Employers beware the 'new hire cliff'
The first step to successful onboarding in today's reality is to focus on building a human connection.
It’s a job seeker’s market out there, with industries across the boar hurting to find qualified individuals to round out their workforces. Thus, when companies do successfully find the right candidates to fit their needs, it’s imperative that they make sure the onboarding process goes smoothly. These days, with many hirings done completely or partially via a virtual platform, there’s a lot that can get overlooked.
Related: The ‘all-Zoom hire:’ One company’s experience
Brent Pearson, founder and CEO of Enboarder, recently shared his advice for employers looking to improve their onboarding process and avoid what he calls the “new hire cliff.”
Can you explain the concept of the “new hire cliff” and how it relates to current issues in the workplace we’re experiencing?
Too many organizations make the mistake of viewing onboarding as occurring only on a new hire’s first day or simply the paperwork that needs to be completed for compliance purposes. In other words, they’re still in the mindset of “traditional onboarding.”
The new hire cliff ultimately results from these traditional onboarding processes and an organization’s failure to fully integrate new employees beyond basic training, instructions and paperwork. It’s the point where support starts to drop off once a new employee has been traditionally onboarded, but they’re still getting fully up-to-speed on the nuances of their new company’s culture, processes and what it will take for them to be successful in their role and within the organization.
HR and talent acquisition teams across the world are struggling to secure top talent amid the challenges of the pandemic and rising quit rates, but once they’ve been successful, it’s critical to make a strong first impression in the onboarding process.
What are the dangers of the “new hire cliff,” especially amid the Great Resignation and the hybrid workplace?
Although getting onboarding right represents a massive opportunity, getting it wrong represents an even greater risk to an organization’s talent strategy. In fact, 1 out of 5 new hires will leave within the first six weeks, making it clear that overcoming the new hire cliff is a critical point within the employee journey — and it has never been more critical than during the Great Resignation. Employers can’t afford to keep losing top talent, especially when there’s a variety of resources and strategies that can improve the onboarding experience in the first few weeks and beyond.
Organizations are also dealing with the new reality that employees are more overwhelmed and more distributed than ever before. Creating an onboarding experience that resonates with this reality and focuses on building human connection is the first step to overcome the new hire cliff. In doing so, organizations benefit from fully engaged new hires that are motivated to do their best work and be their best selves, and new hires feel supported to maintain a high level of engagement beyond onboarding.
What steps can organizations take to prioritize the employee onboarding experience?
A traditional onboarding program prioritizes what the organization needs from new employees, rather than what employees need from the organization. With this in mind, the key to improved onboarding is designing it from the new hire’s perspective:
Create highly personalized and meaningful content that not only educates new hires, but generates excitement and engagement about their new role and reassures their choice during those critical first weeks. For example, at Enboarder, we survey new hires on their favorite song, food and 3 p.m. snack during the pre-boarding process so we can incorporate these things on their first day. Paying close attention to details like this will make a new employee feel like part of the team from the start.
Empower hiring managers and other onboarding stakeholders to nail their part. We’ve all heard onboarding horror stories about not being able to enter the building or not having a working laptop for the first weeks (or experienced this ourselves). These instances will make or break a new hire’s experience, so it’s important that everyone involved in the onboarding process knows what they need to do and when. Even more critical are the actions of the new hire’s manager during the first few weeks. Research from Gallup shows the hiring manager’s impact on an employee’s engagement is 70%, so it’s critical for managers to receive thorough coaching, guidance and reminders to successfully complete the onboarding process.
Spark human connection where people are. I’m a firm believer that human connection is the key ingredient to onboarding success. In our current world of virtual/hybrid onboarding, there’s still a wealth of opportunities to facilitate human connection, whether it’s sharing introduction videos, matching up new hire buddies, facilitating coffee catch up calls and much more. Stay agile and improve over time. Organizations should strive for progress instead of perfection in their onboarding programs. Staying agile is especially important in the current environment, which constantly creates a new set of challenges that HR teams and managers need to consider when developing a human-centric onboarding experience.
What resources are needed to make the transition smoother from onboarding to being a fully integrated member of the team?
For any HR initiative, the key to success is in the delivery. Without the engagement and orchestration of stakeholders involved in the program throughout the journey — whether that is the new hire, their manager, buddy or anyone else — the onboarding process can be confusing, overwhelming and unproductive for everyone involved.
In the age of overwhelm and distributed workforces, we also need to rethink the delivery of onboarding experiences to successfully integrate new hires at scale. This is why we developed the “people activation” model, which consists of four components: engagement, ease, nudge and connection.
For onboarding in particular, these components can be applied to overcome the new hire cliff:
- Engagement: Provide a personally relevant “why” behind an action, even if it’s a simple task like filling out a form.
- Ease: Make taking action easy for everyone. Automate reminders for welcome lunches, introductions to buddies or even a personalized text from the hiring manager to share their excitement.
- Nudge: Only deliver information at the time that it needs to be received. Overwhelming handbooks are out – timely nudges are far more effective.
- Connection: Technology does not replace human connection, but it does play a role in facilitating it. Help new hires find their new work friends and remind busy managers and team members to check in to proactively build those all-important relationships for success.
The onboarding process can be stressful for both new hires and their managers. What advice do you have for managers to streamline the process and make it less overwhelming for everyone involved, especially the new hire?
Instead of taking the traditional approach of giving new hires and managers a list of information and tasks to complete on the first day, onboarding should be viewed as a journey that takes place before, during and after a new hire steps through the virtual or physical office door. This relieves much of the overwhelm and first-day stress by providing new employees the right information at the right time. Managers can then work alongside technology that delivers information in bite-sized pieces, adding a hu/man element that guides new hires through the onboarding program, encourages connection and answers any questions along the way.
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