Feature Onboarding: It s a Personal Experience, Not a One-Time Event By Deb Maher, DeVry, Inc. The Challenge What it means to onboard an employee has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. Not long a, onboarding was synonymous to the day-one orientation filling out paperwork, getting a badge or business cards, and having a first-day lunch. Creative organizations assigned mentors; had follow-up new-hire lunches, and showed videos or PowerPoints that gave folks a glimpse into the organization. My first day at my current organization was 11 1 2 years a. A benefits coordinator gave each of us a stack of papers. We filled out a new-hire document, an I-9, read pamphlets on benefits and 401k, and were given a 15-page document to elect our benefits with a pen and turn it in. They played a 20-minute video, handed out a paper copy of the employee handbook and two hours later, turned us over to our manager. It was not fulfilling. But now, we all know better. Most organizations realize how important onboarding is; however, it is rare to have in place what is needed to be fully impactful. In my view, true impact comes from thinking of onboarding as an Experience, and not an Event. What is the difference between an experience and an event? Think of an amazing experience you have had. Most are not just reserved to that moment in time. They had precursors, nuances, follow-up, reminiscing with those who shared the experience or with whom you would have liked to have shared it. A really transformational experience becomes a part of you, just as onboarding becomes a part of you as an employee. Imagine a od, workable orientation at an average organization. Do you see videos and PowerPoints? Do you see an online component? What about remote too far from a location to have a live orientation? How are engagement, acclimation and excitement created for them? Research has shown that onboarding efforts are still not taken seriously it s an often used buzz word, but without impact. The 2012 Allied Workforce Mobility Survey: Onboarding and Retention, sponsored by Allied Van Lines, showed that one-third of companies spend $0 on onboarding. The average annual spend by all companies surveyed is $99,191 the spend per employee is about $67.00! Serious onboarding focus is critical. Allied s survey shows that companies with a specific budget and strategy for onboarding programs are more likely to: Retain their ; Get them to full productivity; and, Develop them into corporate leaders/influencers. So what is a real focus on onboarding? Not just talk, but a true impactful approach? Forrester s research on onboarding is very comprehensive. To me, it begins to hint that real onboarding is more than a moment in time. According to Forrester, the onboarding experience is the process of acquiring, accommodating, assimilating, and accelerating new users into a system, culture or methodology. This means that onboarding is much more than an administrative task of collecting paperwork, getting new on the payroll, and organizing an orientation meeting. Onboarding maximizes the first months on the job and includes activities such as: consistent communications to ; automation of logistical details, including formerly manual processes; understanding the organization s key work processes; helping with relationship-building across the organization; job mentoring as a way to build competencies; and access to online learning modules and job-specific materials. I believe that onboarding is an experience, not an event. It starts before you acquire a new hire and follows them through a journey that is experiential and impactful. How to best achieve this al is the real opportunity. Organizations must partner with an HRIS vendor to leverage technology and create an oning experience that will transform how new come aboard organizations. I believe that onboarding is an experience, not an event. 14 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2012 Workforce Solutions Review www.ihrim.org
The Opportunity Best-in-class onboarding can support critical organizational als and directly impact the return-on-investment (ROI), such as: Voluntary turnover in first 90 days or first year; Faster time to productivity; Higher engagement levels by new ; and, Stronger performance by new hires in their first year. These are not HR als. These are business objectives with tangible ROI. Aberdeen research has demonstrated that organizations with formalized onboarding processes have significantly better performance. In their study, a formal onboarding process created a 60 percent greater year-over-year improvement in revenue per full-time employee (FTE) and a 63 percent greater year-over-year improvement in customer satisfaction than those with an informal or adhoc onboarding process. Kevin Martin, vice president and principal analyst for human capital research at Aberdeen Group said, The initial experiences of new have a direct impact on the productivity and profitability of an organization. This is where onboarding becomes a competitive necessity and helps explain why 58 percent of 466 executives surveyed for this research indicated onboarding will increase in importance at their organization this year. Leveraging technology in onboarding was absolutely critical for best-in-class results. In fact, 65 percent of best-inclass organizations indicated that their onboarding process is at least partially automated. Again, the opportunity here is to really think of onboarding as an experience and not an event. Forget the first day for a minute. Think of the bigger experience. Now, break that into parts: sub-experiences, if you will. Preapplication (Branding Subexperience) Your real experience with an organization starts before you even apply for a job. It s the reputation and branding of an organization. Do you leverage your career site to be a part of onboarding? Acceptance to Start Date (Preboarding Subexperience) Here s the magic sweet spot. You re thrilled. Your candidate accepted the position and starts in two weeks. Why is it that often we don t communicate with that person again until their first day? Maybe we e-mail them, but the opportunity that exists in this window is huge, and often not leveraged to the extent it should be. Preboarding is the moment of acceptance until the employee shows up for their first day. The focus here