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You’ve found the perfect candidate, extended the offer and made your hire – congratulations! Now the real work can begin!
That’s right – finding and hiring the right candidate is just the beginning when it comes to creating a team of employees you can rely on. There is so much more that needs to be done in order to keep those new hires productive and happy. And it all starts with onboarding: your first line of defense in employee retention.
We’ll talk about ways to create a successful onboarding process in the future, but today, let’s focus on why it’s so important.
- Building a Team: Once you’ve made that hire, there are two ways to go – point your new employee to their desk and set them free to work, or guide them in the ways of your company and remember that everything is still a bit overwhelming when starting a new job. Which do you think is the most successful way to orient someone into your team? Quality onboarding provides those new hires with a point of reference to come back to for questions and acquaints them with a few familiar faces, making them a part of a team they want to see succeed.
- Establishing Expectations: Onboarding is also the perfect time to establish expectations in terms of not only the new employee’s job duties, but also key aspects of how the company runs and what the company culture is all about. It might seem like senior employees, especially, are ready to hit the ground running – and that letting them loose could save time and money – but in the long run, the potential for issues down the line increases exponentially when you don’t establish those expectations from the start.
- Preventing Turnover: According to LinkedIn, replacing mid-level employees can cost up to 150 percent of their annual salary. When it comes to highly specialized employees, that cost can run up to 400 percent. Point being: turnover affects your bottom line in a very big way. Companies that have a quality onboarding program and work to prepare their employees for the job manage to decrease their turnover rates. This is partially because employees feel like they are a part of the team and know what is expected of them, but it is also because they are made to feel as though their company actually cares about them and their success. And an employee who feels that way is bound to stay on longer than one who has been set adrift.
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