The First 30-Days Is Make-or-Break: How to Ensure Onboarding Is a Success

Authors: Laci Loew

Michael Cardman, XpertHR Senior Legal Editor

October 24, 2023

Most new hires confirm their decision to stay at an organization within their first six months of employment, indicates research from the Human Capital Institute. More alarming, 70% decide to stay or go within just the first 30 days, according to research conducted by HR technology services provider BambooHR. See Figure 1.

Onboarding is a key or a culprit. Unfortunately, a Gallup poll found that 88% of employees don't strongly believe their organizations do a great job onboarding.

When asked about their most common frustrations, respondents in Bamboo HR's study said:

• No clear points of contact for questions (65%)
• Not enough training on company products/services (62%)
• Lack of access to essential tools (58%)
• Technology issues (e.g., malfunctioning computers, lack of setup, etc.) (51%)
• Not having a single person acting as an onboarding guide (50%)

So, What to Do?

How can employers deal with this potentially brand-embarrassing and costly problem? The answer: Create a delightful onboarding experience by adhering to the following principles:

• Onboarding, in fact, is not a one-time, multi-day event.
• Onboarding is all about building relationships from the start.
• Onboarding should be personalized and enabled with technology.

Making It an Experience, Not an Event

If HR teams are still thinking of onboarding as a one-week or 30-60-90-day orientation period, it is far too easy to dismiss it as just another completed HR to-do. HR needs to reframe their understanding of it as an opportunity that will affect an employee's entire experience at the organization and how new recruits perceive (and talk about) company brand during their tenure.

If the experience is transactional, comes and goes, and fails to create critical connections to build and grow institutional knowledge and forge lasting relationships, well, leadership should expect new hires to leave in a matter of days or weeks, or months, at best.

On the flip side, if it is a journey leading new hires through the what's, why's, and how's of the business, they are far more intrigued and satisfied. Their journey will impact those factors they most desire in a new company: development and know-how, purposeful and meaningful work, and close social relationships and connection. An inspiring journey is often accompanied by the decision to stick around to experience more and more of it.

Humanizing the Experience

Regarding social connection, new hires seek camaraderie from the get-go. To this point, it is not surprising that survey respondents said they value relationship-building more than anything else. In fact, 87% said they hope to make a friend at work. Yet, one in five said their company did not have any social system (e.g., buddy system, mentor-mentee program, virtual new hire communities on an intranet site, etc.) in place. The key to success here is two-fold:

• Introduce the new hire to as many people as possible in the first few days, and
• Re-introduce co-workers in the new hire's direct line of work as often as possible.

Names and roles are often forgotten after an initial introduction. The second, third and fourth introductions bring stickiness and help to forge long-term social relationships. With social connection comes retention. And that is a win-win - for the new hire and the organization.

Adding Digital to the Human

As much as new hires crave the human touch, they expect to connect with co-workers in the same digital and mobile ways they do outside of working hours. Technology, and in particular automation and AI, personalize the onboarding experience. These self-service tools allow new hires to schedule meet and greets, sign up for team building sessions, and even participate in virtual happy hours, enabling the bonding experience and facilitating the human-to-human interaction all under their on-demand control.

More so, digital onboarding workflows represent an opportunity to do more by adding more experiences that are set off in weeks and months ahead, such as check-ins with onboarding buddies, or prompts and alerts around certain topics and presentations by co-workers, managers, and leaders.

Adding digital to the onboarding experience is arguably a key to accelerating social connections and the overall onboarding journey.

The Pay-Off

Every new hire deserves the opportunity to be set up for success. And every business deserves the greatest productivity and commitment from every new recruit. The mutual and measurable benefit starts with a delightful onboarding journey. Onboarding as an experience - not an event - pays off in both directions; it keeps productive and engaged new hires in the job, and it is simply good for business. Let's look.

Research shows both organizations and employees benefit from a healthy induction and onboarding process. Here's how:

What Does Your Onboarding Look Like?

It's hard to argue with the numbers. Done right, onboarding can impact business outcomes and be a key driver of the success of the business. So, here's the big question: How would new hires rate onboarding at your organization? Is your onboarding a low-value activity that results in high turnover rates? Or a high-value experience that improves the employee experience and retention rate?