How to Make Onboarding Engaging (Without Overloading New Hires)
Employees joining a new organisation often feel stressed and overwhelmed. Starting a job can be scary, with new hires expected to perform their responsibilities to high standards, build relationships with colleagues, and pass probation periods. New hires can quickly become overwhelmed by the pressure of learning company policies and the latest industry regulations. In the long term, this pressure can spell disaster for HR teams, creating high turnover and workforce gaps.
Why does this happen? Keep reading as we explain the consequences of information overload and how to avoid it with an engaging onboarding process.
What Are the Benefits of an Engaging Onboarding Experience?
An engaging onboarding experience provides the tools new hires need to feel ready for the role. From introducing company policies and setting up technology to building colleague relationships, it’s no wonder 60% of organisations see this process as the key to success!
Effective onboarding balances formal tasks like contract signing and orientation with activities that welcome new hires into your organisation’s culture. Think mentoring schemes or team-building events for larger recruitment drives. The benefits of achieving this balance include:
Improved Performance
Effective onboarding helps new hires learn their responsibilities within the workplace, preventing any confusion about what’s expected.
Knowing how to use IT and support systems properly also encourages independent problem-solving. New hires build confidence while enhancing time-to-productivity — how quickly staff become competent in their roles. Together, these benefits can boost employee performance by up to 70%!
Lower Turnover
Poor onboarding programs that leave new hires feeling unsupported can create poor morale, causing more employees to leave early.. Effective onboarding eliminates the cost of replacing these employees, including recruitment expenses and the valuable knowledge lost.
Higher Retention
New hires who participate in a well-structured onboarding program are 82% more likely to remain at a company for up to three years. A comprehensive induction process enhances the employee experience, allowing them to properly learn the company’s values. They also bond better with colleagues and gain a greater sense of belonging.
Enhanced Reputation
Employees who connect to the organisation’s culture are six times more likely to recommend their workplace to others. Word-of-mouth referrals are among the best ways to gain a reputation as a caring employer, while also instilling trust in your brand.
Why Overloading New Hires Backfires
Overloading new hires with policies, expectations, forms, and introductions during onboarding backfires due to the Cognitive Load theory: when the amount of information delivered exceeds the brain’s ability to process it. Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that worker shortages are currently 42.9% higher than pre-pandemic levels. Coupled with rising recruitment costs, these figures mean that HR teams must get new hires up to speed as quickly as possible.
Rushed onboarding processes are often the result, with large amounts of information being delivered in a short period. Though it may be a quicker approach, allowing HR to tick that all-important compliance box, how much of this information have new hires really taken in?
New hires may quickly become frustrated, and their lack of understanding leads to mistakes being made early on. Errors are detrimental to productivity and performance in all sectors. But for industries like health and social care, they can be incredibly dangerous, potentially costing lives.
Over time, frustration can turn to resentment, particularly for overburdened staff in the aged care sector, where worker shortages could reach 110,000 by 2030. When aged care employees feel disengaged from the organisation and its culture, productivity and performance levels suffer. Employers ultimately find it difficult to retain a motivated workforce, which compromises quality of care and life for residents.
How to Create an Engaging Onboarding Program
To create an engaging onboarding program, HR teams must secure the trust and attention of staff from day one. But is there a way to minimise lengthy onboarding processes and ensure efficiency, without sacrificing engagement? Here’s how to integrate four key elements of a good onboarding program into your organisation:
Deliver Information at the Right Pace
Engaging onboarding programs should help new hires manage the influx of essential information. Both the speed and format of delivery matter here, which varies based on the individual employee’s role and past experience. Not everyone has the same learning style, and while some may better absorb information via charts and videos, others prefer audio recordings or even working with a colleague.
Once you’ve discovered which way they absorb information best, create a step-by-step guide that takes your new employee through the onboarding journey. Creatively introduce expectations of their day-to-day role:
- Videos: Recorded around the workplace by real employees and managers.
- Compliance Checklists: Ensure new hires have completed all relevant training on their end, while meeting industry compliance regulations on yours.
- Welcome Kits: Create a company handbook describing your history, mission, and values. Include fun items like personalised company merchandise too!
Create Smarter Onboarding Processes
Engaging doesn’t have to mean inefficient. High-quality onboarding tools eliminate manual administrative processes, replacing them with paperless, automated workflows to enhance efficiency and build engagement.
Look for software that offers:
- Automatic policy document and advanced contract creation
- Secure, compliant online approvals distributed to all relevant departments
- Candidate welcome portals with all the necessary information in one place
- Automated notifications, reminders, and milestone celebrations
One of the most important elements is personalisation. Select software offering fast, flexible onboarding workflows that adapt to each employee, with information released gradually in their preferred format.
Make Onboarding Fun
A huge 30% of new hires leave within the first 90 days. 32% of these hires don’t see the company culture as a good fit for them!
To avoid this, focus on building a culture that encourages collaboration between all employees, featuring positive interactions and incentives. A great place to start is with informal monthly gatherings like team lunches or out-of-work social events to celebrate significant milestones.
Fun onboarding processes can be part of this culture. Consider themed onboarding weeks for large recruitment drives, filled with events and ice-breaker activities for new hires and long-serving colleagues to meet.
With employee happiness shown to boost productivity by around 12%, the results of a fun onboarding process that highlights your positive organisational culture can be incredibly far-reaching.
Offer Feedback
Setting aside regular times to meet with new hires allows you to share both positive and constructive feedback. This process demonstrates that you’re invested in their development and career progression, while also giving them a chance to check in with any concerns.
To inform your feedback, choose digital onboarding tools that offer real-time data insights into employee performance. Many tools also allow you to monitor workforce engagement trends and adapt the onboarding process as you go.
Another key area to consider is communication. Frequent face-to-face feedback meetings aren’t always possible, particularly for shift workers or during busy seasons, while email feels cold and impersonal. Maintaining a good flow of communication can therefore be difficult between HR teams and employees.
Digital onboarding tools bridge this gap, strengthening engagement between feedback sessions with notifications and quick check-ins customised to each employee.
Keep Your Workforce Engaged and Efficient with Smart Onboarding
Whether you’re gearing up for a busy season or refining recruitment procedures, engaging onboarding experiences are key to success. They foster an organisational culture where new hires feel supported, productivity is high, and turnover is low.
And the best way to achieve this? By replacing manual processes with onboarding software, you can create in-depth, creative programs without sacrificing speed and efficiency.
At Onboard Express, our simple workflowsintegrate seamlessly with your existing HR systems. Create tailored digital contracts and secure online approvals, while helping new hires access essential training and policy documents from a personalised online portal — all while maintaining compliance and engagement.
Book a demo today to see how Onboard Express delivers purpose-built onboarding experiences without overwhelming your new hires.