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