Reduce churn with onboarding that covers the full employee experience

Why onboarding is critical to reducing churn

The rapid pace of business and high rates of churn demands that new hires are up to speed and contributing quickly. This puts a premium on optimizing onboarding training. And when onboarding is done well, its positive impact can be game-changing:

• 70% improvement in new hire productivity gains
• 33% increase in employee engagement
• 82% improvement in employee retention

(Gallup)

And yet just 12% of employees report a good onboarding experience. Why? Most onboarding solutions can’t operate with the efficiency that your workplace demands. They offer only:

• Homogeneous experiences for learners
• Administrative burdens for time-poor managers
• Poor validation of effectiveness for leadership

As a result, training cycles are protracted, staff is sent to work unprepared, and churn rises even further with frustration. This has real business impact: When employees don’t feel like they are contributing, they leave – 20% of turnover occurs within 45 days. And it costs organizations 20% of base salary to recruit a replacement hire. Instead of developing a team prepared to perform, organizations are left to account for wasted time and money. 

So what does good onboarding training look like? What can organizations do to ensure they have onboarding solutions that are ready to meet the moment?

Onboarding as a continuous process

To answer that question, we must first understand that the key to good onboarding lies in viewing the function not as a one time event, but rather as a continuous process that serves the entire employee experience. It goes without saying that getting a new hire set up in the payroll system and detailing their benefits is a necessity for any onboarding program. But if that’s the end of the story, then one of the most effective opportunities an organization has to influence the return on investment on that new hire is lost. 

Good onboarding makes sure that new hires understand their role, not just in the immediate future but also in the medium term, is critical. They need to understand how the role they’re filling fits in with the organization’s broader goals. They also need to understand the organizational culture and establish interpersonal connections that engender loyalty to the organization. And they need to feel that there’s a path they can follow that will make them feel and fully participate in the organization’s growth. This has never been more true than in the dawning age of hybrid and remote work, where growing numbers of employees never step foot in your business, rarely meet their colleagues face to face, and are more willing to jump from job to job if there is a better offer to be had.

A continuous approach to onboarding may seem counterproductive to the goal of getting a new hire ready to contribute in as little time as possible. But the reality is that, a rush to deliver proficiency delivers only false-positives and unsure hires whose uncertainty can easily turn to frustration.

This is all well and good in theory, one might say, but trying telling that to time-poor managers who are already struggling to keep their head above water. This is where most of the onboarding tools vendors have brought to the market have let organizations down. These learning platforms and other more niche technologies prioritize speed and scale (both important variables no doubt) but fail to do so while also offering a truly personalized experience, one that reflects who they are, what they know, and what they need to do to be successful in their new role.

Effective onboarding tools

What do tools that accomplish this level of personalization look like? Is it even possible to achieve for a company with hundreds of employees? Thousands? A new breed of smarter learning technologies has emerged in the last few years that make the answer to this question a resounding “yes”.

Learning platforms: Learning Management System, Learning Experience Platform… call them whatever you like: the truth is the once clear distinction between these tools has collapsed in recent years as businesses have made it clear that all they really care about is quality learning for their people. And while digital learning has become more modular and agile in recent years, for most organizations, some kind of learning platform remains the home base of their learning program. In the context of onboarding, there are few things to keep an eye out for as you evaluate your learning platform options:

• Personalized experiences: An effective onboarding solution offers user-directed learning and role- based learning, dynamic group management, multi-lang support, and more to create ‘one-size-fits-one’ experiences to meet your learners where they are. 
• Automated administration. Be it through nudges that keep learners engaged or the automatic assignment of mandatory learning, your managers should be free to provide targeted support and encouragement while the platform keeps onboarding progressing at the optimal pace (keeping managers informed every step of the way).
• On-the-job learning. Deep search and user generated content allow learners to access information when it’s most needed. A strong onboarding platform seamlessly blends digital content, social learning, in-person events and on-the-job training into engaging pathways that keep the human element alive. Complete with mobile support, learners shouldn’t need a desk or an email address to engage in learning.

Digital adoption platforms: A new category for many organizations, digital adoption platforms take the concept of “learning in the flow of work” to new levels. Learning to use business software – Salesforce, Workday, SAP, etc – is one of the most common onboarding activities. This makes sense – these softwares are what day-to-day business operations run on and every organization manages their instance differently. And every minute employees spend learning how to use enterprise software is a minute that isn’t spent adding value for the business. Challenging software design, inefficient training, and constant change can make that time add up quickly: McKinsey estimates that the average employee spends nearly 10 hours a week searching for information on the software they use to do their jobs. Digital adoption platforms (like Learning Pool’s OnScreen) allow you to create, embed, and edit step-by-step guidance overlaid directly onto business software. These guides are proven to improve productivity by 300% and reduce training time by 55%. By providing employees with actionable guidance at the point of use, OnScreen makes your enterprise software training smarter. What separates the best digital adoption platforms from the pack is the simplicity with which they can be deployed. 

They should be:  

• Simple to use: Any trainer should be able to publish a guide on their first try.
• Simple to support: It should be 100% web-based with nothing to install, no implementation fees, and dedicated customer success management.
• Simple to buy: Straightforward pricing should include the ability to use it with unlimited software applications and processes, reducing time to realizing an ROI.

Skills management: As established, understanding both how you’ll contribute to an organization and what a path for long-term success might look like is important information for any new hire to receive as part of an onboarding process. A skills inventory is a great way to offer that. Good skills management has the ability to capture the skills each employ has when they join the organization and prepares them for the skills they’ll need to davance. It makes it simple to create and maintain individual skills profiles for your entire workforce, identifying skills gaps so that personalized, purposeful learning can be assigned. It presents opportunities for internal mobility and builds more agile teams. And through a continuous stream of real-time market intelligence, good skills management shows you the emerging skills trends your team will need for your business to continue to compete in the future. Skills management technologies like Learning Pool’s skills builder:

• identify skills gaps
• personalize skills development
• create opportunities for mobility
• build more agile teams
• monitor the latest skills trends

The benefits of an onboarding process that recognises the real needs of new hires will be evident in a swift move to proficiency, the development of better motivated and engaged employees, and a willingness to stay on, gain experience and contribute. Investing in the right onboarding strategy and getting people off to the right start represent a win-win for employees and organizations alike.