How to Boost Employee Retention with Strategic Onboarding
Written by zoe ALEXIS WHITEHORN
In This Blog
Effective onboarding is the ultimate defense against the sink-or-swim culture that leads to high turnover and burnout. Since 90 percent of employees decide whether to stay with an organization within their first six months, a thoughtful approach to the new hire experience is essential for long-term employee retention.
In this blog, we talk through:
The data behind good onboarding
The five steps you can take as you build a strong onboarding plan for your team
You’ll be ready to create the thoughtful, paced onboarding plan that protects the investment you put into that process and makes good on any promises made during the interview.
Way back in the olden days, I started a role as a junior teammate at an organization I was proud to be joining. On day one, I was eager and excited… but not exactly full of know-how. Those first few days brought a tough realization for any new hire: there was ZERO onboarding.
That meant a lot of wild guesswork and work that inevitably stalled. Cohesion with your new colleagues? That magic mind-meld just can’t happen when someone’s too busy wandering around trying to create a map. That’s a real blow to anyone’s confidence, too.
The lack of onboarding doesn’t just affect the new hire. It slows down our colleagues who rely on new teammates, and it has an impact on the people we serve, too. It sets a sink-or-swim tone that leads to high turnover and burnout that we all want to avoid.
The data tells us all that we need to know about why onboarding matters so much:
There’s massive room for improvement. Only 12 percent of employees say their organization does a good job of onboarding. (Yikes!)
Amazing onboarding experiences → Awesomely happy employees. More than two-thirds of employees who had great onboarding experiences also said they have “the best possible job.”
A good start keeps your people around. About 90 percent of employees decide whether they want to stick around in the first six months.
Good onboarding also means good results. Research from the University of Michigan shows that structured onboarding can lead to an 82 percent increase in new hire retention and a 70 percent boost in productivity.
The good news is that onboarding woes are avoidable. We can do better to bring on new teammates to a team that feels supportive and makes everyone feel like they belong from day one. And honestly, it’s pretty easy.
Here are five ways to welcome and continuously support new teammates.
get the paperwork out of the way
HR forms are a necessary part of starting a new gig. But, they’re objectively unfun. Paperwork does not need to define day one. Keep it short and sweet. Get the logistics out of the way in the first chunk of the day so your new hire can spend the bulk of their time focusing on the people and the mission.
Here’s what that first day could look like:
Welcome meeting or virtual coffee with the manager (ideally someone they met in the hiring person… familiarity is disarming!)
Paperwork sprint
Reading sessions
Peer chat
Closing meeting or virtual snack with the manager (bookmark the day, answer questions)
pair your new hire up with a peer buddy
Connection is so important for building a sense of belonging. A peer can create a safe space to chat about the silly stuff and the day-to-day things. Schedule a set of recurring meetings with a go-to peer who can help the new teammate feel like they’re really a part of the organization.
set up a listening tour
Communicators need to understand every corner of an organization to be effective. They also need to know what’s come before them. The best way to help them find their footing is to send them on a listening tour.
This might mean scheduling 1:1 time with each program lead (or existing comms staff) during their first two weeks. This is the time to learn the history, understand the big picture and start to spot opportunities. It also helps build trusting internal relationships.
build a 30/60/90 day plan, together
Creating a 30/60/90 day plan creates clear, shared expectations from the get-go. It gives new teammates something to work toward and creates a sense that progress matters rather than immediate perfection.
That means good motivation as well as a vision for what success looks like and how we’ll measure it. (Here’s a template from our friends at The Management Center.)
space out and individualize the learning
Louder for our friends in the back: Onboarding is NOT a two week process. It should stretch its supportive wings out through the first year. You want your new teammates to be able to absorb the information, grow and even share feedback.
Remember: Everyone learns differently, and we need to invite people in, then let them get their hands dirty and then process and come back with questions. Give them space.
When we’re helping our partners onboard team members, we often facilitate individual, topic-specific, all-the-way-niched-down trainings.
We walk people all the way through a document in real time. It’s an interactive session.
Then, we let them sit with the document and schedule a follow-up to discuss what they learned or what questions have come up.
This creates a safe space for questions and ensures they aren't overwhelmed by back-to-back presentations.
We also love the “I do, we do, you do” model.
This means we first model the task while they observe (think: a simple screen share meeting.)
Then, in the next meeting, we tackle the work side-by-side.
Finally, we step back and let them take the lead, while we remain available for support.
It creates a sense of ownership and builds confidence. Wa-lah!
The hiring process alone asks a lot of your team. Thoughtful, paced onboarding protects the investment you put into that process and makes good on any promises made during the interview.
Happy, healthy teammates for the win!
P.S. Need help with hiring and onboarding? Give us a shout! We use our custom-built G.U.I.D.E. Method to find and help you onboard mission-aligned talent. That means the right people in the right roles doing what they love to do.
About the Author: With over 15 years of experience in strategic communications, Zoe specializes in hiring and onboarding mission-aligned communicators using Forthright’s proprietary G.U.I.D.E. Method. She helps organizations improve employee retention and team cohesion by bridging the gap between talent strategy and effective communications leadership.
