Whether you are hiring remote workers or need to train new hires at a factory, your onboarding process will determine how successful your employees are in their future roles. At its heart, the onboarding process goes through four essential phases. By carefully designing the entire program, you can effectively boost your employee retention rates, worker confidence, team communication, and engagement levels.

Why Is High-Quality Onboarding Important?

Each employee has a life cycle at your company. This life cycle begins with attracting and onboarding new hires before transitioning through their initial development, ongoing development, retention, and separation. Through a well-designed onboarding program, you can help your organization enjoy a few important benefits.

Increase Employee Satisfaction

When workers experience a good onboarding process, they are 2.3 times more likely to say their job is at least as good as they expected it to be. A solid onboarding process introduces new hires to your company’s mission, vision, and values. It helps them feel like they fit in and are a part of the team, erasing some of their new job jitters.

Improve Productivity

High-quality onboarding processes set workers up for success and help them tackle their job duties sooner. In fact, 49% of workers who went through an effective onboarding process were able to contribute to their teams in just the first week of work. During onboarding, employees learn what their job duties are, which key personnel they can turn to for questions, and the major expectations they are required to meet. All of these factors allow the employee to be more productive as they complete their onboarding and training process.

Lower Labor Costs

Employees who aren’t supported in their new positions are more likely to leave your company. In turn, this can increase the amount you spend on labor. As soon as a worker leaves, you must attract, interview, hire, and train a replacement. Even after someone completes the hiring and training process, they’ll still be less efficient and productive than an experienced staff member. Because of this, better onboarding can directly impact your long-term labor costs.

Better Team Communication

Another one of the benefits of onboarding is enhanced communication. During good onboarding programs, employees are introduced to their co-workers. They will learn who to go to for questions and be paired with a mentor. Thanks to all of these measures, a top onboarding program can improve team communication. 

The Four Phases of Onboarding

Onboarding is the term for all of the training, social support, and orientation that occur after someone begins working at a new job. Each company has a unique culture and mission, so the type of onboarding processes you need can vary. When designing your company’s onboarding program, you should start by considering the following four key phases in the onboarding process.

1. Preboarding

Preboarding can look quite different based on what type of industry you are in, the job position, and your company culture. The following are just a few of the most common pre-boarding activities that companies do. 

• Welcome emails
• Company email account and business software
• Swag and gifts
• Remote working tools, like laptops and walking pads
• Lunch meetings and preboarding hangouts
• I-9 forms and other employment documents
• Employee handbooks

In general, pre-boarding takes place before the employee’s first day at the organization. It’s your chance to allay any nervousness by giving new hires a general idea about what to expect. To make the welcoming process even easier, send out an email to other workers to introduce the new hire before their official first day.

More importantly, make sure all of your employment forms, employee handbooks, and policies are in order. Many documents, like Form I-9, have to be completed right away. To ensure you’re in compliance, incorporate these regulatory requirements into your onboarding process so that every employee completes the right paperwork. If you make a clear onboarding checklist, you can easily check off each document as it is completed.

2. Orientation

After the preboarding process, the next step is the actual orientation. This phase incorporates the first day or week of the employee’s new job. During this stage, you’ll typically spend time familiarizing workers with your company’s culture, mission, and policies. 

To help workers navigate the office and feel at home, give them a tour and introduce them to the people that they’ll need to know. Additionally, you may want to pair your new hire up with a mentor or work buddy so that they have a friendly face to turn to when they need help. By doing all of these activities, you can significantly improve the new hire’s initial experience at your company.

3. Training

The orientation process will typically involve training about company-wide policies and values. Afterward, you’ll likely want to conduct job-specific training to help the worker succeed in their new role. While each position is different, this type of training will generally last for a few weeks or months.

Some of this training may be through traditional mediums, like handbooks or training videos. Alternatively, you may want to use group training sessions, hands-on projects, or mentorships.

To make your training as effective as possible, try creating a progressive training schedule. It should help the employee build on each skill, so they gradually get up to speed.

How well you train employees will determine whether they are successful at their new role, satisfied with their jobs, and willing to stay at your company. In fact, 41% of workers report being willing to leave their companies in the next year if they don’t get the right learning, training, and development support.

4. Integration 

Throughout the onboarding process and as the onboarding process comes to an end, the employee will start to integrate with your company’s culture. To help this process, encourage managers to give new hires feedback and clear expectations. This helps employees understand what they need to do to be successful at your organization.

As a part of your ongoing development and integration approach, you may try some of the following activities. 

• Conduct performance evaluations.
• Provide ongoing feedback.
• Set and discuss goals with the employee.
• Partner the employee with a mentor.
• Discuss ongoing training and development opportunities.
• Host team lunches.
• Do team-building activities.

How Long Should Onboarding Take?

In general, most experts agree that onboarding should take at least three months. Depending on the company and the job, onboarding can last as long as a year. While the general onboarding timeline can vary for each phase, most effective onboarding programs use the following timeline. 

• Preboarding: About a week prior to the employee’s first day
• Orientation: Anywhere between a few hours and several days
• Training: Up to three months
• Integration: Several months

Many companies make the mistake of ending their formal onboarding too early. It is fairly common for professionals to need 20 weeks to get up to speed in their new positions. By extending your onboarding timeline, you can make sure employees are fully productive and prepared for their ongoing roles. 

Learn More About How We Can Support Your Onboarding Process

As a small business owner, you can’t afford to have an ineffective onboarding process. Good onboarding increases retention rates and productivity, boosting your company’s bottom line. By understanding and implementing the basics of onboarding, your business can catalyze its long-term growth and employee development. 

If you’re ready to learn more about setting up your employee handbook and onboarding processes, reach out to our team of payroll and HR experts today.