New onboarding best practices research for female employees shows the levels of staff engagement, leavers and those at risk. Find out the reasons why new starters leave and problems with the onboarding process.

HR Onboarding Best Practices for Female Employees 2014

Onboarding new employees is key to preventing high early attrition rates. Whilst demographic differences are important to recruitment and retention because one size does not fit all staff.

This is true of employee engagement strategies and taking on new hires. Staff engagement improves productivity, customer service and employee retention. Therefore tailoring initiatives to your staff is key.

Female employee turnover can incur costs for organisations including recruitment, training and cover work. That’s why it’s important to use exit data to improve talent management and engagement.

This research demonstrates the specific needs of onboarding new female employees. In 2014 great{with}talent researched 3,469 new starters to test their staff engagement levels.

This chart shows the number of new employees who are actively leaving, at risk and engaged.

Read: Why Female Employees Leave and Staff Retention 2014.

Compared to the overall new employees sample of 7,490 new starters, female employees have an average amount in each group. Therefore the results show that these new staff are average for early attrition.

This also shows that there are female employees who are willing to leave within the first 12 months of employment. Whilst a significant amount are ‘at risk’.

This makes staff engagement initiatives important for employee retention. Early attrition can cost organisations due to the aforementioned reasons and through lack of productivity.

Read: How to Calculate Staff Turnover Rate with Exit Process Cost Calculator.

The top reason new starters listed for being ‘at risk’ of early attrition is potential for progression through the organisation (41%). This is lower than the overall batch (46%) who also ranked it in first place.

Likewise, the pay and benefits package (37%) was marked lower (42%). This shows that women are less concerned about these areas than the average group but they are still their main issues.

On the other hand, work-life balance (31%) had increased slightly. Whereas the nature of the work itself (31%) had gone up even more.

Training and development opportunities (27%), however, remained at an average score. These results show that female employees have their own needs and staff engagement strategies should be adjusted to meet them.

Onboarding Best Practices

It’s clear that new hires need to be introduced to a company as seamlessly as possible. Onboarding best practices involve meeting all the technical needs of new employees as well as immediate employee engagement initiatives.

Alongside welcome e-mails, an uninterrupted onboarding orientation and a well-stocked desk (complete with a list of responsibilities), there’s other steps to take. Firstly, this includes a one-to-one with the new employee.

This involves a frank and honest conversation about the nature of the work, the culture of the organisation and the potential for progression. This can also take place with potential employees to get the right fit during recruitment.

As a result, new hires will have realistic and well-informed expectations of every aspect of their new role. Moreover this may be a good opportunity to explain other training and development opportunities.

Setting up a mentoring scheme can also be a great way for new employees to become integrated into the organisation. It also allows them to build a career plan from day one. They can therefore build skills and become integral to the organisation.

Assigning mentors can be an opportunity to reward an existing employee. Similarly low cost recognitions can quickly and easily improve morale and the nature of the work itself.

Meanwhile flexible working can address female employees’ need for a work-life balance. It is becoming more and more common and is a simple way to relieve stress on staff whilst increasing productivity.

The differences between female employees and new starters as a whole shows the importance of collecting onboarding and exit data. It can easily and cheaply improve employee engagement and staff retention in 2014.

Contact great{with}talent and increase “speed to performance” of female employees with their onboarding tool:

(Main image from Huffington Post)