Onboarding New Employees: 5 Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
9 out of 10 new employees decide whether to stay or leave a position within their first six months. It’s a staggering number that shows how much first impressions matter.
Just because employees are testing the waters in those first months at a new job doesn’t mean you will drive them away. Fortunately, it’s easy to create that good first impression.
Having a well-thought-out process for onboarding new employees is essential to your business and company. Moreover, it’s a cost-efficient way to set everyone at your company up for success.
If you’re a business owner or company manager, this article is perfect for you. In it, you will learn about how to create a seamless and efficient onboarding process to retain all your new hires!
Onboarding Mistakes
You all know the feeling of starting a new job. The mix of anxiousness and excitement creeps into everyone on that first day. New hires are eager to learn and excel in their new position.
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By avoiding these mistakes, you can create a simple onboarding process guaranteed to boost productivity and morale in the office for new hires.
- Disorganization
When creating an onboarding process, you must create a formal strategy. This means having a schedule and preparing for the arrival of new employees. An organized workplace creates an efficient workplace.
New employee onboarding should include carefully selected tasks that they can engage in to learn more about their role and the company. However, you don’t want to give too many tasks or assignments.
If you overwhelmed the new hires, they wouldn’t learn as much from the onboarding process that you expect them to. Therefore, it is best to have both HR representatives and managers assist with onboarding.
Shared responsibilities create organization in the company. This leads to clear goals and expectations for everyone to follow.
New employee onboarding is the perfect time to be transparent with the new hires about the expectations for their position too.
An organized onboarding process gives new hires a great first impression to get them excited for the new opportunity. It also allows them to feel confident in the position from day one.
- Not Using a Digital Intake Process
On their first day at the job, new hires don’t want to spend all day filling out paperwork. By using onboarding software, the process starts before the first workday begins.
Companies call this a pre-boarding process. It replaces the more formal orientation that would take place as part of the onboarding process.
Employers can incorporate this software into their onboarding system to streamline tasks employees can do outside the office.
This includes filling out paperwork like tax forms and collecting ID copies. It doesn’t make sense for new employees to fill out their paperwork by hand in the digital age.
Including a pre-boarding process in your system is essential.
- The Onboarding Process is Too Short
The pre-boarding process doesn’t mean onboarding should end shortly after the new hires arrive at the office.
In fact, it means new hires can start their first day immersing themself in the work and office culture. Working on the first day is a much better way to start a new position.
However, the onboarding process shouldn’t last a few weeks or even a few months.
The best onboarding processes last for up to a year. Then, at the end of the year, onboarding transitions to retention.
A one-year onboarding process creates a path to success for new employees and the company as a whole. It also gives the company time to assess employee satisfaction.
In reality, it is more expensive to replace employees than to invest in your onboarding process. Therefore, onboarding needs to be an ongoing process.
It usually takes new hires six months to learn everything about the position they’ve filled and to feel comfortable.
Not every day needs to be a new learning activity. But, new employees need time to acclimate to the new job and learn the expectations laid out for them at the beginning.
Employees who are well informed are high-performing.
- There’s Not Enough Support
Onboarding is not as simple as having some planned activities for new employees. Onboarding should include education, relationship building, and networking.
As mentioned before, multiple departments should play a role in the onboarding process. New hires need to see how different areas of the company work together.
New hires should work with co-workers and integrate themselves into workstations right at the beginning. This avoids isolation. The environment should feel like a team from day one.
New employees need to feel they can freely ask questions as have one-on-one time with managers to assess their work and progress in the role.
Employees who feel supported work harder and more efficiently.
- Failure to Collect and Give Feedback
The process of onboarding new employees is there to create successful habits and expectations.
Your onboarding process can seem efficient from the outside. But, if new employees are still feeling lost, you need their feedback for improvement.
You should receive feedback from new hires at every step of the process to ensure they are learning the right tasks and working as preferred.
Their feedback will also help you track their progress to ensure they learn all the skills they need. This allows you to change anything as needed to create a seamless process.
If you are completing remote employee onboarding, feedback is even more important because of the missing value of face-to-face communication.
Whether in the office or working remotely, all new hires should give and receive feedback to benefit both parties. Confident employees become the most valued in their companies.
Start Onboarding New Employees Now
There is no doubt that the process you create for onboarding new employees is crucial to your business. As a result, you will retain employees and create a more productive work environment.
And now you know how to onboard new employees by avoiding these mistakes. You have the tools to create a simple yet effective process that will benefit your entire business.
Take a look at your onboarding process today and make changes to ensure you don’t make these errors. In addition, let us know any other useful tips you’ve found to be helpful for your company when onboarding new employees!
