We all have heard this proverb, “First impression is the last impression,” and the same is true for the employee onboarding and offboarding process. There is no doubt that hiring is a challenging and long-tiring process, but the process doesn’t stop by selecting just the right candidate. It merely starts from that point, as then comes the onboarding process, which involves many tasks like helping new employees settle in the company, making them feel valued, capable and motivated, helping and supporting them through the entire process, etc.
The same is the process with employee offboarding as it also involves various tasks like conducting the exit interview, revoking access to the internal documents, ensuring that all necessary documentation and papers are signed and submitted, etc. And most companies fail to complete these processes well-structured, which ends up hurting the company’s image and sales target.
According to a survey conducted by HCI, surprisingly, more than 20% of the newly hired employees leave the job within the first 45 days for a new opportunity. In addition to that, as per the survey conducted by Glassdoor, it was found that organizations with proper onboarding and offboarding processes have a productivity rate higher than 70%, and the employee retention rate is also above 82%.
Thus, in this article, we will cover some of the most important questions like:
1. What are the pitfalls of the onboarding and offboarding process
2. How can Beyond Intranet help you?
3. Why should you go with Beyond Intranet’s Employee Onboarding and Employee Offboarding add-in?
So without wasting much time, let’s get started.
Below are some of the most prominent reasons and consequences of poor onboarding and offboarding process. So let’s dig them one by one.
1. Little to No Pre-Onboarding and Offboarding Process
Employee Onboarding and Employee Offboarding are by themselves arduous processes as they involve many tasks to be performed; thus, depending directly on the D-Day, the first day for the new employee to join and the last day for the formal employee to leave can be a wrong decision.
With pre-onboarding and offboarding, you can ensure that you have supplied all the necessary paperwork before the D-Day so that employees don’t feel overwhelmed and rushed during their D-Day. In addition, it will also give employees enough time to go through the documents and other papers provided by you.
Thus, by setting the pre-onboarding and offboarding process in place, you can ensure that there won’t be any delay in the further process and also save much time on the final D-Day.
2. Delaying onboarding and offboarding Process
In the current scenario, every company is trying its best to onboard the best talent. And suppose you make a delay in either onboarding a new employee or offboarding a formal team member. In that case, it might cost you hefty as not only will your organization lose its image in front of the employee, but it can also face negative reviews.
A recent survey from Software Advice found that more than 50% of job seekers initially check the reviews and work culture of the company on websites like Glassdoor before applying there. And no one would use it for companies with a lower rating.
Thus, you must ensure that there is no delay in onboarding and offboarding, as your employees can either build or destroy the company’s reputation based on this step.
3. Lack of a structured onboarding and offboarding process in place
In the current times, most companies have moved to remote hiring and onboarding process. However, they still don’t have a proper employee onboarding and offboarding structure, mainly due to the lack of technology usage.
This lack of a structured process not only results in stress and a lot of manual work for the HR manager and team, but it also creates a bad impression in the mind of employees as the process is stretched too long and delayed due to various things not in place. Employees also remain in confusion and doubt, affecting their performance and work targets, eventually hurting the company’s revenue targets.
According to a research conducted by CareerBuilder, 41% of the employers believe that the unstructured employee onboarding and offboarding process has the following drawbacks to their company:
Thus, a properly structured mechanism will help the company overcome all the drawbacks and make things smooth and error-proof.
4. Bombarding Too Much Information Too Quickly
Commonly, employees are bombarded with much important information by HRs on their first day of joining, and if they are leaving then on their last day.
There are many signatures to be taken, forms to be filled, and various other things to settle; thus, employees may feel overwhelmed and find it hard to manage and figure out all the things in one go, which may lead to fundamental errors.
So, it’s always good to divide the information into multiple parts with proper structure and time frames and have a booklet or FAQ section available on your company’s website so that it can be referred by employees very quickly.
5. Poor training and Mentor/Buddy Systems
Training and mentorship systems are undoubtedly the foundation that most new employees require to excel in their journey and give the best of their performance to the company.
But it is mainly not prioritized by the companies, leading to lower employee morale, a lack of trust within the organization, lower confidence among employees, and unfavorable work culture.
Companies should provide basic training to new employees as they join the company. It will be like a refresher for the employees who are experts and have relevant skills but the ones who lagged these skills and expertise will get a lot out of this training.
