12 Must-Know Employee Engagement and Onboarding Stats

Posted in Talent & Onboarding

A whip around of all the important stats and bits you need to support your case for engagement-led onboarding software.

You’re in a war for talent that shows no sign of easing. Getting them to sign the contract is the first step, but it doesn’t assure their commitment to you if they realise they don’t much like you. Which is why delighting your talented new hires with a rock star onboarding experience is critical to their long-term engagement and retention.

So, we rounded up a few stats to help you get your head around onboarding, how it affects employee engagement, and why you should be prioritising an out-of-this-world onboarding experience to engage and retain your new hires in 2019.

6 reasons why you need to fix your onboarding

There’s an 88% chance you’re doing a crap job at employee onboarding and you’re losing staff because of it.

We hope that didn’t make you choke on your latte, but we’re not here to sprinkle cotton candy and sweeten your reality. There’s a proven link between high quality onboarding programs and improved retention, engagement, and productivity.

Improving the way you onboard new hires in 2019 is the quickest, easiest, and most effective way to boost your bottom-line.

Onboarding Stats 1_3 (1)

Here’s how onboarding is impacting business:

  1. Only 12 percent of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job of onboarding (Gallup).
  2. Up to 20 percent of turnover happens within the first 45 days (O.C Tanner).
  3. Ten times as many people quit at their first work year anniversary vs. the five year mark (O.C Tanner).

Onboarding Stats 2_2 (1)
  1. Twenty-five per cent of companies admitted that their onboarding program doesn’t include any form of training, which potentially leads to a loss of 60 percent of a company’s entire workforce. (source).
  2. Approximately 35 percent of companies spend zero dollars on onboarding. Confusing, that you would happily spend around $11,000 on recruitment / turnover costs but not invest any money in ensuring the new hire’s success?
  3. Sixty-nine per cent of employees are more likely to stay with their employer for at least three years after a great onboarding experience.

6 reasons to prioritise employee engagement via onboarding

It’s likely there are more disengaged employees in your workplace than there are engaged ones. Yikes.

Employee Engagement in Onboarding (1)

Given there’s a credible link between high quality onboarding and higher employee engagement, we wanted to back up the state of onboarding with a few stats about engagement.

  1. According to Qualtrics, 62 percent of US workers are engaged; 48% in the UK, 56% in Australia, and 42% in Hong Kong. Which means everyone else is indifferent or actively disengaged. (Not a good thing, Harriet.)
  2. Fifty-three per cent of HR professionals say employee engagement rises when onboarding is improved.
  3. Organisations with effective onboarding have 33 per cent more employees feeling engaged than organisations with ineffective onboarding.
  4. When employees felt onboarding was highly effective, they were 18 times more likely to feel highly committed to their employer.
  5. Employees who have friends at work are seven times more likely to be engaged, proving just how much relationships matter, and why the emphasis on integration during onboarding.
  6. Gallup found that highly talented employees who are not engaged were among those who had the highest turnover in each organization – on par with low talent, disengaged employees. So, contrary to popular belief, top talent can be disengaged and leave you just as much as regular Joe on the bottom rung will. They still need your love.

Onboarding is your first opportunity to connect new hires with your mission, values, and culture and set them up for long-term success in your company.

Engagement’s effect on key business outcomes

Engagement Improvements

How the employee experience matters

On average, we spend 5.9 hours each day on digital media, more than half of which is on mobile phones and/or tablets (3.3 hours). Social media has become a staple part of life now, and we’re sharing everything from the triple-shot coffee we drink to get through Monday, to the view from our work desk.

There are no secrets anymore, and thanks to our obsession with sharing all-of-the-things on social media, employers are no longer able to fake their brand; work environment, culture, experiences. Employees are holding you accountable.

And since people are more likely to share a negative experience than a positive one, and we’re more likely to investigate reviews before making a job or purchase decision, employers should be feeling pressure to up their game.

How you woo your new hires and how you treat them in the early pre- and onboarding days (and even past their first year), will dictate your public-facing brand and culture. Because doing a bad job of it could spell the beginning of the end!

So, heck yes, the employee experience matters.

However, don’t be fooled. An Instagram-worthy employee experience does more for your organisation than evoke #employerenvy street cred from outsiders. It goes hand-in-hand with higher employee engagement, too.

Enhance the employee experience during onboarding and you’ll boost long-term employee engagement

The onboarding experience can make or break your new hire’s engagement with your organisation before they even set foot through your door. With high rates of disengagement globally, amongst the candidate-driven talent war, employers need to prioritise engagement-led onboarding as their top strategy to retain and engage new talent in 2019 and beyond.

Loving the stats but not sure what to do next?

Check out this post on everything you need to know about onboarding software.

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