is to: seal the deal, create excitement, educate, engage, prepare, acclimate and accelerate, so that the new hire is excited about their new job. They haven t started yet and are Preboarding is the moment of acceptance until the employee shows up for their first day. thinking about the new organization, talking to their friends about it. Maybe they re deciding what to wear on the first day and how early to start the drive in case there is traffic. They are excited and maybe nervous. They are eager. It is fertile ground for their minds and hearts to be impacted. At my organization, we use our HRIS system, cfactor Works, to create a robust preboarding experience that can be a game changer. The moment the recruiter hits the button in the applicant tracking system to indicate an acceptance of a job offer, magic happens. How do we do that? Think of it at a high strategic level and at a tactical level. Strategically, you must choose what you want to achieve during this experience. Common choices can be: Provide concrete information for them to consume; Create excitement and make them feel od about their decision; Immerse them in the culture and values; Allow them to meet senior leaders and those relevant to their new roles; Acclimate with systems they will need to alleviate fears and accelerate learning; Let them meet other online; and, Make them feel as though they are already a part of the team. Tactically, there are a great number of things that can be done to achieve these and other als. They can range from the mundane, like providing benefits summaries and comparative tools before their first day so that they are prepared to make benefits elections; all the way to online discussion groups, personal profile pages, threaded discussions with other in relevant communities and networking before their first day so they have contacts and familiar faces when they show up. Some things I have focused on in the preboarding phase are to create a robust experience that: 1) Conveys our culture and values; 2) Communicates what to expect; and, 3) Allows you to meet others before you even start. With those strategic als chosen, leveraging technology in an HRIS became simple, engaging and fun. To start, we ensure that as soon as the new hire accepts the offer, they are immediately sent an e-mail to their personal e-mail account that takes them to a preboarding site. The site mimics the normal HRIS they will work in once they start, so they are actually already becoming accustomed to the system they will use every day once on board. www.ihrim.org Workforce Solutions Review OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2012 15
experience creating a greater focus before the first day. Once join the first day, it s a flurry of decisions, finding directions, learning your way and getting busy and productive. A great opportunity exists during those exciting few days before you show up and get too busy to read anything. There are tangible results to be gained from great preboarding. Once preboarding was put in place, we found that were more likely to get involved, fill out a social networking profile, complete tasks and spend time learning. This preboarding site above leverages the cfactor Works HRIS system to provide a multi-media experience for new hires. A video is projected to welcome the new hire and targeted letters are based on their specific role. Our preboarding is a personalized experience, based on the new hire s division/branch, role, job and/or location. The welcome letter you see in the screen shot is from his or hers specific institution leader. The history and culture section is specific to their institution, etc. Thus, different new hires have different experiences based on their location and role. Further, we emphasize our values by having our current welcome new hires to our organization and tell them about each topic. Effective preboarding for my organization. Tells new hires what to expect during their first year; Allows them to learn about the organization, branch, leader and location; Provides answers to common questions; Helps them create a personal profile and join online work communities so that they meet others and get connected before they even start; and, Creates excitement and interactive experiences with videos and multimedia. Note how the preboarding site is focused on. One way to convey your culture and values in preboarding is to focus on what is important at your organization. Here, current introduce topics, bringing to life what could be dry information on benefits elections, leadership bios, and the history of the organization. Best-in-class preboarding can transform how new join an organization because it enlarges the Profile Started and in Progress New Hire Tasks Completed w/o Preboarding With Preboarding 39 percent 64 percent 84 w/o percent Preboarding 93 With percent Preboarding Profile Started 39 percent 64 percent and Providing in Progress a preboarding experience is instrumental in getting Preboarding fully involved and ready for their first New Hire Tasks Experience 84 percent 93 percent day. If given the option to access a preboarding site, most 74 Completed percent will of all fully new utilize it if it is robust to the preboarding and provides site before their first day value for them. Those spend an average of 71 minutes becoming acclimated and getting information they need Preboarding Experience 74 percent of all new to the preboarding site before their first day Those spend an average of 71 minutes 66 becoming percent acclimated of and access getting the information new hire hub they need A new employee es to the new hire hub for information an average of six times Day 22 percent One (Orientation of Subexperience) to the new hire community (social So, now networking) it s the first day. Your are ready. They 66 percent know what of to expect. access They ve the learned new hire about hub the organization, A new employee feel od es about to the the new information hire hub forthey have received information and an the average engagement of six levels timesthey have already achieved. 22 percent Day of one is more meaningful to the new now. hire Take community the focus off (social paperwork networking) and benefits elections. Put the focus on teamwork, culture and a great first day. The al then is to have every employee leave at the end of the day and tell someone how great their first day was. Remember, technology can help you here too. While this could be an entire article by itself, technology can create a more interactive experience, and also ensure that there is consistency of experience, even in a geographically dispersed situation where there is no senior leader or HR person physically present. The First Year (Onboarding Subexperience) The entire first year is a subexperience of its own, with many parts. How you break those into parts depends upon your organization, learning curve and expectations. Regardless, Forrester onboarding research shows that 16 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2012 Workforce Solutions Review www.ihrim.org
