The Watercooler

The ROI of An Effective Onboarding Program

In your gut, you know that rolling out the red carpet for a new hire is smart business. Common sense says that effective onboarding:

  • Helps new employees gel with their coworkers.
  • Reinforces your company culture.
  • Equips them to do their best work.

But the benefits of great onboarding extend well beyond making a new employee feel welcome. Research shared by the Human Capital Institute indicates that:

  • Organizations with a standardized onboarding process experience 54% greater new hire productivity.
  • Standardized onboarding leads to 50% greater new hire retention.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Companies that systematically improve their employee onboarding experience and processes enjoy key benefits such as higher engagement, faster time-to-productivity, and more:

  • Companies with robust onboarding improve employee productivity by over 70%.
  • Adding an ambassador or buddy program to onboarding can boost new hire proficiency by 87%.
  • A great onboarding process helps ensure that nearly 7 in 10 (69%) of employees stay with a company for at least 3 years.
  • 62% of businesses with an effective onboarding program experienced a 54% increase in employee engagement.

So…how can you gauge the effectiveness of your company’s onboarding?

Measure the right things. While calculating the direct return on investment of a complex and lengthy process like onboarding is challenging, here are a few ways you can determine if your onboarding process is top-notch:

  • Track new hire turnover. Consider the percent of employees who leave you at 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, and 3 years. While employees leave for multiple reasons, many of them are influenced by onboarding.
  • Assess new hire performance. Measure how long it takes new employees to reach full productivity. The complexity of your business and the role will determine what the “right” length of time-to-productivity should be. However, the setting and then tracking of this metric will help you understand if your processes are improving or not.
  • Test new hires’ knowledge. After they complete onboarding, conduct a short quiz (customized to the job) to gauge what employees know about your company, your culture, processes, job, and how they plan to go about daily activities. If you see patterns in knowledge gaps, use this as a way to identify parts of your onboarding to focus on improving.
  • Ask for feedback. Gather anecdotal feedback to gauge how welcoming, accurate, comprehensive, and effective your program is – and specifically ask if employees have any concerns about their onboarding. Not only will your new hires’ input help you refine your onboarding; it will also make them feel heard, understood, and important (which all boost engagement).

Looking for the best ways to optimize your onboarding process – and improve your ROI?

Read “Nobody Puts Onboarding in a Corner: How to Perfect Your Onboarding Process.” We share seven ideas for perfecting every aspect of this function in this post.

Then call PrideStaff.

A national staffing and recruiting firm like PrideStaff maximizes new hire success by helping you find the best-fit candidate – and get them off to a productive start. Contact us today to find out how we can help you tame turnover and build a high-performing team.