A great onboarding experience means new hires arrive prepared, contribute early, and already have the internal connections they need to thrive, all of which adds up to a longer career with you. A disengaged new hire, by contrast, can struggle to find their place from day one.
Research by Brandon Hall Group, conducted for Glassdoor, found that organisations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%.
So, understanding whether your new hires are engaged, or disengaged, has significant financial implications for any organisation, but the question is how do you know which one is which?
The challenges of tracking engagement
Tracking engagement during onboarding presents significant challenges. Many traditional methods provide valuable insights but often fail to offer the immediacy needed to address disengagement as it happens. Delays in identifying issues can lead to missed opportunities to support new hires effectively, potentially resulting in higher attrition rates.
Conducting regular surveys helps gather feedback on the onboarding experience and overall satisfaction levels. However, these tools often provide retrospective insights rather than real-time data. And tracking key metrics such as time-to-productivity, retention rates, and participation in onboarding activities can indicate engagement levels but may not highlight immediate concerns. Nor will any of these metrics give you any insight during pre-boarding, before day one.
Encouraging open communication and regular feedback from new hires is essential, as is using any tools you have at your disposal to monitor wellbeing. Timely pulse surveys can also shed light on the challenges an individual might be having, but monitoring, analysing and acting on this insight quickly is difficult for over-stretched HR functions and busy line managers.
Few of these methods allow for real-time decision-making, which is crucial when addressing disengagement. Identifying and resolving issues promptly can make the difference between a disengaged new hire leaving, or staying and thriving within the company.
How Eli Insights™ closes the gap
This is exactly the gap Eli Insights™ is built to close. It tracks and analyses millions of data points across your organisation and your new hires, from pre-boarding right through onboarding, to give each person a bespoke engagement score in real time, at every point of their journey. Disengaged employees are flagged immediately, giving you and your line managers the chance to make quick, informed decisions that support new hires, reducing the risk of dropout and early attrition, and improving engagement, wellbeing and performance.
A&M, an Eli client, tracked a £1.6 million cost avoidance over two years specifically from a reduction in employee turnover after monitoring engagement, part of a wider £1.92 million cost avoidance across their EMEA-wide onboarding programme overall. Their stability index (the percentage of employees who have been at A&M over 12 months) also saw a 12% positive shift.
Clients like NatWest Group and Police Now are also using Eli Insights to spot reneges amongst the hundreds of graduates they hire each year too, before they happen.
By investing in an engaging pre-boarding and onboarding experience, organisations can set the foundation for long-term employee satisfaction and success. And by using real-time tracking tools like Eli Insights™, they can make sure that experience enhances retention, productivity and wellbeing on an individual level.
FAQs
How can you tell if a new hire is disengaged during onboarding?
Traditional methods like surveys and completion rates only tell you after the fact. Real-time engagement tracking, the kind Eli Insights™ provides, flags disengagement as it happens, from pre-boarding onward, so you can act while it still matters.
Why aren't surveys enough to track onboarding engagement?
Surveys are retrospective by nature, they tell you how someone felt, not how they're feeling right now. By the time a survey response flags a problem, a disengaged new hire may already be looking elsewhere.
Can engagement tracking actually reduce cost, not just attrition?
Yes. A&M tracked a £1.6 million cost avoidance over two years specifically from reduced turnover after monitoring engagement, part of a wider £1.92 million cost avoidance across their onboarding programme. NatWest Group reduced graduate reneges by 5% resulting in a cost avoidance of £73,692.
Does engagement tracking work before someone's official start date?
Yes, this is one of its biggest advantages over traditional methods. Pre-boarding engagement can be tracked in real time too, which matters given reneges typically happen before day one, not after.
