As we continue into 2019, strategic employee onboarding continues to be a key focus for many organizations. The most innovative companies understand that building an effective onboarding program is an ongoing process. Sapling, a provider of onboarding and HR software that automates workflows and empowers People Operations teams with connectivity, data, and insights on their global workforce identified 5 employee onboarding statistics you must know in 2019:
1. Organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%.
Source: Glassdoor
Unemployment is low, job openings are high, and people have many choices when it comes to where they want to work—so it’s important to engage and retain employees from day 1. A strong employee onboarding process can help you accomplish that, while also helping new hires ramp faster, so they can be productive sooner.
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2. 58% of organizations say their onboarding program is focused on processes and paperwork.
Source: HCI
It’s no surprise that only 12% of employees think their organization does a great job with onboarding when more than half focus on processes and paperwork. Furthermore, one-third said their onboarding program was informal, inconsistent, or reactive. The best employee onboarding programs are structured and strategic, rather than administrative, with a focus on people, not paperwork.
3. Employees who had a negative new hire onboarding experience are twice as likely to look for new opportunities in the near future.
Source: Digitate
The average US employer spends $4000 and 24 days to hire a new worker. With a negative new hire onboarding experience, your new hire could walk out and effectively double your cost and time to hire. Take into account the cost of vacancy, lost productivity, and the impact on morale, losing an employee so soon after they’ve been hired is much worse than it appears on the surface.
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4. The Top 5 onboarding challenges are an inconsistent application, competing priorities, measuring ROI, buy-in/manager accountability, and insufficient internal resources.
Source: HCI
If you’re facing these challenges with your employee onboarding program, know that you’re not alone. The good news is that many organizations have overcome these challenges. An employee onboarding solution can also help in many of these areas. For instance, it can reduce manual tasks to maximize resources, and can automate reminders to help ensure a consistent application and management accountability.
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5. The average new hire has 54 activities to complete during their onboarding experience.
Source: Sapling
The average new hire will be assigned 3 documents to sign, upload, or acknowledge, and 41 administrative tasks to complete. They will also have 10 outcomes, which are achieved learning goals around the company culture, market knowledge, and role alignment. This variety of activities ensure the new hire is fully acclimated and integrated into their new role.
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