According to a survey conducted by Robert Half, a staffing firm, more than 64% of employees favor job-hopping mainly because of improper work culture and more salary hikes by hoping to the new company.
Dan Schawbel, the founder of Millennial Branding, advises that to create a good work culture and retain existing employees, companies should consider conducting leadership training and mentorship programs from time to time.
6. Lack of proper support and feedback mechanism
One of the dangerous onboarding mistakes which you can commit is not providing proper support and feedback to the employees, especially during their initial months. It is prevalent psychology for employees to expect support and input from the higher authorities or managers at the workplace. If not received, they will feel demotivated and may end up missing the targets and deadlines and even eroding their performance.
Thus, if the new hire is struggling with anything, you should provide the necessary support and conduct at least one 1:1 performance meeting every month.
So, from the above discussion, it’s clear that performance feedback and support play a vital role in maintaining a good working environment and thus are an essential component of the employee onboarding process.
7. Lack of automation
Automation is a helping hand for all the repetitive tasks if used wisely as it offers some the excellent features like:
According to the survey conducted by CareerBuilder, 2 in 5 HR managers spend more than 3 hours per new team member manually collecting and processing onboarding information rather than capturing it electronically and automating the entire task.
Thus, the consequences of not using automation are way more to be neglected like:
Companies can’t neglect the above loopholes, and it becomes necessary to overcome them, or they will be on the verge of losing their sales targets and valuable resources. Thus, here comes Beyond Intranet with their best solution, SharePoint Employee Onboarding & Offboarding, a SharePoint add-in to manage onboarding and employee offboarding-related tasks in a secure Microsoft environment.
One of the best parts about this solution from Beyond Intranet is that it is beneficial for onboarding and offboarding employees in companies of all the sizes and all industries, so no matter whether your company is a tech startup, small-scale automotive business, a medium-scale e-commerce business, or an enormous-scale business empire in manufacturing, its suitable for all the types. In addition, it directly impacts your company’s bottom line. It helps you increase your company’s employee retention rate, which is also one of the biggest problems in every industry.
It will also be beneficial for all the stakeholders of the company like:
1. Managers
2. Organization
3. New Hires and Employees
Along with that, there are many up-and-coming features included in SharePoint Employee Onboarding Software so let’s have a glance over some of these:
1. Engage new hires
You can easily connect with the employees before the D-Day and supply all the necessary documents, so they have enough time to go through them. You can also connect them with their teammates and provide details about the company’s values, aim, ethics and mission.
2. Reduce time and increase productivity
You will be able to collect and analyze the data electronically, which will not only help you save much time that you might have to do manually but will also increase your productivity and help establish the core job commitments.
3. Streamline the entire process
You can rest assured that everything will be structured and streamlined, from onboarding new employees to tracking their progress and performance and supporting them whenever required.
4. Make onboarding tasks super easy.
You can easily create a new employee account, manage the induction, generate the required reports, monitor every step during onboarding, and provide training as and when needed.
5. Configure the whole onboarding process
You can easily create multiple customized onboarding processes based on the level of position and the task to be performed by the newly hired employee.
6. Smooth Offboarding
You can also ensure hassle-free, tension-free, and stress-free employee offboarding by assigning them required tasks to the concerned department and ensuring that all those tasks are fulfilled, no documentation is left before the employee leaves, and finally revoking the access of the account, which the employee had access to.
Finally, before we move forward, there is a question for you.
Are you also worried about the Security and Privacy of the employee and internal document data, which are very sensitive?
If yes, don’t worry as you are not alone. Beyond Intranet has also taken care of this in the Employee Offboarding Software, as it is built based on General Data Protection Regulation Act (GDPR). Hence, you can be assured of security and privacy.
It is clear from the above discussion that there are various things to keep in mind for your company to ensure that the employee onboarding and offboarding happen smoothly and without any stress, tension and delay.
But there is no need to worry as companies like Beyond Intranet are there to take this hard work on their shoulders and serve you with their easy-to-use interface and insightful dashboards solution. Beyond Intranet’s Employee Onboarding and Offboarding add-in can help your company streamline and optimize your onboarding and offboarding process with assured Security and Privacy.
So, if your company is also facing issues with onboarding and offboarding employees, why don’t you reach out to our experts to learn more, or head over to our HR Onboarding Software page to get yours today!
