Why You Need a Strategic Onboarding Plan in 2019
Strategic onboarding is not a new concept, but it is definitely more relevant in 2019 than it ever has been. With the diminishing talent pool and the ghosting epidemic, upgrading your onboarding strategy is key to retaining the talent you hire. In this article, we cover the ROI of strategic onboarding, the challenges to implementing it, and how to get C-suite buy-in to transform your onboarding program.
Several organizations tend to look at onboarding as a finite task to be completed anywhere between 30 days to 1 year. But is onboarding being overlooked as one of the key steps to retention, engagement, upskilling, and most importantly, improved business outcomes and as a result, increased business revenues? Yes, found a recent survey by SilkRoad Technology.
SilkRoad Technology, a provider of strategic onboarding and workforce provider solutions, announced the findings of a poll titled U.S. Trends and Applications in Employee Onboarding. The survey was conducted over April and May 2019 among 203 HR decision-makers in the U.S. to assess where HR can direct their efforts to prepare the workforce for the coming decade.
The findings? Onboarding was identified as one of the least leveraged events in the employee lifecycle, and an under-recognized contributor to the business bottom line.
Enter – strategic onboarding, which does more than just introduce an employee to their new organization. It helps in the evolution of the employee into a strategic resource for the organization.
What Is Strategic Onboarding?
A step ahead from the conventional employee onboarding process is strategic onboarding. In contrast to its administrative counterpart, strategic onboarding continues throughout an employee’s lifecycle with an organization.
It involves more than just HR admin and takes place with a manager and the team the employee will now be a part of. And most importantly, strategic onboarding involves helping employees upskill to keep evolving in their present role as well as preparing them for future roles. All these events are strategic touchpoints that define the continuous onboarding of an employee in an organization.
Learn More: Do You Measure These 5 Onboarding Metrics?
What Is the ROI of Strategic Onboarding?
In an era where the very notion of work is being disrupted, strategic onboarding keeps employees engaged, and helps prepare them for an uncertain future of work. But let’s look specifically at what the ROI of this process can be.
1. Strategic onboarding is key to remaining relevant in the future
In an exclusive conversation with HR Technologist, Robert Dvorak, CEO of SilkRoad Technology said that onboarding is not just for new hires. It extends to the entire workforce.
Stressing the importance of continuous learning, he said, “HR leaders must prepare their entire workforce – not just new hires – with the skills they need, and continually ‘onboard’ them to new roles of business value and relevance. These new skills include critical thinking, active learning and an agile mindset to build sustained relevancy to their organization and their career.”
It appears that there is a lesser-known connection between onboarding and upskilling the workforce. And Lilith Christiansen, VP of Onboarding Solutions at SilkRoad Technology, was of the same opinion. “More than two-thirds of those surveyed say onboarding is treated as a static event in their company. They are missing opportunities to support employees with continuous, intentional and personalized training that will help them remain competitive and relevant throughout their careers.”
78% of HR decision-makers as identified in the U.S. Trends and Applications in Employee Onboarding report agreed that onboarding is not just for new employees. It should also include older employees. 70% said that their new employee onboarding program lasted only three months or less.
2. Strategic onboarding is key to preparing employees for an AI-driven future
The future of the workforce is AI-driven and there is no escaping it. In fact, as you may have seen, AI is making several strides in HR as well. Yet fears about its application in the workplace and how it might replace jobs abound. And though employees and HR may say they are ready for this future, are they really?
Christiansen says, “During the next three to five years, businesses in every industry are expected to experience massive disruption and opportunity through automated, digital, AI and machine learning advances. The potential is huge (e.g. offloading work to algorithms, bots, and other tools), but it’s also unnerving (‘what does that mean for me and my job?’).”
Research by Lighthouse Research and Advisory confirms this. 81% of employers are concerned about technological disruption changing the skills that employees need to get the job done.
To handle these fears, Christiansen adds, “Companies need to navigate this new normal and determine what to do first. They are struggling with how to prepare new hires and legacy employees for jobs that don’t exist. To do this, they must first anticipate what skills employees will need to remain relevant and competitive, then determine how can onboarding fill these skills gap.”
