Design an Effective Employee Onboarding Strategy: Tips to Increase New Hire Engagement, Productivity, and Retention

All that work you're putting into attracting, interviewing, and hiring the right person for the job will amount to nothing if you cannot get them to stay long enough to reap the rewards of your investment.

The onboarding process is key to building long-lasting partnerships with employees and creating a workplace that supports their happiness, satisfaction, and performance.

There needs to be structure and intention behind your onboarding strategy to ensure you deliver a positive employee experience. This means making new recruits feel connected and motivated to stick around and do their best work.

This article will show you the importance of properly onboarding new hires and how to create an onboarding strategy that reduces employee turnover and inefficiencies.

✈️ What's an onboarding strategy?

Some HR managers think of employee onboarding as ensuring the new hire signs all the appropriate paperwork. Then, giving them access to work tools, introducing them to a few team members, and showing them around the office.

This approach is equivalent to throwing new hires into a river and leaving them to learn how to swim on their own. Sure, some may figure out how to stay afloat, but many will drown. 

Leaving your new hires alone without support is not only bad for the employee experience, but it's bad for business. Negative employee experiences affect employee performance, engagement, and even your brand as an employer.

That's the kind of outcome that an onboarding strategy aims to prevent.

Your new hire onboarding strategy is a defined plan and system to:

• Gradually introduce recruits to the company culture. 
• Help them unlock all the knowledge, resources, and support to become successful in current and future roles.
• Help them establish social connections at work and build trust and confidence. 

Rather than solely focusing on helping employees settle in on their first day or week, a good onboarding strategy targets long-term engagement and career development throughout the employee's life cycle.

❓ Why do you need a proper onboarding strategy?

The strength of your onboarding strategy will determine whether your employees will happily remain with you for years or jump ship when they find a slightly better offer.

Your onboarding strategy helps you create positive first impressions

A thorough strategy will shape your new hires' first impressions of your company. You want to make them feel welcome and valued rather than filling them with regret and frustration.

Yet, about 88% of organizations struggle with proper onboarding. Because of this, their recruits are twice as likely to search for a new job soon after being hired. 

When you don't take the time to help your new recruits:

• adjust to their new roles, 
• get familiar with the ins and outs of the company, 
• clearly understand role and performance expectations, 
• establish good relationships with their coworkers, 

You set them up to struggle. 

And there's only so much difficulty new hires can tolerate before they decide to quit. This is the reason why inefficient onboarding processes account for over 20% of worker turnover in the first 45 days. 

Your onboarding strategy saves you expenses from voluntary turnover 

Poor onboarding strategies cost companies a lot of money. On average, it takes about $4,000 to hire new talent. And when employees leave, replacing them costs around 16% to 20% of the worker's salary. 

Meanwhile, companies with effective and positive onboarding strategies experience an increase of over 59% in employee retention and a 70% uptick in new hire productivity. 

Employees who benefit from a good onboarding process attain complete competence in their roles 34 times faster than their peers. Plus, the possibility of staying committed to an organization increases by 82%.

These statistics show that investing in new hires from the beginning of their journey pays off handsomely in the long run. Not only does it give you a serious advantage in the talent retention arena, but it also positions your employees to thrive.

⚙️ How to create an onboarding strategy in 5 steps?

You cannot create an effective onboarding strategy in a day. You must be intentional about designing an onboarding experience that supports the smooth assimilation of employees into the workplace. You also have to prioritize reducing the risk of disengagement and early resignation.

If you are ready to overhaul or optimize your company's onboarding, here's how to pull it off.

1. Define your onboarding goals 

You wouldn't set out on a journey without having a destination in mind. 

Before you get started with strategizing, you must have clear goals spelling out what you want to achieve in the process.

The goals you set will guide how you structure your onboarding process.

So ask yourself what you want new hires to learn from the experience. Also, what is the company's end goal? Performance, engagement? All of these have to be evident to you and your fellow stakeholders.

Once you figure this out, it becomes easier to ensure that your content and all the different elements within your onboarding process are working together to help meet those targets.

Some examples of onboarding goals you can set for your organization include:

• Improve retention in the first year.
• Accelerate learning and career development.
• Get hires up to speed faster to make early contributions in their new role.
• Make it easy for employees to find answers to common questions.
• Increase job satisfaction and employee happiness.
• Create a sense of community to increase employees' comfort level in the office and with colleagues.
• Encourage employee engagement and commitment.
• Strengthen employer branding to turn employees into active promoters of your corporate culture and employment experience.

➡️ Get proactive with your employer branding strategies. Discover templates, measurement options, examples, and concrete steps to start right away.

