PA-ESSAY-Onboarding

Importance and best practices of Onboarding in an OrganizationJani Dishesh (1874568)Submitted to: Mr Louai RahalDue Date: 06/27/2019Fairleigh Dickinson UniversityIntroductionOnboarding is seen as an important step in the process of new employee hiring (Isson & Harriott (2016)). It is the process of making new employees feel friendly and socialize with work environment and colleagues, understand the culture of the organization, introducing the practices of working environment as per employee’s job roles and providing them the resources needed to fulfil job duties. Socialization in onboarding is important because it focuses on elaborating the organization cultural values, organization goals and what organization expects from its employees. It includes, but not limited to acquiring the information, expertise, tools and attitude to perform in the organization effectively (“Onboarding,” n.d.). Right Information is needed for employees to work in the right way because it enables employees to evaluate what skills are needed for task execution and mind-set towards working in new environment. Organization is responsible for providing necessary tools and equipment to employees and provide training of operating them if needed. Onboarding provides the idea of the culture of an organization which is the set of values and behaviour of company, that every task executed and decisions made by its employees convey to the society. It is the representation of organization as a summary of everything that it does or associated with. Culture is also the attitude of the organization towards social responsibility. So for every employee it is very important to understand the culture of the company to have a good employee-organization fit and to work at full capacity (Meyer & Bartels (2017)), otherwise whole culture would collapse (Isson & Harriott (2016)). Therefore cultural values, expected behaviour from employees and chain of the executive hierarchy should be well explained in the onboarding process.Importance of OnboardingAccording to Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA), “35% of companies spent zero dollars on onboarding, while spending an average of $11,000 in hiring someone” (Belaiche, 2017), which is clearly not afford as it is repeating hiring process without finding the bugs in the whole hiring process, one of which can be lack of an effective onboarding process. A sound HR process not only selects good and qualified employees as per job positions but also take actions to retain them and get most output from them. Most companies even did not set a clear and achievable goals for new hired employees which does not help track or monitor their progress. As per data available for USA region, poor or no onboarding can have high turnover of new employees. Turnover of new employees prior to one year time is 23% which costs organizations in range of 100% – 300% of again new hired employee’s pay check (Ferrazzi, 2015). Also it takes almost 8 months’ time period for a beginner worker to establish full productivity in new environment (Ferrazzi, 2015).Obstacles of onboardingThe most common roadblock to competent onboarding process is the lack of time (Ferrazzi, 2015) and efforts towards its design and execution by managers in order to measure, mentor and collaborate with new hires. Managers have so many tasks with existing employees, projects and they have to report to higher authorities as well, which disable their capacity to work and attend with new hires. The solution to this problem can be found with appropriate usage of ERP and Managerial analytical programs. The company will be required to invest on such onboarding digital platforms but it enables reviewing of much insightful data into new hires’ work and progress. For example, having a well designed software helps mangers monitor compliance issues remotely and may intervene if any action is needed as per such event. They can create custom notification preferences and get notified. They can engage new employees with custom activity campaigns in the socialization process and make them feel it. It is believed some time proper notice of some actions of new employee from this data may help management stop wrong practice and tackle future obstacles by providing rightful training or guidelines (Ferrazzi, 2015). Consequences of poor onboardingHaving no onboarding stage or a poorly designed onboarding have side effects on various factors. Poor onboarding creates a bad or improper image of the organization on employees mind. It also do not help understand the culture of company to employees in the intended manner which causes difference in expectations on both side; employee’s job expectation from job and organizations’ work expectations from employee. This causes performance deduction, employee turnover and compliance issues, and imbalance of over all productivity of the team. Also the organization bears the extra cost of continuous or timely recruitment processes (Ferrazzi, 2015). The overall brand value of organization is reflected by commitment and views of workers on the organization process and the market value or sales and services satisfaction. The following case study helps understand what difference can be made by presence of a well structured onboarding process.Case study: Parkview HealthParkview health, Regional Medical center (Indiana and Ohio) provides medical care for every individual. They were experiencing employee