effective onboarding takes six to nine months. For some organizations, it may be longer. Unfortunately, too often onboarding programs focus on processes. Certainly, there are processes to automate taxes, direct deposit, address, emergency contacts, benefits enrollment, 401(k) information and much more. Of course, you should automate these things and leverage an HRIS to handle reminders and notification and to populate data from one system into all systems without duplicate data entry. To me, those are a given the price of entry. The opportunity in onboarding is how we leverage our HRIS to focus on the employee, not the process. Profile Started and in Progress New Hire Tasks Completed w/o Preboarding With Preboarding 39 percent 64 percent 84 percent 93 percent This screen grab of our HRIS system shows a. Multi-media greets you immediately. Personalized views allow you to find your own senior leader and HR contact, along with their bios and contact information. A focus on the employee is very different in how it looks and feels than onboarding that focuses solely on a process. Employee-focused onboarding is personalized, presenting information based on role and location. Best-in-class, employee-focused onboarding includes: A special hub just for new hires; A visualized path for new hires where an avatar automatically moves down the path based on tenure known in the HRIS; Targeted resources and information based on where the employee is on the path for the first year; Tools to help new, like find a colleague to allow an employee to put a face to a name; Formal and informal ways to find and connect with mentors and create a personal network; Interactive ways to meet others and hear from senior leaders; and, Specialized social networking communities to chat with other new. This New Hire Path in our system demonstrates one way that an organization can use visuals to help see where they are and what resources they will need. The material is engaging and interactive. Preboarding Experience 74 Having percent a of single all new place in the HR system to the (a preboarding new-hire hub) site before to support their just first the dayneeds of new is important. We have an avatar move along a path as the employee Those progresses spend in their an tenure. average Social of 71 networking minutes becoming acclimated and getting information they need and targeted, specific tools are available to the new, and they use them frequently. 66 percent of access the new hire hub A new employee es to the new hire hub for information an average of six times 22 percent of to the new hire community (social networking) What else can you do with an Experience View? Once you think of things as oning experiences for your, a whole different set of inter-relationships become evident that were previously hidden by a silo view. Activities are not one-time events. Take employee engagement, for example. You may survey your once a year, maybe more often, maybe less often. How does an experience view change that? With a broader view, we are ing to be using our HRIS to look at the entire experience with employee life-cycle surveys. We will survey our during preboarding, during the first month of onboarding, and again at exit interviews. We will track engagement questions throughout these phases of the employee life cycle to allow a more holistic view of the employee experience and to track www.ihrim.org Workforce Solutions Review OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2012 17
when/why engagement increases or is negatively impacted. We maintain personal confidentiality, but can track overall trends throughout the many experiences the employee has. Again, this is only possible because of the focus on the employee experience and not siloed events. When you broaden your view to the perspective of the employee, all of these things become possible and so much more. References 2012 Allied Workforce Mobility Survey, Onboarding and Retention, March 2012, 500 HR respondents, www.alliedhriq.com. Claire Schooley, Paul D. Hamerman and Ralph Vitti, Case Study: First Horizon National s 90-Day Onboarding Program Benefits The Company, Forrester Research, Inc., April 23, 2010. Kevin Martin & Justin Bourke, Aberdeen: Onboarding: The First Line of Engagement, February 2010. About the Author As the senior director of HRIS and Shared Services at DeVry Inc., Deb Maher oversees process re-engineering for operational efficiencies, all elements and modules of HR technology solutions, and the interfaces between each of the systems. She has implemented an HRIS, learning management system, applicant tracking system and compensation modeling system, and much more. In her tenure at DeVry, she has served as the director of Human Resources, the organization's ethics officer, and is a senior faculty member at DeVry University's Keller Graduate School of Management, where she has taught Employment Law, Legal, Political and Ethical Dimensions of Business and Strategic Staffing. She holds her J.D. from Northwestern School of Law and her B.A., magna cum laude, from The American University in Washington, D.C. She has been admitted to practice law in Virginia, the District of Columbia, Michigan and Illinois. Prior to joining DeVry more than 11 years a, she was a trial and corporate and employment lawyer for almost a decade. She can be reached at dmaher@devry.com. Once you think of things as oning experiences for your, a whole different set of inter-relationships become evident that were previously hidden by a silo view. 18 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2012 Workforce Solutions Review www.ihrim.org