complete. Depending on the job, onboarding could go on for months.
Early Turnover Rates
If you do not think a poor onboarding experience has anything to do with high turnover, think again. Statistics show that nearly 40% of all employee turnover occurs within the first six months of employment. Additionally, 20% of total turnover occurs within the first 45 days. Some 23% of all new hires leave their jobs within the first year.
The numbers don’t lie. It is clear that employees who leave their jobs tend to do so rather early in their tenures. Everything from salary and benefits to company culture can be contributing factors. But by and large, onboarding is a significant contributor to new employee dissatisfaction.
Long and Complex Processes
Dallas-based BenefitMall says an emerging trend in HR and payroll for 2020 is less emphasis on process. This is no coincidence. For some companies, onboarding is a long and complex process that requires too much time and effort from both employers and new employees. Much of what is involved in onboarding is either unnecessary or inefficient.
Onboarding can be improved by focusing less on process and more on results. Between new technologies and the modern penchant for personalization, onboarding can become a more streamlined affair that allows for faster completion with less effort.
Too Many Repetitive Tasks
With long and complex onboarding processes come repetitive tasks. For example, consider a job candidate spending a significant amount of time filling out a job application. Upon hire, much of the same information required by the application must now be entered on other forms. New hires can spend hours on the first day just filling out paperwork.
Lack of Training
Another area of poor onboarding performance is training. For a lot of small businesses, training amounts to nothing more than pairing new hires with experienced employees for a couple of days of on-the-job supervision. This hardly constitutes a comprehensive training experience. Furthermore, if an experienced employee has little to no training skills, pairing him or her with a new hire is not going to help much.
Training is an undeniable part of onboarding. As such, new hires who feel they aren’t receiving quality training during the first few weeks or months may quickly determine that their new company is not a good fit.
There is no denying that onboarding is part of recruiting and hiring. You cannot run a company without it. However, inefficient and complex onboarding processes that don’t do enough to get new hires working productively can actually be counterproductive to a company’s hiring and retention efforts. If your company is losing the turnover war, take a good look at your onboarding processes.
