A large percentage of employees are dissatisfied with their experience of joining a company:
New employees who start a job feeling undertrained and disconnected from their work environment are far more likely to quit than those who have a good onboarding experience.
With the unemployment rate lower than it has been in decades — even more so in technology fields — job candidates more often than not field multiple offers. So, if the onramp to a new job is bumpy, they're far more likely to reconsider staying with the organization, even in the short term.
According to research firm Gartner, 63% of new hires are satisfied with their onboarding experience. A recent survey by payroll and human resources provider Paychex showed onboarding experience affected how quickly they would quit after taking a position.
The survey of about 1,000 Americans by Paychex, released last month, found half (50%) of newly hired employeesplan to quit soon.
[...] Among the percentage of remote workers who said they're likely to leave their current job soon, 88% described their latest onboarding experience as boring, 78% called it confusing, and 74% saw it as a failure. On-site and hybrid employees fare better; only 36% of them viewed the onboarding process as confusing.
Remote workers are most likely to feel disoriented (60%) and devalued (52%) after onboarding, the survey found.
[...] Without a streamlined and supportive process, employees can be left frustrated, she said, which can muddle a new hire's first experience in a new position and affect their morale.
[...] "You need a two-way connection where they're not only learning about the company, but the company [is] learning about the employee and tailoring the onboarding experience to them. In that, they're also learning what the new hire brings to the table," Kohn said. "It works a lot better when a new hire comes in and sees a manager and a team already recognizes [that the new hire] brings strengths to the table."
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10 2023, @09:22AM
The Lobby for Returning to the Office and Safeguard Office Building Real Estate Owners' Interests
(Score: 3, Insightful) by darkfeline on Friday March 10 2023, @09:28AM (2 children)
Certainly a company should have a good onboarding process. However, I'd like to bring up a related topic: "kids these days" lack agency.
Part of both work and being an adult is dealing with reality, and the reality is that onboarding is never perfect. After all, the company is short-staffed; that's why they're hiring in the first place. You were hired to do work, including the work of improving any documentation gaps, or finding any other gaps not being covered and covering them.
Of course there are bad companies that obstruct new hires from trying to make themselves useful, but from my personal observation it's usually that the new hires lack the agency to do so. All they know how to do is do as they're told.
Maybe that's not their fault, entirely; insert tangent about the education system here. But that's them breaks.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10 2023, @11:56AM
Correct, but you weren't hired to deal with _unnecessary_ crap that speaks of unprofessionalism exhibited by a place of employ. Let me turn that "kids these days lack agency" complaint around:
"Job-Creators" these days... they feel so entitled to every last bit of allegiance, subservience, time, and loyalty by those whom they toss crumbs at. They keep whacking them with sticks and then are surprised when people vote with their feet. They could use some sense of agency to fix their broken environments. It almost feels as if they are still stuck mentally in a time when slavery was common practice and are fighting tooth and nail to hold on to it for dear life.
Suddenly that whole "free market" thing ain't working for what are referred to as "job creators"? Tough luck, up your game or die out... Those employers who do will be successful!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday March 11 2023, @08:59PM
So let me get this straight:
1. Company hires a "kid these days".
2. Company's onboarding experience is crappy to non-existent.
3. Kid says "screw this, I'm outta here, looking for something better".
4. You conclude that the problem is a "lack of agency".
On the contrary, these "kids" are showing agency, by refusing to spend months or years wasting their time in an organization who demonstrably is going to treat them badly, all for a paycheck that probably won't grow and maybe wasn't that good to begin with.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by rigrig on Friday March 10 2023, @11:23AM (1 child)
Did they somehow manage to talk companies into deliberately screwing up the onboarding of random employees "for science"?
Because otherwise I expect there might be a bit of a correlation between companies "being shitty in general" and "having shitty onboarding".
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10 2023, @06:14PM
I heard that asian cultures are very competitive in school - as in unfriendly competitive - and this transfers into the workplace. It certainly has been an experience I have had. Looking back I also experienced it at an "elite" music school I attended for a couple of years. No friendships, barely speaking to eachother.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Friday March 10 2023, @11:42AM
We need better onboarding tools.
Because trying to force people back to office will simply result in these people not even applying for the jobs because "100% home office possible" is basically the requirement right now for people to at least apply for your job.