Tip: Remember to set your goals as precisely as possible. It's not enough to say you want to increase employee satisfaction. You have to state the current satisfaction level and the level you wish to attain. 

For example, one of your goals can be to raise job satisfaction from 3 to 4.5 out of 5.

2. Use a checklist as inspiration for a complete process

There's no room for guesswork or uncertainty in an onboarding strategy. There has to be a concrete plan that clearly communicates how you intend to move new hires through the onboarding journey.

An onboarding checklist is an excellent way to:

• document every step hiring managers or HR professionals should take to engage, orient, and align new hires with the company's vision and 
• prepare them to tackle the responsibilities of their position effectively.

Tip: Use an onboarding checklist to outline the roles and responsibilities of every stakeholder involved in the onboarding process and ensure that all new employees get a consistent experience.

Our employee onboarding checklist kicks off from the moment a candidate says yes to your job offer.

The tasks on the checklist are broken down into timelines starting from the offer acceptance stage and ending when the new hire has fully settled into the role and organization.

Before start date

Some of the things you can do to help candidates prepare to join the company include:

• Provide and oversee completion of all the necessary onboarding paperwork. 
• Communicate your company values, history, culture, policies, benefits, and mission.
• Ensure a thorough IT onboarding process by: 

• Preparing their hardware, access passes, business cards, and other equipment. 
• Setting up the new employee's online accounts—email, instant message, productivity tools, etc.

• Inform team members about their new colleagues and the responsibilities they will take on.
• Send out a welcome package with a personalized message. (Tip: Consider sending an onboarding video message as an engagement booster.)
• Arrange introductory meetings with core team members.
• Reach out with a welcome email explaining everything they need to know and what to expect on their first day. (We got you covered with our guide on How to write a new employee welcome message.) 
• Plan their first work assignment.

On their first day

Checking off these activities on a candidate's first day will help them start on a great note.

• Give them a tour of the office and walk them through their onboarding agenda for the first week.
• Introduce them to their manager and relevant colleagues, and encourage them to ask questions.
• Plan a (virtual) team lunch for new hires to share small talk and get to know their teammates in an informal setting.
• Invite them to join the shared team/holiday calendar.
• Handover their equipment and account credentials and allow them time to set everything up. (Tip: Make sure to arrange tool training if necessary.)

During their first week

Here are some onboarding tasks you should get out of the way before the first week runs out:

• Explain your company's new hire training process if you have one. 
• Schedule individual sit-downs with their coworkers and supervisor. Let the supervisor help them come up with a 90-day roadmap and explain role expectations, review processes, and the process for evaluating their performance.
• Give them their first work task and provide quick feedback on their performance.
• Set up a meeting with an HR representative to review their first week, what they love so far, and identify any challenges.

In their first 90 days

Onboarding is an ongoing process. So, keep an eye on keeping your employees busy and engaged and make them feel more in sync with the company and its overall objectives.

Start by giving new hires the structure to allow them to work independently and make contributions that positively impact the company. 

Focusing on these activities in the first three months will help new hires fully transition into their roles:

• Keep checking in with new hires monthly to see how they are doing and give them the resources, training, and support they need.
• Plan team-building events to help employees bond with their colleagues.
• Help them create a plan to grow their career and advance in the company.
• Encourage managers to hold regular 1:1 meetings with new employees and offer recognition and constructive feedback.

➡️ Master constructive feedback with our 10 best practices for giving constructive criticism.

After their first six months and their first anniversary 

Doing pulse checks around the sixth month and one-year mark is a great way to keep your onboarding journey going and reengage employees who are starting to waver in their commitment to the company:

• Review the employee's performance.
• Evaluate the strides they have made to reach their employee development goals.
• Enquire about new goals or skills they plan to work towards in the future. 
• Assess their competency level based on the expectations for their position.
• Ask what they think about your onboarding experience.
• Keep encouraging them to take advantage of learning and training opportunities.

3. Define appropriate actions and prioritize them 

Treat your onboarding plan like a marathon and not a sprint. Trying to pack too many activities or too much information into a short period will leave your new employee feeling overwhelmed.

The stress of having to manage time and execute a pile of onboarding tasks all at once will ruin the positive onboarding experience you are working so hard to create.

It's essential to spread out your onboarding journey to give employees enough time to absorb new knowledge.

Rank each task according to its urgency or importance to the employee's integration into the company. Then introduce them to new hires in that order using a mix of:

• Webinars
• Puzzles
• Articles
• Bite-sized videos
• Interactive quizzes
• Round table discussions
• Infographics and presentations
• 1:1 conversations with colleagues/managers.

Make it easy for new hires to identify what they have to do and when they should do it: the clearer, the better. 

Plus, don't forget to set up automated reminders and content delivery to ensure everything gets done on time.

