Onboarding: A Transformational Experience for HR and New Hires

By Daria Friedman, Principal Analyst, Talent Acquisition, Brandon Hall Group

Read Brandon Hall Group’s newly published research Strategic Onboarding Essentials to Improve Business Performance and learn the building steps to improving onboarding at your organization.

The purpose of onboarding is to optimize new-hire engagement and increase time-to-proficiency, but it does much more than that. After completing Brandon Hall Group’s research on the Strategic Onboarding Essentials to Improve Business Performance, I’m inspired to declare how transformational onboarding can be for new hires and HR professionals.

Onboarding challenges to HR professionals include all the elements of the organizational culture into a short period of time (five weeks on average) to assimilate, engage and train new hires. In addition, as part of this effort, it is incumbent upon HR professionals to build the business case to prove the value of onboarding to the C-Suite and executive leaders to successfully impact talent metrics. An important finding from our research is that organizations with leaders who extensively support onboarding are more likely to see improvement in new hire talent metrics than those only providing some or no support.

From the new-hire perspective, onboarding is very transformational. They have expectations about the employment experience based on what they learned during the recruitment and hiring experience. Depending on the organization, these expectations may or may not be met. However, if onboarding is managed correctly, they will quickly see that they are a valued member of the organization; that they can develop professionally; and that they are given support to achieve their career goals. With these transformational experiences, the new hire can become a champion of the organization, promoting it internally and externally, and referring their personal connections for employment with the organization (see new-hire referrals in the above chart).

Delivering on a successful onboarding practice is definitely a transforming experience. Find out how to improve your organization’s onboarding by reading: Strategic Onboarding Essentials to Improve Business Performance

–Daria Friedman, Principal Analyst, Talent Acquisition, Brandon Hall Group

For more information on our research, please visit www.brandonhall.com

Like what you see? Share with a friend.

Mike Cooke

Related Content

Making Your Leaders Better Collaborators

Prioritizing Use of
Your Leadership Development Resources

How to Build Sponsorship, Mentorship
and Allyship Across the Organization

Mike Cooke

Chief Executive Officer of Brandon Hall Group Mike Cooke Prior to joining Brandon Hall Group, Mike Cooke was the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of AC Growth. Mike held leadership and executive positions for the majority of his career, at which he was responsible for steering sales and marketing teams to drive results and profitability. His background includes more than 15 years of experience in sales, marketing, management, and operations in the research, consulting, software and technology industries. Mike has extensive experience in sales, marketing and management having worked for several early high-growth emerging businesses and has implemented technology systems to support various critical sales, finance, marketing and client service functions. He is especially skilled in organizing the sales and service strategy to fully support a company’s growth strategy. The concept of growth was an absolute to Mike and a motivator in starting AC Growth, in order to help organizations achieve research driven results. Most recently, Mike was the VP and General Manager of Field Operations at Bersin & Associates, a global analyst and consulting services firm focused on all areas of enterprise learning, talent management and talent acquisition. Tasked with leading the company’s global expansion, Mike led all sales operations worldwide. During Mike’s tenure, the company has grown into a multi-national firm, conducting business in over 45 countries with over 4,500 multi-national organizations. Mike started his career at MicroVideo Learning Systems in 1992, eventually holding a senior management position and leading all corporate sales before founding Dynamic Minds. Mike was CEO and Co-Founder of Dynamic Minds, a custom developer of software programs, working with clients like Goldman Sachs, Prentice Hall, McGraw Hill and Merrill Lynch. Also, Mike worked for Oddcast, a leading provider of customer experience and marketing solutions, where he held a senior management position leading the company into new markets across various industries. Mike also serves on the Advisory Board for Carbon Solutions America, an independent sustainability consulting and carbon management firm that specializes in the design and implementation of greenhouse reduction and sustainability plans as well as managing the generation of carbon and renewal energy and energy efficiency credits. Mike attended University of Phoenix, studying Business Administration and Finance. He has also completed executive training at the Chicago Graduate School of Business in Chicago, IL.