The Business Impact of Effective Onboarding
If you were to grade your onboarding process for how effectively it integrates new hires into your business, what score would you give it?
The sad truth is that most companies focus so much on recruiting top talent that they neglect what actually happens after that talent signs their offer and in their first days and weeks in their new role. According to Gallup data, only 12% of U.S. employees say their company does a good job of onboarding.
What’s more, our recent State of Employee Onboarding Report found that for 62% of employees, their onboarding was over within a week. And for 31% of employees, onboarding only lasted one day.
Source: 2024 State of Employee Onboarding Report
This represents a huge missed opportunity when it comes to ramping your new hires and decreasing time to productivity. We’ve found that an effective onboarding process should last at least seven months and follow the four C model, covering compliance, clarification, culture, and connection (you can read up on that in this blog) – wrapping an amazing experience full of Wow moments.
When done right, onboarding can dramatically transform your organization by setting your new hires up for long-term success.
The Positive Impacts of Effective Onboarding
When we set out to study employee onboarding in our recent survey, we wanted to understand the full ROI of a great onboarding experience. What difference does it make in the numbers companies use to measure success? It turns out the impact of effective onboarding can last for years, as you’ll see below.
Source: 2024 State of Employee Onboarding Report
A Sense of Belonging at Work
Putting together a thorough onboarding process for your new hire shows them that their manager, the team, and the company cares about their experience – and that fosters a sense of belonging right away. Our survey reveals that good onboarding processes that emphasize cultural assimilation help 40% of new hires feel like they belong.
Higher Job Satisfaction
Joining a new company can feel like a huge leap of faith for a lot of new hires. But you can reassure them of that big life decision by designing a positive onboarding experience; we found those who rate their onboarding experience positively were 46% more likely to express satisfaction with their job decision.
Boosted Productivity and Engagement
Beyond getting compliance and paperwork complete, the bigger goal of onboarding is to ramp up your new hires as fast as possible. We found 40% of employees with a good onboarding experience reported increased productivity and 42% felt more engaged.
Read Lonza’s case study and learn how they increased their new joiner net promoter score by 12. 📈
Enhanced Employee Retention
People want to stay where they’re treated well – and that starts with onboarding. We found 34% of new hires with a good onboarding experience were motivated to stay longer at their company, showing the long-term impact of those early interactions with their manager and team.
Improved Quality of Peer Recommendations
If one of your goals is to attract top talent through personal recommendations, then you can’t forget about effective onboarding. Of employees with a good onboarding experience, 32% would recommend their company as a great place to work.
Learn how Sandvik integrated their employee referral program right into their onboarding process. 🤩
Consequences of Inadequate Onboarding
If effective onboarding has the power to transform your business for the better, then the opposite is also true. Ever heard people in your company talking about new hires “drinking from the firehose” and “being thrown in at the deep end”? If you answered yes, then chances are your onboarding process is not setting new hires up for success or effectively integrating them into your culture. And that can have a detrimental impact on the metrics that matter.
Source: 2024 State of Employee Onboarding Report
Employees Feel Ineffective and Disengaged
Imagine how discouraging it must feel for a new hire to go from peak excitement about a new role to disappointment from a lackluster onboarding process. That disappointment translates directly to disengagement for 34% of new hires and difficulty in performing their job for 35% of new hires.
Job Regret Causes Turnover
What’s worse, 33% of new hires say they regret their decision to accept their job offer when they have a negative onboarding experience. And 25% actually resigned because of it. All that time and energy spent on recruitment is at risk of walking out the door because of poor onboarding, and with that comes a negative impact on morale for the rest of the team, too.
Negative Sentiment Towards Brand
Of course, there’s always the risk that word about your new hire’s negative experience will be shared more broadly. Of new hires with negative onboarding experiences, 25% will share their story with others, potentially damaging your employer brand and ability to attract future talent (or even their replacement!).
Reap the Benefits of Effective Onboarding With Enboarder
Now that we’ve covered the correlation between onboarding and important business metrics, it’s time to figure out where you have opportunities to improve onboarding at your company.
First, you can take this 2-minute quiz and see for yourself how your onboarding stacks up – if it’s process-driven, experience-driven, or truly Connected Onboarding.
We’d also recommend you dive into the rest of the data in the State of Employee Onboarding Report and learn more about:
- What good onboarding looks like
- The lasting impact of “Wow!” moments
- Which tech features make for a great experience
From there, we’d be happy to jump on a call and chat about how Enboarder can help you design a more effective onboarding that supports your engagement, retention, and productivity goals and really gets your new hires jazzed about the journey they’re embarking on at your company.