Is Employee Onboarding Important for Small Businesses?

When you’re a small business, the addition of every new employee most likely fills you with excitement. You think about everything you can do now that you have that employee on staff – fill orders quicker, take on more clients, expand to new opportunities, have a work-life balance! However, seeing that employee was often needed long before you were able to get someone hired, one essential thing is often overlooked. That one thing is the importance of employee onboarding.

 

What is employee onboarding?

Employee onboarding is the process of getting employees acquainted with both their work tasks and the company culture.

In other words, it is a process that helps ensure that the new hire not only becomes fully trained compared to your expectations but also becomes seamlessly assimilate into your company.

Even the best interview candidates and the long-term best employees need help adapting to your company. After all, this employee has most likely never worked for you in this role before. Therefore, they do not truly know what it means to do the job well if they are not taught.

 

Why is it important?

Now, you might be thinking that the perfect hire should know what it means to be successful without extensive onboarding. This is not true.

Studies have shown that when companies properly onboard their employees that they have higher retention rates. Retention rates are the percentage of employees staying with your company compared to the portion of employees leaving your organization.

According to SHRM, 69% percent of new hires are more likely to stay with a company for up to three years when they had an adequately structured onboarding experience.

In other words, when you put focus into employee onboarding, your team members stay with your company longer, and you have to hire less often. As I shared in Three Reasons Why Your Business Should Focus on Employee Retention, hiring can be very costly. 

Why is it important?

Now, you might be thinking that the perfect hire should know what it means to be successful without extensive onboarding. This is not true.

Studies have shown that when companies properly onboard their employees that they have higher retention rates. Retention rates are the percentage of employees staying with your company compared to the portion of employees leaving your organization.

According to SHRM, 69% percent of new hires are more likely to stay with a company for up to three years when they had an adequately structured onboarding experience.

In other words, when you put focus into employee onboarding, your team members stay with your company longer, and you have to hire less often. As I shared in Three Reasons Why Your Business Should Focus on Employee Retention, hiring can be very costly.

 

How long should employee onboarding last?

The next trap for most small business owners is thinking that you are onboarding your employees when you are not.

One of the biggest misconceptions about employee onboarding is that most small business owners see it as an event that only takes place on an employee’s first day. Sometimes, it only lasts as long as it takes to complete the new hire paperwork.

However, employee onboarding is a process that expands well beyond these activities.

While each stage of the process will look different, most HR consulting companies will say that the onboarding experience should last at least a year with corporate companies. Now, with small businesses things are a little different seeing there are fewer people, departments, and often products to get to know to be immersed into the company thoroughly.  However, even with small businesses, an onboarding plan should last at least six months.

Six months might seem like a long time when you needed a fully functional employee yesterday. It’s important to call out that an employee can be producing quality, independent work during the onboarding process.

Onboarding is a series of activities. Yes, it includes training. However, it also includes performance evaluations, retraining (because even the best don’t pick up every detail the first time), and other activities to teach them what it means to be a top functioning employee within your small business.

Six months is also a key timeframe because it’s when most employees make their decision to stay with an organization. Therefore, those first six months are critical to making a great first impression. Unless you want to be often hiring, you need to have a set plan to produce a great first impression.

How to create an onboarding plan

Ready to create a proper and effective onboarding plan for your small business? I’m here to help you! 

Schedule a discovery call and we will discuss how an onboarding plan can impact your company and how we can create the plan your company needs.

 

 

With proper onboarding, your employees can perform to your expectations and stay with your company longer.