Back in August, we published “How to Hire the Right Person for Your Funeral Home“, with valuable tips to help you find the best employee for your firm’s needs. Let’s say you’ve found someone you believe to be a well-qualified hire and offered them a position, which they accepted.
Now it’s time to get them on board. But it’s not just about taking a few hours to introduce them to co-workers, show them where to park or put their lunch. HR experts argue employee onboarding should be a process which provides new hires with the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become maximally effective members of your organization.
While that sounds like an overwhelming task, at its heart, the onboarding process is all about giving a new hire, from the moment he or she arrives, the keys to succeed “in full alignment with company values”.
The Benefits of Effective Onboarding
Implementing a standardized employee onboarding process has its benefits for all business operators, including funeral home owners. For one, effective onboarding has been proven to reduce turnover with companies experiencing as much as 50% increase in new-hire retention. And for another, businesses with a standard onboarding process experience 50% greater new hire productivity.
Couple those with sobering facts about the frequency and cost of employee turnover in today’s workplace, and you’ve got more than enough reason to develop a clearly-defined onboarding process–and use it with every new hire.
Defining Your Employee Onboarding Process
Read all you can about the subject and you’ll come away with this awareness: onboarding begins before the new employee’s first day in the office, and continues far longer than you’d expect. In truth, research has found companies with longer onboarding programs facilitate 34% “full proficiency” in their new hires 34% fasterthan those with shorter programs in place.
If you’ve not already established a standardized onboarding process, you should consider developing one for 2018. Your onboarding process should:
- Communicate purpose at every point in the process
- Make a great ‘first impression’ (and nurture it throughout the program)
- Facilitate new hire success with clearly-established goals
- Stay connected with frequent check-ins
- Give them adequate time to make the transition
- Show gratitude and appreciation frequently
When sitting down to write your onboarding program keep these ‘big goals’ in mind. While every business will have an onboarding process which is unique to their company; there is a common developmental framework. The good news is, you don’t have to look far and wide for a guide or template either; we’ve put together a free resource to help you get started. Download our Employee Onboarding Checklist, which also includes a set of best practices and a 5-point template for you to guide you along the way.
Don’t Think Twice
The importance of a well-conceived onboarding process has been made clear by dozens of HR experts. Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh; authors of The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age (2014), made it quite clear that effective employee onboarding is essential in today’s workplace: “The importance of onboarding is significantly increased these days since the average turnover at work is less than four years and lifetime employment strategies are out of date.” (Source)
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