A study by the Wynhurst Group found that nearly one-quarter of staff turnover occurs within the first 45 days of employment. Losing any employee can be expensive, but losing a new employee can be particularly costly because your business has not had time to benefit from his or her skills. It takes around eight months for the typical new employee to reach full productivity.
This is an important reason that it’s essential to start things out right with your new employees. Dropping the ball during the employee onboarding process could mean the difference between a satisfied employee who stays around for a long time, and one who is looking for the first opportunity to work elsewhere.
Today, it’s likely that many of your new hires are young adults of the Millennial generation. Almost half of Millennials think the employee onboarding process could stand improvement. Feedback is important to all new employees, and Millennials in particular want feedback to come more often than their quarterly or annual review. Take a look at your onboarding process and assess how it could be better. Following are 4 suggestions for improving the onboarding process for your new Millennial workers.
1. Don’t Wait Until They Arrive to Begin the Onboarding Process
Many companies can begin the onboarding process between the time a new hire accepts a position and his or her first day at work. A solid “pre-join” program can include online training modules, presentation of company information and history, and the opportunity for new hires to fill out some of the paperwork involved with joining a company’s workforce. The less actual paper you use for this, the better. Millennials are used to accomplishing tasks online and will appreciate being able to fill out multiple human resources forms online rather than on paper. Electronic forms are also less error-prone and you can arrange them into electronic workflows so that information entered once populates multiple forms and fields automatically.
2. Use Video to Introduce Geographically Distributed Team Members
Geographical location is not as big a factor in work team composition as it used to be. It’s not unusual for a project or work team to be scattered across different cities, states, or even countries. Online videos introducing key team members can save time on the part of team leaders, cut down on travel requirements, and help new hires put faces with names and get to know their new colleagues. Depending on company policy and what your new employee will be working on, these “get to know you” videos could be included as part of the pre-join program, or they could wait until the new employee has officially started work. Video offers everyone considerable flexibility in the onboarding process.
3. Company Social Media Can Help New Hires Feel Welcome
Millennials cut their teeth on social media, and many companies now have employee social networks. Social forums, discussion boards, and other participatory online interaction can help with the assimilation process for new workers, by allowing them to get to know their co-workers a little better and learn more about the corporate environment. Moreover, company social networks make it easier for leaders to offer new hires a personal touch by “introducing” them online and offering guidance without having to carve out large chunks of time for more formal introductions. A new employee FAQ page, or a questions and answers forum for new hires can also help your new employees gain their bearings.
4. Ensure All Appropriate Personnel Are Kept Apprised of a New Hire’s Status
Onboarding isn’t just for the new employee, but for everyone who will interact with that new person. That means all key personnel should be kept in the loop concerning when the new person’s first day is, whether they have acquired necessary credentials yet, which projects they’ll charge their time to, and where they’ll be located, for a start. An onboarding process that includes online forms and workflows that take care of paperwork can also be made to alert those who need to stay informed along the way. A facilities manager may need to know whether a new employee needs keys made, while IT may need to know where to set up the new person’s workstation. An online onboarding process can make all these notifications instant and automatic.
Conclusion
A streamlined electronic onboarding process doesn’t have to involve a major IT initiative, because PerfectApps lets anyone build online forms that are sophisticated and beautiful with the ability to link them into productive workflows without any programming. Watch our demo and see for yourself how PerfectApps can make your company onboarding process significantly better.
