What comes to mind when you think about onboarding? Confusion, time consuming, a lack of productivity? This can one of the most stressful, tedious tasks for a company and/or employee to complete. I have worked with several companies that suffer from outdated onboarding procedures. This causes a delay in getting a resource up and running in their new position. This can cause frustration on the employee’s behalf as they can feel unproductive and dissociated from the company. The company also feels this pain as they are losing team productivity and the money that they are paying the resource to sit there and do little to nothing.
A study of 264 new employees published in the Academy of Management Journal found that the first 90 days of employment is crucial in building rapport with the company, management, and coworkers.
Onboarding Defined
The definition of onboarding is the process by which new hires get adjusted to the social and performance aspects of their jobs quickly and smoothly. During this process, the new hires must also learn the attitudes, knowledge, skills, and behaviors required to function effectively within an organization.
Next Steps
The challenge is to step back and look at your current onboarding procedures and evaluate them. Are they effectively getting your new hires producing the day that they start?