Filling positions quickly is the dream, but it can result in an onboarding nightmare

Many factors are affecting the labor market and workplace dynamics. COVID-19, working from home, inflation and an historic labor shortage are making it difficult for employees to attract and retain new talent. One issue that employers, especially those whose workers are “deskless,” need to address is onboarding.

In a new survey, TalentCards talked to 900 onboarding managers and found that 48% believe the most common challenge in onboarding is that new hires lack necessary skills for the job and require a lot of training. In addition, 72% of companies have unfilled positions due to the inability to find qualified workers.

In an attempt to mitigate this challenge, 57% of these respondents reported that they are trying to train existing employees to fill these roles. However, the other 43% stated that these positions simply remain unfilled.

According to the survey, challenges remain throughout the hiring process. “Even when companies do manage to find the skilled labor they are looking for, the challenges don’t end there. Keeping these new hires with the company is critical both because they are in such short supply, and because the cost of onboarding them is far from negligible.”

Employers are trying many things to entice the “deskless” employees from quitting. Among them are:

• Higher pay (54%)
• Flexible working shifts (47%)
• Better benefits (32%)
• More paid time off (27%)
• More training opportunities (23%)

Despite these efforts, onboarding managers report that 59% of “deskless” employees end up leaving the company in under three years. It’s worth noting that the majority of these employees are not switching to desk jobs. In another TalentCards report, which surveyed “deskless “employees directly, 64% stated that they would not switch to a desk job even if they were given the same pay and benefits.

“What’s interesting about the challenges that onboarding managers most commonly face when training new “deskless” employees is that they can almost all be solved by finding and implementing the right tech solution,” notes Leonidas Palaiokostas, product owner at TalentCards.

“Distributing training materials, evaluating how well knowledge has been retained, providing access to materials even on the go, sharing employee schedules— all of these tasks can be accomplished much faster and more efficiently through the use of training software and mobile applications.”

The report concludes by saying the differentiating factor is how managers bring new hires into the company. By providing onboarding managers with the tech tools and resources they need to improve new hire training, they can not only teach employees the skills they need, but also increase the likelihood that they will remain in the company.