turnover issues as it was affecting management costs and standard of care that the organization wanted to provide. With the help of ‘Work institute’ they setup a strategy to identify and then resolve this issue and gain high retentions of skilled employees.The program started with the exit interviews over cell phone from employees who quit to know the real reason behind quitting the job. Over some time handful data was collected and as a surprise the salary expectation was not the main reason to leave the job. They identified that job expectations were the main reason of high turnover and supported by smaller issues like gap in cultural fit, lack of proper orientation and onboarding process. They worked on data collected and came with a solution of a three stage orientation system: Pre-Arrival, System Orientation and Department or Unit Specific Orientation. This time special focus was of job expectations and they made it clear. They also made employees rate this new system on each and every stage and consistently made adjustments if needed. The third phase included a higher employee and sometimes team of employees to train these new employees. They observed high satisfactory ratings of the new process from the employees. They receive about 33% reviews stating the onboarding experience was excellent. Effectively 36% declined rate was observed in the separation of new first year nurse employees.The review also included that there were gaps in hiring process and employee expectations and meeting organization fit. They recreated the whole hiring process on the base of exit interview inputs and changed it.This case study provides example of the importance of onboarding. It is necessary for organization to have employees understand what the job is, what are the organizational beliefs, what organization expects from them. Also onboarding is just not about welcoming and socializing new comers to people and system, it is the best opportunity for organization to put a strong positive impression on new employees (Isson & Harriott (2016)) so that there is a high level of commitment, loyalty and job satisfaction which turns into high retentions of employees. Best practices of effective onboardingAfter analyzing above discussions it is clear that onboarding plays a crucial role in an organization. So to make the most out of it, it is recommended to review recruiting as well as onboarding process by an organization at a fixed interval and get insightful data by comparing it with variables like employee turnover, employee performance, sales and other business data. It is also good practice to have employees and new hires give feedback on the process of management, performance and overall experience at the organization. Onboarding is a long term continuous process (Isson & Harriott, (2016)) of development of positive emotional and task based commitment, loyalty and job satisfaction.Identifying problems and needs of best onboarding process leads to some suggestions as below.Design the onboarding process considering business culture and values.Providing maximum onboarding activities to ensure maximum socialization among new employees (Klein, Polin & Sutton (2015)).Events of onboarding should be in a more formal way to gain proper attention by new hires (Klein, Polin & Sutton (2015)).If possible provide pre-hire or early orientations to new or prospective employees (Klein, Polin & Sutton (2015)).Use of appropriate technological solutions to integrate whole recruitment process.Gamification and technical solutions for better onboarding experience that reflects organizational values. Provide ample amount of time for the orientation to cover all necessary information.Onboarding is a long term process and should be progressively measured on specific interval of time.Interaction and engagement with employees from higher executives can motivate employees and seen authentically.Identifying future problems and take actions based on analytics data.Referenceshttps://www.conferenceboard.ca/press/newsrelease/11-11-07/Canadian_Organizations_Take_Onboarding_Beyond_New_Employee_Orientation.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1 Klein, H., Polin, B., & Sutton, K. L. (2015). Specific onboarding practices for the socialization of new employees. International journal of selection and assessment, 23(3).Ferrazzi, Keith. “Technology Can Save Onboarding from Itself”. Harvard Business Review. 25 March 2015, Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2015/03/technology-can-save-onboarding-from-itselfOnboarding. (2019, May, 18). In Wikipedia. Retrieved June 19, 2019, fromhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnboardingIsson, J., & Harriott, J. S. (2016). People analytics in the era of big data: Changing the way you attract, acquire, develop, and retain talent. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.libaccess.fdu.eduMeyer, A., Bartels, L. (2017). The Impact of onboarding levels on perceived utility, organizational commitment, organizational support and job satisfaction. Journal of organizational psychology, 17(5). Belaiche, M. (2017, Mar., 7). “The Essentials of Employee Onboarding”. Human Resources Professionals Association. Retrieved from https://www.hrpa.ca/HRPAChapters/hamilton/programs/Documents/Essentials-Employee-Onboarding.pdfCase study: Parkview health. In Work institute. Retrieved from https://workinstitute.com/resources/case-studies/articleid/2237/case-study-parkview-health