Three Levers to Increase the Success of Your New Hire Onboarding Program

Finding the best talent for your organization is just one step towards building a great team. That’s because great talent does not always equal a productive employee. Onboarding is a process that helps bridge this gap. Research indicates that there is a correlation between a robust new hire orientation program and increased retention as well as the enhanced productivity of new hires. In fact, organizations with a standard onboarding process experience 50% greater new hire retention.

Many organizations often confuse onboarding with orientation. Orientation is more focused on paperwork and documentation. Onboarding on the other hand, is a process designed to help the new hire succeed. A high impact new hire training intervention can reduce training time, minimize day one errors and improve the overall productivity of the new hire.

Typically, a new hire’s net contribution to an organization is equal to the revenue generated by the individual minus the net cost incurred on the individual. So while an organization is investing in salary, space, and training, the overall contribution by a new hire during the duration of the training is generally quite low. Many new hires often make mistakes during their initial days at work that adds an additional cost of non-performance, dragging the net contribution further down. The duration of onboarding is therefore also a key factor in evaluating total costs. 

The duration of an onboarding program depends on the type of role and level, as well as size of the company. It typically takes eight months or approximately 240 days for a new hire to reach an expected level of productivity, and take nearly one year to match the output of an experienced employee.

In our experience with customers, a strategy focused on three key levers can help improve the effectiveness of any new hire training program.

Download our whitepaper to understand how these levers can help improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your new hire onboarding program.