Top 7 effective HR strategies for onboarding employees successfully

Onboarding is often referred to as a critical stage of hiring. It is a stage in which you teach new employees about your organizational culture and train them for best behaviors, attitudes, and job duties. An employee's future performances are dependent on their onboarding processes. Today, even though many employers realize the importance of onboarding, only 12% of employers onboard well. Good onboarding results in 82% greater employee retention, reduce hiring costs, and improves organizational productivity by 70%. In this blog, you will learn about 7 effective HR strategies for onboarding employees successfully.

What is employee onboarding?

Employee Onboarding is the first step of an employee into your organization. During onboarding, employees learn about your organizational culture, hierarchy, and work environment. Moreover, you train them with the tools and information they have to use so their first day at the office is hassle-free and work begins on day one. You can carry out onboarding virtually or physically, but if carried out virtually it saves time and money. Your employees can study their office map beforehand. Moreover, the supervisors can introduce themselves before the first day to waste less time.

Strategies for the effective onboarding process

Onboarding is a make or break point for your employees. Good onboarding can lead to your long-term organizational success and bad onboarding can destroy your employer's brand. However, there is always room for improvement and some great HR strategies are the formula for successful onboarding. These HR strategies work in every situation and can be customized according to your organizational needs. However, not all HR strategies can work at the same time and you need to be careful when implementing them in your employee onboarding processes.

HR strategy 1: Pre-prepared the tools and resources for your new hires

Some companies are so disorganized that after hiring they ignore the onboarding process. Other than that, they do not even prepare the initial tools and other resources that the employees would require to start with their work. For instance, if an employee needs login details, it is them who are going to places to find the person who would provide them the details. This creates a very bad impression of you and speaks volumes about your organizational processes. To be effective and successful at onboarding it is important to pre-prepare the tools to speed up the work tasks.

HR strategy 2: User-friendly onboarding portal

This is a very important part of creating strategies. Onboarding portals require great attention but in the middle of myriads of processes are often ignored. Onboarding portals are the face of your organization and your first impression. Employees can learn anything they want to at these portals. But, when these are outdated, mobile-unfriendly, or complex, things start to take a difficult turn. Users take a lot of time understanding the functioning of the portal which often results in frustration and them losing time. To avoid any complications, improving onboarding portals should be at the top of your HR strategies.

HR strategy 3: Create your employee expectations

New hires have a lot of expectations from their new jobs which are often higher than what you can offer. To manage their expectations you must create them. With your onboarding HR strategies, you can tell them about your company culture, what you offer, and what you expect from your employees. Be vocal about the reality of your organization and avoid forming fake expectations. For example, if your organization does not have a hybrid system then you should be very specific about it. There is no point in giving them false hopes and lying to them because when they will join you, they will be disappointed and lose trust in you.

HR strategy 4: Allot a mentor to the new hires

One requires a mentor at every stage of life especially when they are under difficult situations. Did you know? Mentoring programs during onboarding helped 95% of new hires to grow in their careers. Your new hires are from a different background and maybe nervous at their new workplace or miss their old organization. Mentors can help employees get over their negative emotions and support them. Proper guidance and an act of kindness go a long way and your employees will be grateful to you for giving them the right boost. Mentors can guide the employees about how to deal with workplace toxicity and get over negative feelings. It will not only prepare the employees for negative circumstances but also help them handle such situations.

HR strategy 4: Provide an organizational guide

Similar to the guides at tourist spots you should provide an organizational guide to your new employees. A guide could be anyone from within the department who understands the employees and is experienced in the area. Your employees could report to him and ask for help. It is often difficult to manage employees who seek answers to their problems. Similarly, it frustrates the new employees when they have to look for unoccupied persons to address their issues. To be effective you need to allot a partner or guide whose core responsibility is to answer employee queries at the time of onboarding.

HR strategy 5: Tailor onboarding according to each new employee’s need

Every employee is unique and has specific requirements that depend on their knowledge and experience. You as an employer know who your employees are, hence should prepare personalized onboarding material. For instance, if you have hired a technical person you should inform them about a technical guide who they can go to if an issue arises. You cannot assign one guide for all new hires as that may be misleading and useless. Did you know? Employers with well-designed onboarding experienced 50% greater new-hire retention. To be successful at onboarding, satisfy your new hires with the right measures. You can do it by implementing successful employee onboarding strategies.

 

HR strategy 6: Consistently update your standard onboarding plan 

Your onboarding plan should be standard and systematic. It means you should have a standard plan for onboarding your new employees. For example, if your onboarding stages are,

1) Employee introduction,

2) Video lectures,

3) Game simulations, and

4) Training, you should not change these stages often.

However, different times have different needs so you need to constantly update your methods. For instance, now you can add illustrations to videos, for employees to understand better compared to before. However, video learning remains standard unless the needs change at some time.

HR strategy 7: Reduce unnecessary paperwork

On average employees have 54 activities in their onboarding which includes a lot of paperwork. It is important to have less paperwork as it could be time-consuming and annoying. Plus, what is the point of stacking unwanted data and occupying much of the physical space? Firstly, you should reduce the paperwork and take only the necessary information that is a legal requirement. Secondly, switch to virtual paperwork where possible. Today, e signatures are very common, and if you can sign virtually every other thing is secondary. Look for places where you can avoid paperwork or carry it out virtually. This will also save a lot of costs linked to paper purchase and avoid the hassle of keeping the important documents safe. If you lose any of the employee documents you could even face a lawsuit and you should not risk your safety.

 

Benefits of effective HR strategies for onboarding employees successfully

HR strategies are used for different HR-related tasks. These strategies can ease your daily tasks and are a smart way of allocating your resources to the right places. Effective employee onboarding strategies can be very tricky and overwhelming to implement, with so much on the plate. And when the employees are new and you do not often hire, you get stuck with what to include in their onboarding process. HR strategies for onboarding employees can reduce costs, save time, and increase employee retention rates. A higher retention rate creates a stronger employer brand and gives you a competitive advantage in terms of your workforce. Moreover, a successful onboarding reduces the need for onboarding and training again as the hiring is less often. All the benefits are interconnected but start from stage one which is onboarding. 

Conclusion

A successful onboarding goes a long way. Employees will always remember their onboarding experience with you, even if they leave. Did you know? 45% of employees sourced from referrals stay with organizations for more than 4 years. When your current employees are happy with your onboarding, their positive word of mouth can bring you greater talents. Onboarding itself is a complex process but when you carry it right it reaps a lot of benefits that are many times indirectly related. Your HR strategies should be customized according to your organizational and new-hire needs to have a stronger impact. You may not find immediate effectiveness but with time you will gain great benefits.