The task of building trust and feelings of belonging falls on everyone. Don't leave this to your employees to work it all out alone.

Involve individuals at different levels of the company and assign tasks to them.

Tip: Make sure everyone internally knows their role in creating a meaningful onboarding experience for new employees.

4. Assess the status quo from a new hire's perspective

Your onboarding strategy might look perfect on paper, but in reality, it could be lacking in several areas.

Every new recruit allows you to gauge how effective your onboarding process is. 

You might even discover blind spots in your journey where you need to improve to boost new starter engagement. 

Remember that new hires might respond differently even when you deliver a consistent onboarding experience. After all, each person has their expectations of how onboarding should be.

Collecting more data will allow you to identify patterns and optimize your experience to benefit every type of candidate. 

Tip: Use an employee onboarding survey. Through onboarding feedback surveys, you can collect fresh impressions of your company's processes early in new hires' journey. 

Not only are you keeping your processes in check, but you also show new hires that you value transparency and are open to embracing change.

Here are some examples of questions you can include in your onboarding survey:

• Do you feel happy to be associated with the company?
• What did you like most and least about the onboarding process?
• Have you been given enough training time to succeed in your role?
• Which part of the program did you find most engaging or helpful?
• How would you improve the process?
• Was there anything missing from the experience that would have helped your first few days and weeks less challenging?

 ➡️ Check out additional onboarding survey questions 39 sample questions & best practices to get the most out of new hire feedback.

5. Roll out and measure

After creating and implementing a structured onboarding process, you must measure its impact. Doing this will help you understand whether your new starters' experiences were rewarding and satisfying.

• Was the experience enjoyable, or was it a burden they had to get through? Did employees feel fully prepared to perform their jobs after completing the program? 
• How long did it take for them to start meeting expectations for their role?

The answers to these questions and more contain essential onboarding data. You just have to dig it out and make it actionable. 

Tip: Data accessibility is a crucial benefit of investing in employee onboarding software. Use onboarding tools to track participation, progress, attrition, outcomes, productivity, and overall onboarding program health. 

💡 6 Best practices for your employee onboarding strategy

These practical tips can help you bridge the gap between your work culture and new talent expectations. The rewards that will flow from implementing them into your onboarding strategy include higher performance, job satisfaction, knowledge retention, and a sense of belonging.

• Begin before day one. Preboarding is a crucial aspect of onboarding that should never be neglected. It's always a good idea to get new hires excited about coming to work for your company before they officially start. That morale and motivation will carry them through their first few weeks and months.
• Standardize your onboarding efforts. All employees should enjoy the same streamlined process. Onboarding should not be a process reserved for an elite few. Onboarding consistency will ensure everyone heads in the same direction and no one is left behind. Your employees deserve consistent learning, engagement, and feeling valued.
• Build connections with fun virtual events. All work and no play leave employees feeling isolated and demotivated. It's always a good practice to build a culture that emphasizes relaxation as much as productivity. You can organize after-work games, trivia nights, walk and talk, happy hours, and other informal activities to immerse new hires into the company's way of life.

➡️ Explore our connection program templates gallery. You'll access real Zavvy journeys. We practice what we preach, and our employees benefit from these programs to feel connected even from remote locations.

• Document your company's processes. New hires shouldn't have to message a coworker whenever they have questions related to the company or their role. Not only is this time wasting, but it will also make them feel less competent in their roles. An internal knowledge base housing all relevant company documents and information solves this problem and streamlines onboarding efficiently. 
• Give every new hire an onboarding buddy. Even with an effective onboarding strategy, new employees can feel a little lost and anxious initially. But having a buddy who is happy to help them navigate this new terrain can make a world of difference to their experience. So if you haven't already, consider setting up a buddy program as part of your strategy. 
• Automate your onboarding experience. It's easy for inefficiencies, inconsistencies, and delays to creep into your process if you handle everything manually.

Using specialist onboarding software like Zavvy allows you to reduce manual work, save time, and improve productivity by automating your entire onboarding workflow. This way, new employees can dedicate their time to doing meaningful work rather than drowning in paperwork.

🏢 Real-Life onboarding strategy examples

Although many organizations miss the mark with their employee onboarding strategy, there are few who are crushing their new hire programs.

Here are some great examples of companies that have developed impactful and supportive strategies for welcoming newcomers.

Hubspot: Interactive new hire training system

The company's onboarding strategy focuses on helping the new hire learn everything they need to know to work and excel at Hubspot.

They use recorded tutorials and videos to teach employees about Hubspot's values, goals, and innovative products.

In doing so, they transform newbies into competent advocates for the brand and product.

Google: Structured online process

How does a company with over 130,000 workers meet its massive workforce's onboarding expectations? 

