Onboarding, or the process of integrating a new employee into an organization, has moved beyond the trend stage and has established itself firmly in the vocabulary of HR professionals. And yet, despite being such a prominent feature with so many clear business benefits, many organizational integration processes are still lacking in their onboarding efforts.
Prof Dr Dirk Buyens, Professor of Human Resources and Partner of Vlerick Business School (the triple-accredited, international business school at the heart of Europe) and his team wanted to investigate this issue further and conducted an independent research into the expectations versus reality of HR onboarding on a European scale, in collaboration with Talmundo, the leading onboarding software provider in Europe. The study aimed to find out exactly what new hires need most when starting a job, and bring this knowledge back to HR professionals.
“What we found is that the state of onboarding is indeed still far from perfect,” says Professor Buyens. “All of the HR professionals who participated in the study were of the opinion that onboarding is incredibly important, and yet 34% of employees have not witnessed such a program at their organization at all.” Furthermore, the study confirmed that, if there are onboarding processes present within an organization, they seem to be a result of assumptions made by HR that do not always correlate with the actual employee experience.
The most surprising findings were that 40% of employees did not get the absolute minimum support required to start their new job, and that it took 43% more than a week to get basic workstation logistics and tools in place. Knowing that the success of new hires starts before their first day and goes far beyond the first week on the job, it is therefore paramount for HR professionals to get their pre- and onboarding journey back on track. Additionally, there’s also the reported issue of a rushed onboarding process. 52% of employees stated that their integration period was over after the first month on the job, despite the fact that 48% of HR professionals understand the importance of continuing onboarding for at least the first three months in a new company.
It stands to reason that figuring out the discrepancies between the view of onboarding of HR professionals and new hires is only the first step in building a good onboarding process. “Companies need to listen to what their new hires need, implement helpful solutions, create opportunities for feedback and continue to improve their onboarding offering,” says Stijn De Groef, CEO of Talmundo.
For more in-depth statistics on the state of onboarding in Europe, helpful tips and real life case studies, you can visit https://www.talmundo.com/onboarding-study and read the full study.