According to McLean & Company’s 2016 HR Trends and Priorities Spotlight on the American Society of Employers’ Members Survey, Learning & Development is the fourth most important HR function out of 30 HR areas surveyed. A major area within Learning & Development was onboarding, ranked fifth highest priority. However, only 42% of ASE respondents currently view their onboarding efforts as very effective. (McLean & Company Trends & Priorities for ASE 2016: N=117)

A large factor to the low scoring is the fact that onboarding is often confused with orientation and given only superficial treatment. Orientation is typically a few days of completing paperwork, reading manuals, and learning about the company’s history, strategic goals, and culture. By contrast, onboarding is three to twelve months dedicated to welcoming, acclimating, guiding, and developing new employees – with the ideal duration reflecting the time-to-productivity for the role.

A traditional orientation approach provides insufficient focus on the organizational identification, socialization, and job clarity that a new hire requires. This is a missed opportunity to build engagement, drive productivity, and increase organizational commitment. This can result in early disengagement and premature departure.

To successfully reap the benefits of onboarding, the program needs to effectively acclimate, guide, and develop new hires over months, not days. In fact, onboarding that contains effective orientation, performance management, and development has a significant, positive impact on new hire engagement. Our data shows that for every 10% increase in orientation, performance management, and development effectiveness, new hire engagement increases by 6.3%, 5.9%, and 5.6%, respectively.

This blueprint will help you achieve impactful results by developing an onboarding program that addresses all three critical components – orientation, performance management, and development – as each has a significant, positive relationship with new hire engagement.

Blueprint Path: www.aseonline.org Dashboard > My Resources > McLean & Company > Research > Learning & Development > Onboarding > Develop a Comprehensive Onboarding Plan