It's an employee's market, meaning employers have to up their game to attract and retain quality employees.
However, a new study displays the struggles that most employers face when trying to integrate newly hired employees into their workforce. As a result, employers worry that many of their new employees never develop the bonds with the workplace that will make them effective, long-term workers. Instead, they often have one foot out the door from the day they start the job.
The survey 350 HR leaders by Kronos Incorporated, a workforce management solution provider, finds that three-quarters say that onboarding practices are "underutilized" at their organization.
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What's driving the neglect of the critical part of the hiring process? As usual, many say there is too much work and too few people to do it. More than half of respondents identify a "lack of bandwidth for people managers" as an obstacle for onboarding.
Moreover, 60 percent say that the most important part of onboarding is familiarizing a new hire with an organization's work culture, but most acknowledge that that is not the main focus of their employer's onboarding process. That critical element is likely marginalized as a result of time-consuming paperwork and legal compliance that new hires spend much of their first days on the job completing.
Indeed, many companies seem to believe that orientation and onboarding are synonymous, comments Kronos. Most HR leaders who responded to the survey said that reviewing rules and regulations (75 percent) and introducing new employees to company resources and equipment (62 percent) were the most important part of the onboarding process, while fewer than half prioritized peer mentoring (32 percent) or assessment of future training needs (37 percent).
Worst of all, most organizations (55 percent) are not bothering to measure the effectiveness of their onboarding programs.
Employers should take steps to make the onboarding process a key part of familiarizing an employee with the company and helping them understand how they relate to the organization's goals, but for many companies, the process is currently little more a series of bureaucratic hoops that employees jump through.
"We all know turnover is expensive, both in terms of direct costs and intellectual capital," says Sharlyn Lauby, president of ITM Group, in a press release announcing the study. "Organizations can increase retention by focusing on those activities that get employees engaged from the start. One way to do that is by taking care of administrative paperwork before day one so employees can focus on their role and other things that matter to them most."
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