How do you know if you are successful at onboarding your new employees?  Look around you.  Do you see happy, confident workers?  Do you see employees that are comfortable with their job responsibilities and understand what they need to do to be successful?  If you do, then you need to analyze the key factors that demonstrate how your workforce got where it is today and keep doing it!

Knowledge is power, I’ve heard, and I believe it also brings responsibility.  I remember a new employee that was hired for a bank I used to work for.  She was a very pleasant, talented, and capable individual possessing a background that included extensive work with mortgage loans.  She was hired to assist a senior loan officer with various administrative duties, some of which were quite detailed.  There were several administrative employees on staff all of whom performed the same duties.  However, a disconnect occurred and no one bothered to

train her on the processes and procedures to be able to perform the duties of her job effectively.  No one organized her training, and no one followed up with her.  The other admins were far too busy to train her, so the story was.  I wondered if they were just too competitive to share their knowledge, or if they didn’t realize that a front-end investment of time would save them time in the long run and add a valuable team member to the bank.  Needless to say, her tenure there was very short-lived, about two months.  They were probably the longest two months of her life because she was unintentionally set up to fail, but really the bank failed her by not onboarding her properly.

Onboarding is a long-term process of bringing new employees into the company, making sure they know what is expected of them and how to add value.  This process of onboarding can take from six months to a year and a half to achieve the desired result of having employees on board who truly feel comfortable with and valued by the company and their coworkers.  This is a period of time during which employees transition from being considered the “new person” to being a member of the team.

Please share with us your onboarding process and how you have been successful retaining good employees.