The process of effectively onboarding training new employees into your organisation, and embedding them into your working culture can be tricky. Conducted properly, you will ensure the employee is fully informed on what your company do, and have a better chance of becoming an important part of your company. But, if the process is conducted incorrectly, you will increase your chances of losing that employee in the long term, or even worse, be left with them but operating unproductively.
Aberdeen Group have done interesting research into the area of onboarding and found a remarkable 34% of companies have no formal onboarding process at all. They also highlighted the top 3 motivations of companies to onboard: productivity; streamlined hiring and culturization. Today, we’re going to take a look at why onboarding training is so important and how you can turn your new employee into a working superhero (without the costume of course).
The ROI of Good Onboarding Training
Effective onboarding is often overlooked despite a proven return on investment far in excess of money poured into consultant recruiters or employee perk packages. Onboarding is really simple.
Firstly your employees need the information to achieve their goals. They need to know what to be doing in order to stay productive. Very few companies do this, but it’s a good simple way of thinking about onboarding.
Secondly, it’s about holding onto your employee, not just for a few months, but preferably years. Imagine you’re six months in and you have to go through the whole hiring process again? That’s a deviation you can do without.
This is the ROI of onboarding: multiply the employee retention benefits by the increased productivity and you can quickly see that the argument for spending time on your onboarding is time well spent.
Technology and Onboarding Training
You don’t have to conduct your onboarding process through face to face exclusively, in fact, that’s becoming less common. According to Aberdeen, 16% of companies use online platforms like GoContractor for their onboarding process. It’s all about giving your new hires the best tools to be that superhero, so they are the one who fully embeds themselves into your company, and strives to take it to new heights.
Online systems are becoming more popular because of the combination of simplicity and flexibility. They also save time and money because you don’t have to do time-consuming powerpoint presentations. Workers can be onboarded before they step foot on-site so no more waiting around. Online platforms are becoming more and more integral to the onboarding process, particularly in large workplaces where managing many workers is an organizational challenge.
So, how can you do that? What do you need to do? Well according to Kevin Sheridan, an author, speaker, and consultant, who has written extensively about employee onboarding, there are a number of steps to achieving the superhero.
Have an Onboarding Process!
It would help if you had an onboarding process already in place. According to Sheridan, pre-boarding is “exceptionally important” in order to keep your employee engaged with you, and excited about their new role.
According to Aberdeen’s research, 86% of companies who onboarded correctly retained their employees, while 77% of those employees met “first performance milestones” and 20% of hiring managers were happier. Let’s look at onboarding training from a different perspective, the dreaded first date. Sheridan suggests you should think back to your first date, remember that feeling you had when you were just about to see HIM for the first time? That’s the feeling your new employees will feel on day one. They are “eager to make a good impression, and extra sensitive to any reaction that seems tentative or unenthusiastic.”. Get your employees in early, communicate with them, introduce them to the team, smile and be yourself. You don’t want to scare away your future superhero.
Make a good first impression
You should literally go out of your way to ensure they feel welcomed. Sheridan has devised a few key rules to ensure your welcoming process goes off without a hitch, they include:
- Greet them at the door.
- Introduce them to all of their co-workers, depending on the size of your company not everyone has to be included.
- Give them the bathroom key, it’s more important than you think.
- Take them out to lunch.
- Have a small welcome gift, candy or an office mug, at their desk
- And, make sure tech is set up.
Employees Are Not Just For Christmas
According to Sheridan, the onboarding process will take you 90 days, and after that point, you must “leverage the top” drivers of employee engagement. It’s a long list, but one that will finally give your worker the sufficient tools to be this superhero employee we have been harping on about. We include a handful below:
- Recognition: It starts with recognition. Your managers, and perhaps yourself, should say thank you on a regular basis. Their job isn’t the easiest, and they could do with the pat on the back. You should also “meet with the new employee to discuss their career and job aspirations,”. This shows the employee that you value their employment and are looking forward to their future career developments within your company.
- Career Development: your workers need to know that they have a future with your firm, this means sitting down and charting out a path. Where do they want to go and how will they get there.
- Purpose: your employees should be working on projects that have a purpose, according to Sheridan. He even gave the example of giving his new employee an important and purposeful task, which instills them with instant responsibility.
- A Strong Relationship: Finally, Sheridan talks about fostering a strong relationship with your employees. This is not about diluting the management lines, well maybe it’s partially about that. It is critical that you show your employees you have an “interest in them as human beings, not just employees”. This is why building a relationship and enhancing it over time, can enhance the onboarding process.
How GoContractor Can Help
An onboarding process is a key driver in employee retention. And for good reason! It shows you put thought into the wellbeing of your workers and are committed to them becoming safe and productive members of your team. Quality onboarding training produces a tangible return on investment as it reduces injuries that delay projects and result in worker compensation costs. There is also evidence that putting in place a safety process can significantly reduce insurance premiums for companies. Given that insurance is a massive financial burden in heavy industry, this is a real incentive for employers looking to develop their health and safety orientations.
GoContractor is the ideal solution for developing and implementing safety orientations in heavy industry. Industries like construction, mining, and energy generation rely on a workforce made up of large numbers of contractors. This poses a variety of logistical issues and contractors can often fall through the cracks. GoContractor’s online contractor management system makes it simple to manage workers with different roles who are spread across multiple sites. The powerful course builder allows you to create great orientations that help keep your workers safe and productive. Onboarding a superhero takes is easy with the right tools and GoContractor is the perfect solution.