3. Strategic onboarding keeps employees ahead in the upskilling game
And being armed with skills of the future keeps the organization ahead and better prepared for the future. The survey found that 65% of HR decision-makers said their company’s onboarding program helps existing employees prepare for the next step in their career, but only 11% said their onboarding plan continues beyond the initial training period for new hires.
This indicates that a clear gap exists between onboarding and upskilling – a relationship that is still not that evident to employers.
Christiansen said that the way to remedy this is to “recognize those moments in time that require new skills of an individual and utilizing strategy and onboarding to acknowledge those transitions.” This, she says, will help employees upskill in a way that increases their confidence in a new role.
Learn More:
10 Employee Onboarding Checklist Items You Can’t Afford to Miss
Where Are the Bottlenecks in Implementing a Strategic Onboarding Program?
The SilkRoad research found that insufficient leadership support and poor engagement of front-line supervisors are the two areas where onboarding programs fail to take off. “Research tells us that 70% of a person’s satisfaction on the job comes from their relationship with their direct supervisor. Additionally, change management always fails when it lacks support from leadership,” says Ben Eubanks, Principal Analyst at Lighthouse Research & Advisory.
He continues, “In our advisory work with employers, we have seen a wide variety of initiatives designed to revamp and change onboarding programs, and those that fail tend to ignore the people component in favor of a pure process- or technology-focused approach.”
Technology is always marketed as the solution to any problem HR may face. But technology is only an aid. Focusing more on technology solutions than the people who will use it is one of the key reasons most digital transformation strategies fail – and this includes onboarding. The users of the technology require an equal amount of – if not more – attention in any digital transformation initiative.
Learn More: To Stop the Ghosting Epidemic, Upgrade Your Onboarding
Want C-Suite Buy-in? Show Them the Revenue from and Cost of Continuous Onboarding
The success of onboarding is often measured first in terms of employee engagement and then in terms of the value that an engaged employee can eventually bring to an organization. And while that is the desired outcome of strategic onboarding, a greater focus on more concrete outcomes will help you build your case.
The success of a sales pitch lies in its delivery, and successful delivery relies on speaking to the things that matter the most to your audience.
Dvorak agrees and adds, “HR leaders who want to capture C-suite attention and champion the importance of a dynamic onboarding program should present the significance of continuous onboarding in the context of how it impacts revenue, costs, and risk. For instance, they should bring data illustrating revenue increases that occur when employees receive continuous training and are able to meet the evolving needs of their customers.”
Leadership needs to see the impact of onboarding automation and continuous onboarding in terms of revenue, the cost involved in implementation, and the risks involved in revamping the onboarding program at the organization. These risks may involve losing employees in spite of investing in their continuous onboarding and lack of adoption of onboarding measures you implement.
Only then are they likely to give you the nod for a more advanced onboarding initiative.
Learn More: Are Traditional HR Practices Holding Your Organization Back?
The Next Steps for HR Decision-Makers
“The results of this survey paint a picture of a corporate environment that is not using the full potential of its greatest assets – its people,” said Dvorak when asked about the initiatives HR decision-makers and workforce managers should take towards developing more strategic onboarding programs.
He recommends that HR begin by first looking at the current state of their onboarding programs and slowly incorporating the elements of upskilling into it. “Companies can prepare for the future now by beginning to take advantage of their people through onboarding, learning and performance programs for employee development and training,” Dvorak adds.
But continuous learning is a mutual effort, and employees must be sensitized to the intrinsic value of such learning and prepped to be prepared to learn throughout their lifecycle with a company. This openness and awareness of the need for learning is what will define the success of the learning program.
As a last piece of advice, Dvorak recommends, “HR decision-makers and workforce managers should also work together with the C-suite to create a plan to guide their workforce through these changes and redefine the roles and costs of labor. CHRO, CFO, and CIO leaders can and should work together to create an elegantly designed and integrated ‘AI and Human’ operating model, if for nothing but the competitive advantage it provides.”
Quite a few aspects of employee onboarding can be automated, so that’s where you can be freed up and use that time to build a more strategic approach to onboarding, which will benefit the organization and its employees over the short, medium and long term.
Does your organization take a strategic approach to onboarding? Tell us on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter and let’s discuss the benefits of taking this approach. We’re waiting to hear from you!
