Onboarding, The Forgotten Step in Hiring

Employers spend hundreds of millions of dollars collectively hiring people every year, but on average, employee turnover is over fifteen percent.

That means that if we assume that every employee lost costs your company $100k to replace and you have fifty employees, this could cost upwards of $750,000 a year for your company in after-tax dollars.
 

The problem is, too many companies are not looking at the cost of losing employees, but only at the cost of hiring them. They do not realize what losing people year after year does to morale, what it does to company culture and how much revenue is lost due to lost productivity, customers leaving with employees, and customers just leaving because they feel that they are no longer being taken care of.  
 

Because they do not feel listened to, understood, and valued and this starts with the on-boarding process that should start before the new employee walks in the door their first day.

If people do not feel welcomed into the company, if they do not feel special and valued from day one, they will start questioning whether they have made the right decision taking this position and start their process of looking for employment all over again.
  

Onboarding is not about getting forms filled out; it is about bringing people into the culture, helping them understand why you do what you do, introducing them to various key people in different departments and helping them to understand how what they do matters to the overall success of the company.
 

Money invested in making sure that their office or workstation is clean and set up for them when they walk in the door is the first step. Having business cards printed up with their name, title, phone number and email is vital and having promotional marketing pieces laid out on their desk, in their size, the first day is a wonderful surprise that will instantly be told on Instagram and other platforms.
 

Make people feel welcome. Provide them with a buddy who can help them learn the nuances of the company. Where people go for lunch and coffee, best places to park, where the gym is that you have a discount at nearby and all the little things that make you great as a company. 

 

Simple, do you want the first thoughts of a new employee to be, maybe I made a mistake accepting this position or do you want them to think that they have joined a company that they are excited to work for?

Ben Baker wants to help you engage, retain, and grow your most valuable asset … your employees. He provides workshops and consulting to enable staff to understand, codify, and communicate their value effectively internally and externally and Retain Employees Through Leadership. The author of  Powerful Personal Brands: A Hands-On Guide to Understanding Yours and the host of the IHEART Radio syndicated YourLIVINGBrand.live show, he writes extensively on leadership, brand, and internal communication strategy. 
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