According to a recent study by Impact Instruction Group, the process of onboarding is changing. This may be a response to high attrition rates—the study cites statistics culled from a book titled Successful Onboarding that provide insight into just how common a struggle retention can be. According to the book’s authors, Mark Stein and Lilith Christiansen, a third of people employed in their current position for fewer than six months are looking for new jobs, and more than half of a given company’s employees will turn over within four years.
In response, human resources departments are finding it necessary to rethink their onboarding strategies. According to the aforementioned study, 49 percent of respondents said they were in the process of updating their onboarding programs, while 22 percent claim to make changes continuously. Forty-seven percent of respondents described their program updates as “major,” (rather than “moderate” or “minor”).
The primary reasons for making those changes? The top three included the desire to quickly boost the performance of new employees, the need to instill loyalty and improve retention, and “leveraging technology-based tools” in order to lower costs and improve efficiency—a goal that is easily attainable by implementing an HR software solution.
Over 87 percent of survey respondents pointed to their Human Resources department as being primarily responsible for making revisions to their organization’s onboarding program. The tools used most frequently by those surveyed included a company intranet, e-learning programs, web-based onboarding portals, video, webinars and surveys, among other tools.
As onboarding becomes a process that relies increasingly on technology, choosing the right human resource software is crucial to the success of your organization’s process—something that is proving to be more and more important in the current hiring climate.