Onboarding is about retention, engagement and boosting early performance, that much is obvious. What's less obvious is how much further a good pre-boarding and onboarding strategy can reach across your wider HR agenda.
Of course, making sure your hard-won new talent isn't stolen by the competition, and feels welcomed, engaged and informed is absolutely key. But your onboarding strategy can help drive other key HR objectives too.
Wellbeing and mental health
Starting a new job can be stressful. Starting your first job, even more so. Making sure your new hires know exactly what to expect can go a long way to reducing those anxieties. Information on their department, their office, key goals for their team, or what their first few weeks might hold will all help to alleviate nerves.
Most important of all would be personal interaction with their future team. Whether it's receiving a welcome call from their line manager, the chance to message a buddy with a query, or chat online with fellow new starters through an innovative onboarding tool, it's human contact that makes a real difference.
Your onboarding comms are also the perfect place to showcase your wellbeing programme, to make sure you get good take-up on all your initiatives from the very start. From the on-site gym, to healthy food in the canteen or the identity of mental health first aiders, you can let your new starters know about all aspects of your wellbeing offering, so they can access the parts that will be most helpful to them. It's likely your organisation already offers some of this support online too, mental, physical and financial wellbeing helplines being the ones we see most often, so why not offer them to new starters straight away?
Better yet, Eli (Eli Inisghts) can help track engagement and wellbeing signals throughout onboarding, and alert a new hire's line manager (or other person from your team) if someone seems to be struggling. This allows them to proactively reach out at moments when it matters most.
Social mobility
Pre-boarding and onboarding also provide the perfect opportunity to achieve a more levelled playing field for all your candidates, whatever their background. By helping them understand how you work, and providing information and tools to help them learn, you can help make sure that everyone feels equally up to speed before they start on day one. And, by making sure you populate your onboarding portal with content featuring people from a range of social backgrounds, you can make sure everyone feels welcomed and included.
This is particularly important for your early career cohort, who are making the difficult transition from study to work life. The more support you give them, the more successful they'll be, no matter what their background. Indeed, 100% of Police Now's candidates passed their Summer Academy pre-learn assessment due to the strength of their onboarding programme. The same is true of Cognizant, whose whole hiring process and onboarding experience is built around social mobility. Since Eli started working with them, 100% of their grads have passed their technical training, and 100% have been fully billable on time.
A buddy can also be a really good way of making people feel included, particularly important if your organisation has a reputation (deserved or otherwise) for being elitist. What's more, onboarding sites are the perfect place to advertise refer-a-friend schemes, or recruit future advocates, helping to build on the success of your social mobility programme.
Change agenda
New starters are a highly receptive audience when it comes to engagement with, and involvement in, driving through change agendas. Get them onboard with new initiatives during pre-boarding, before they've even started work, and they can be real advocates for change. After all, they won't yet be embedded in the old cultures or processes you're trying to transform.
Whether it's restructuring due to a market downturn or merger, or a big initiative to comply with new legislation, your onboarding comms is a great place to shout about it.
In fact, if there's a big change coming, whether it's a new regulation within your industry, or something that affects everyone, having information that shows you've thought through the implications and have a clear strategy to deal with any potential challenges will reassure new starters, ensuring they stay engaged with your brand and loyal to your offer.
Inclusion
By its very nature, onboarding should make someone feel included. But this isn't possible if your experience focuses solely on compliance and process. Experience-led onboarding allows organisations to create a real sense of belonging, by defining a journey that promotes inclusion at every step. Reach out to your employee network leaders to understand the specific things your onboarding journey needs to include, and be ready to change certain aspects of your onboarding journey to suit. For people with autism, for instance, routine and structure are very important, so a clear onboarding roadmap creates a sense of certainty and a clear understanding of milestones.
Eli even allows new hires to choose their own onboarding journey (should you want to offer it), allowing them to join employee networks early, access extra support, new learning, change their onboarding roadmap and more. What better way to promote inclusion than to allow a new hire to tailor their own onboarding experience?
FAQs
Can onboarding support HR objectives beyond retention and engagement?
Yes. A well-designed pre-boarding and onboarding programme can also support wellbeing, social mobility, change management and inclusion, all from the same touchpoints you're already building.
How can onboarding support employee wellbeing?
By reducing uncertainty (new hires who know what to expect are less anxious), promoting existing wellbeing programmes from day one, and using engagement data to flag when someone might need extra support.
How does onboarding support social mobility?
By giving every candidate, regardless of background, the same access to information and support before day one. Police Now saw 100% of candidates pass their Summer Academy pre-learn assessment, and Cognizant has seen 100% of grads pass technical training and reach full billability on time, since working with Eli.
Can onboarding help drive organisational change?
Yes. New starters aren't embedded in old processes or culture yet, which makes them a genuinely receptive audience for new initiatives, restructuring, or compliance changes, introduced through onboarding communications.
