Transform the Employee Experience with These 5 Onboarding Resources

A good onboarding program is a wise investment to ensure your new recruits are set up for success. Here’s why:

⇾ It boosts productivity. Studies show that a strong onboarding program can boost new hire productivity by 70%.

⇾ It helps you retain more employees. Organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82%.

⇾ It builds culture. Cultivating a strong culture in your workplace takes time. If you can’t retain employees, that process takes even longer. With a structured onboarding program, employees are 58% more likely to be with your company after three years.

⇾ Its absence leads to turnover.  Research has shown 4% of new employees leave a job after a first day that goes poorly, and more than a fifth of turnover occurs in the first 45 days on the job. 

We’ve compiled a list of our best onboarding resources and articles so you can bolster your own program and improve the employee experience for your team.

1) The 7 Benefits of an Onboarding Program

Good onboarding programs educate and engage employees so they become productive members of your organization. The benefits to your business are many. This article explains how strong onboarding programs can:

1. Attract and retain top talent.
2. Engage employees early on.
3. Boost business growth.
4. Build trust and alignment.
5. Forge connections with employees.
6. Encourage open communication.
7. Decrease turnover.

Keep reading to learn why these seven benefits matter and how to build a better experience for your new recruits.

2) 10 Things to Prepare for An Employee’s First Day

Making the right impression will not only make your employee feel prepared for the first day in the new role, but will ensure that they feel comfortable and welcome at your organization.

Turn the typical first-day employee anxiety into genuine excitement. Here are 10 things to prepare for your new employee’s first day at work; they’re simple, but will go a long way.

3) 5 Best Practices to Improve Your Employee Onboarding Program

Learning from others’ best practices can be a great way to enhance your own onboarding program. That’s why earlier this year we hosted a live webinar with two Zenefits customers who aced the onboarding game. In the webinar, we polled attendees to hear who is responsible for onboarding at their organization. From the 283 respondents, here’s what we learned:

At most small businesses, onboarding ownership is shared. Managers, executives, and individual contributors are working together to provide new hires with the tools and education to hit the ground running.

Looking for suggestions to maximize the team’s impact on new hire experience? Keep reading to find out what examples our featured guests had to share.

4) Onboarding Best Practices That Benefit New Hires and Your Business

Breaking the ice with a new hire can be difficult for existing employees. But at The Channel Company, Vice President of HR Erika McGrath has found a clever way to fix this problem.

“When I give candidates their offers, I always ask them what their favorite candy is. I don’t tell them why I’m asking, but on their first day in the office, we fill a big bowl with all of their favorite candy and put it on their desk. This makes it easy for people in the office to come by, grab some candy, and maybe start a conversation with someone new,” McGrath explains.

On their first day in the office, we fill a big bowl with all of their favorite candy and put it on their desk. This makes it easy for people in the office to come by, grab some candy, and maybe start a conversation with someone new. — Erika McGrath, VP of HR

Keep reading to find out more uncommon but memorable ways to super-charge your onboarding process.

5) The Definitive Guide to Onboarding: The First 30 Days

Building an effective onboarding program takes time and careful planning. But you can move faster and see ROI sooner by starting with the right strategy, and following up with a time-based implementation plan that benefits both employee and employer.

Our definitive guide to onboarding helps you do exactly that. In the process of reading it, you’ll learn how to:

• Create a creative onboarding program that drives employee engagement and business growth
• Build a strong foundation for employee success early on
• Ramp up new employees so they’re more productive, faster
• Increase employee retention by focusing on what truly engages new hires

You also get other onboarding resources like worksheets, checklists, and email templates to help you optimize every stage of the onboarding process. Download your copy below!

Note: this article was originally published in August 2016 and has since been updated.