Recruiting and hiring employees is hard and consumes a lot of your company’s resources. A well planned and executed employee onboarding program will mitigate and can even eliminate many of the costs by improving employee retention. If you don’t believe there are challenges around bringing on new employees, consider the following numbers.

According to a paper by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), hiring an employee isn’t even half the battle, you also have to fight to keep them.

• Half of all hourly employees leave their job within 120 days of being hired.

• In general, employees only have about 120 days to “prove” themselves at a job.

• Half of all management hires fail at their job within 18 months of beginning a new position.

Pretty startling, right? Yet, the financials around hiring don’t get any better. SHRM also reported it costs, on average, approximately $4,129 and takes about 42 days to fill an empty position. Imagine, a person is hired, placed in a position, and there is a 50% chance they will leave within four months.

Those numbers alone should spark an interest in improving your employee retention.

So, let’s get down to it, how do you keep a new hire once you have them?

Infuse Your Company Culture Into Your Employee Onboarding

You’ve heard this before, but it bears repeating. In fact, you might want to make it a mantra: “Employee onboarding must be part of your company culture.”

Onboarding is a process everybody at your company goes through, so it only makes sense to include and introduction to your company culture during this process.

As a starting point, ensure your company has a specific onboarding program. This should include a plan or flow chart for all the steps your new hire will perform. Include a check-off list, so you know your new hire has completed all of they required items.

Next, introduce your new hires to your current people on a personal tour. Give them the chance to interact with the team. If possible, spend time at an experienced employee’s workstation. Encourage your more experienced employees to explain what they do, their projects, their insights, and how they fit into the company. Go beyond a quick meet-and-greet as nothing substantial truly evolves from those meetings. The purpose of this effort is to let the new hire learn there is a collaborative vibe at your company, and they are not working alone.

In this setting, you will find that an acknowledgment, a friendly word, and a positive attitude all go a long way towards helping the new hire acclimate to their new position.

There are so many different ways to incorporate the culture you’re building or feeding too. For example, if you want a collaborative environment, provide them with a buddy. If you’re company is focused on a results driven environment, provide them with an accountability partner where there are defined outcomes or results expected. If you want both and it works, find the middle ground.

What Are You Really Trying To Do?

A successful new hire onboarding process is more than just getting the employee introduced to the facilities, team, and workflow. Ask yourself, what are you trying to do? Yes, you are trying to make sure they are ready to go to work and be productive as quickly as possible. However, the long term goals are for this new hire to stay productive and stay at the company for a long time.

Throughout your employee onboarding program, keep that in mind. You’ve chosen the right person, now give them the socialization, the resources to succeed, and the right incentives to stay.

The Culture Operations Specialists at Equal Parts is experienced at helping companies construct and implement high-value onboarding programs. If you are experiencing some unexpected loss of new hires, you need to revamp your existing process, we invite you to contact us to discuss your specifics.