New research about new employee onboarding shows the levels of staff engagement, leavers and those at risk. Find out the reasons new employees leave and problems with the onboarding process.
New Employee Onboarding in 2014
Onboarding new employees is key to preventing high early attrition rates. Staff surveys of new starters can help create more effective new employee inductions.
They can also improve and inform employee engagement strategies and staff retention. Currently, the UK skills shortage makes it even more important to utilise psychometric testing to lower employee turnover.
This research demonstrates the specific needs of onboarding new starters. In 2014 great{with}talent researched 7,490 new employees to test their staff engagement levels.
This chart shows the number of new starters who are actively leaving, ‘at risk’ and engaged.
Read: Why HR Doesn’t Understand the Real Reasons Employees Leave.
New Employee Engagement
This staff research shows that 20% of new employees are not engaged. This effects productivity, customer relations and can cause early attrition.
This chart also shows that three per cent of new starters have left their employment in the first twelve months. This can cause a large waste in resources for any organisation.
There’s the recruitment cost of these individuals as well as cover work, loss of productivity and possibly training costs. During these turbulent economic times early staff turnover is a worry.
Read: HR Onboarding New Employees and Why New Starters 30 and Under Leave.
Top Five Reasons New Starters are ‘At Risk’
The pay and benefits package (42%) only came in at second place, contrary to popular opinion. The biggest issue for new employees is the potential for progression through the organisation (46%).
These results show that the employee onboarding process needs to include future possibilities to increase staff engagement. It’s also key to be honest with potential employees during the recruitment process.
Simply giving new starters clear and honest information from the outset improves employee engagement. This is a low cost staff engagement solution.
The pay and benefits package (42%) continues to be a high concern. Therefore, it remains important to stay as competitive as possible in any industry to improve talent retention.
Similarly a work-life balance (30%) is a high concern. Another low cost example of employee engagement strategy is flexible working. This trend sees new starters expecting organisations to adapt and rely less on a nine to five workday.
Flexible working hours can benefit some companies directly, from news companies to international conglomerates. It can also be beneficial indirectly.
By offering more flexible working hours, employees feel more like individuals. When working hours can meet your staff’s needs, they come to work more relaxed and motivated. This is certainly something to consider across the board.
At a close number four is the nature of the work itself (29%). Unfortunately, this is an expected factor for new employees. Like the number one spot, this concern can be diminished through honesty.
Onboarding, alongside recruitment and retention, should be an accurate portrayal of the role and organisation. From these results, onboarding inductions need to focus on this aspect.
Whilst training and development opportunities (27%) can also be discussed in the early stages. If there aren’t resources available for external training, internal development can be used.
This may include low cost schemes like shadowing. New starters can learn from more experienced employees and provide any cover or support work in future.
By being aware of these ‘at risk’ issues, organisations can improve employee engagement. Furthermore this does not have to cost companies a lot of resources to gain benefits.
Contact great{with}talent and increase “speed to performance” of new starters with this onboarding tool:
(Main image from Willerby Hill)