Answer: By structuring and automating their onboarding process.

All the onboarding tasks new hires have to complete are clearly defined and prioritized based on four attributes—relevant, timely, gentle, and easy to execute.

Tasks and nudges (Google's fancy term for reminders) are always delivered just in time, so new employees never have to wonder what to do next.

👲 Our Google onboarding case study discusses the onboarding process at Google and how you can replicate it. Learn from one of the most influential companies in the world.

Salesforce: Culture and human-first onboarding 

The goal of Salesforce's onboarding strategy is to ensure every new hire feels welcome and gets a chance to connect with their colleagues on a personal level. 

The company creates personalized development plans and welcome packages containing stickers, books, gift certificates, a name tag, and a nerf gun.

The gun is an invitation for the new hire to join the company's fun tradition of organizing nerf gun wars fought between different departments. 

If that doesn't scream a relaxed working environment, what does?

Buffer: Buddy-driven onboarding experience 

Buffer's employee onboarding strategy is unique, as it goes into action as soon as a candidate accepts an employment offer.

From there, the company proceeds by sending out five emails to welcome the recruit, collect basic information, introduce them to peers and managers, give them their new work tools, and explain how their first day will go.

What's more, Buffer assigns recruits not one but three onboarding buddies—a leader buddy, a culture body, and a role body. 

These buddies check in with the new hire before day one and serve as their support system throughout the onboarding process.

➡️ Find more examples of company onboarding strategies here.

📏 5 Key metrics to measure your onboarding strategy success

The only way to know if your strategies for integrating recruits yield the results you want or fall short of expectations is by evaluating your outcomes. 

You can change your strategy to increase its effectiveness when armed with the right insights.

Naturally, the metrics or KPIs you use to track progress depend on your earlier onboarding goals. But they can include:

1. New hire satisfaction. This metric tells you how pleased new hires are with your onboarding process. You can obtain the data through interviews, feedback surveys, or your net promoter score (NPS).

• Net promoter score = Percentage of promoters - the percentage of detractors.

2. New hire turnover rate. A high rate of employees who leave or are forced to leave soon after joining your company might point to issues with your onboarding strategy or workplace experience.

• Voluntary turnover rate = Number of new hires who leave willingly in a given period / Number of new hires in the same period × 100.
• Involuntary turnover rate = Number of new hires who are fired in a given period / Number of new hires in the same period × 100.

3. Retention rate. Measuring this metric can help determine how your onboarding strategy impacts an employee's tenure or whether your culture and experience are living up to the promises you made in your recruitment process.

• Retention rate = Number of new hires who stay with your company for at least 18 months before leaving / Number of new hires in the same period.

4. Training completion rate. If new starters fail to complete onboarding requirements, it could mean that the content isn't engaging enough, your program lacks structure, or you are not allowing enough time for completion. All of these can hinder job performance and personal development.

• ‍New employee training completion rate = Number of new hires who completed onboarding training and tasks in a given period / Number of new hires in the same period.

5. Time to productivity. How long does it take for a new hire to learn the ropes and begin contributing fully to your company? Tracking this onboarding metric will show how well your onboarding strategy is doing when it comes to helping recruits reach their expected productive output.

• Average time to productivity = Total number of days until all new hires perform as expected with minimal supervision in a given period/ Total number of new hires in that period.

📊 Onboarding strategy template & How to present it to your stakeholders

Now that you have a vision for your company's employee onboarding strategy and process, it's time to sell your ideas and get buy-in from management and other key stakeholders across the organization. 

You need to get them to see the value of strategic onboarding planning and how it will contribute to the organization's broader mission and goals. But if you don't know where to start, you might need a strategy template.

A template is a great way to get your ideas across more efficiently and show the ROI of implementing a proper onboarding strategy in a simple and straightforward format.

It saves you the stress of arranging countless meetings or creating numerous presentation slides to get management to see the merits of your proposal. 

Here's a strategy template you can use to present your ideas and convince your organization's leaders to invest in a structured onboarding process. 

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➡️ Need more inspiration? Check out 15+ additional onboarding templates.

Also, explore our onboarding templates gallery. You'll access real Zavvy journeys made by our learning designers, customers, and other forward-thinking companies.

➡️ Zavvy: Your onboarding strategy solved

The early days of a new hire's journey set the tone for the rest of their lifecycle with your company. 

Start seeing your onboarding experience as an opportunity to show your company's commitment to making employees feel valued, cared for, and motivated to succeed in their positions.

With a modern employee enablement platform like Zavvy, you can structure your onboarding process, automate training, and speed up time to productivity for new team members. 

Book a demo now to start your onboarding on the right note.