Move to Online Onboarding— Three Pluses Why It Makes Smart Business Sense – Part One

Old fashioned onboarding is a way boring and a downer. New employees roll in for their first day on the job to kick butt and take names and then they’re banished to a desk or the break room to complete forms, insurance cards and other required first day papers. Once that drudgery is complete 3 hours later, then they are brought out to meet their coworkers or teammates that are already knee deep into their day. This process interrupts everyone’s day and is completely inefficient. The new employee is told to ask questions they may have about their onboarding, but many times they end up not doing it because they don’t want to interrupt anyone.

The old way is the way it has been done for years, decades and with some company’s nearly a century. This method of onboarding makes sense, correct?

One plus to move from first day paperwork oriented onboarding done in a two to three hours is that a more thorough complete longer onboarding system is that it works far better for the employee and employee retention. Recent studies have shown clearly that short onboarding systems retention rates are very poor. The fact is it has been demonstrated that company’s that offer onboarding systems that take under a month were approximately 10% lower in employee retention rates than ones that have onboarding systems that take a month or more.

The critical factor is creating an onboarding system that requires enhanced direct employee involvement, includes caveats of requiring finding out answer to multiple questions throughout the process and one that assists them in building up job skill sets required to be successful at the job. How can companies find a balance between the necessity of a high-involvement onboarding system and not make the new employee end up disinterested and disconnected from their new job? The answer to that question is to move your company to online onboarding.