(Score: 4, Touché) by guest reader on Friday March 10 2023, @12:45PM
... says, that bad onboarding can lead to high quit rates for new Workers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by srobert on Friday March 10 2023, @03:52PM (6 children)
OK, "Onboarding" is a term I haven't heard in my 60 years. I suspect its a bullshit term invented by HR consultants. And apparently, doing it badly leads new employees to quit. I suspect that offering good wages, benefits, and job security, might be the key to retaining employees at all stages of their careers. But maybe that's just me talking like a boomer. Employers are trying desperately to figure out how to deal with a situation that they may not have seen for decades, that of workers having the upper hand in the job market. Well not really, workers never actually have the upper hand. But they're a lot closer to it than they've been for a long time. And management isn't used to that. Now is the time for workers to seize the opportunity for gains. It won't last forever. And if you want to keep those gains when the job market is not so much in your favor, you probably better get them in a written contract. If you cannot negotiate that on your own, then you hopefully you will be wise enough to do it collectively. Your employer is not your friend. And they sure as hell are not a family.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 10 2023, @05:50PM (3 children)
My last job change was an acquisition, essentially I was purchased along with the company.
That "onboarding process" scared off the entire sales staff because it told them they were going to have to play by the rules, no really- we're serious, you're going to have to follow them, and by the way: any company tech you might see after signing this agreement puts you into a 2 year non-compete in similar technologies. They all ran for the hills, as a bloc.
On my side, they offered a 6 month's salary bonus as a "retention incentive" if I stuck it out for a year... worked. I'm still here 10 years later. The competitive wages and benefits and decent working conditions are the biggest reasons for that.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2023, @08:43AM (1 child)
A friend of mine worked for many years for a highly successful British startup as an Embedded Software Engineer. He was well paid and well respected. Their part of the company got bought out by a larger American company. His experience was not good. The Engineers were given a new employment contract to sign. It had all sorts of very restrictive clauses in it like, "The company owns your brain and anything you ever think of either during work hours or at home. If you are a FOSS hobbyist, any code you write or any inventions that you make must be disclosed to the company privately first who will decide whether they want to call dibs on it." They were told they didn't have to sign the new contract, but if they didn't they wouldn't be taking part in the annual appraisal and compensation process, so no pay rises. Seven of them resigned en masse after consulting a lawyer. They went to other companies for more pay and better conditions.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 13 2023, @11:51PM
Sounds like the kind of company that wouldn't give competitive pay raises anyway.
In the small company world investors come up with all kinds of overreaching and unenforceable "agreements" for employees to sign. The more ridiculous the agreement the more risky the investors considered their investment, and a clear sign to find other employment asap.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday March 13 2023, @11:05PM
Modded you interesting, but would definitely give you a side-order of +1 Funny as well about the Sales team having to follow the rules.
Non-compete for sales teams seeing technology is just dumb.
(Score: 2) by optotronic on Saturday March 11 2023, @03:08AM
I agree. It really rubs me the wrong way, and I hate to see it, even though it's far more concise than any way I could express the meaning using real words.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday March 13 2023, @11:21PM
It's been around a long time, and pretty accurately describes what it does - gets the person on board the ship (both physically if on-site, knowledge-wise and motivationally). HR could certainly come up with far worse terms.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Friday March 10 2023, @07:38PM
Two of my last three onboardings have been pretty rough.
In the first, my m1 manager role was empty and my coworkers had some grievance with management that, combined with their heavy workloads, left me twiddling my thumbs for most of the first month. I read all the documentation I could find, checked it against what actually existed, and rewrote a bunch of the out of date stuff. That sucked. It was a year before I felt like I was part of the team there.
In the second, I was hired for a specific contract by a tiny consulting firm and then some paperwork snafu pushed back the contract for about a month, then we lost a couple more months to holidays. I was twiddling thumbs again, this time with the very real concern that the tiny 6-person consulting shop would go belly-up from cashflow issues.
IMHO, onboarding an experienced person is an opportunity that you shouldn't waste. When you work on the same kit every day for years you develop blind spots. The new guy brings in fresh eyes and is ignorant of the "because its always been that way. That helps you, the trainer, see above the tickets in your queue and status meetings. Explaining everything to the FNG is also a great chance to for you to see the big picture again. Both of those advantages wane over time, so you have to take advantage of them while you can.
My most recent onboarding was a breeze, if you can even call it "onboarding". My contract worked out so well I rolled to full time with the company. I got a new laptop and they took the v- off my samaccountname. The actual work didn't change at all. My only complaint was the toy laptop I was assigned, and I was able to score a mobile workstation pretty soon thereafter. (Toy laptop is subjective here. For a normal user it would have been fine, but my work required toting around a bunch of VMs for lab environments.)
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Saturday March 11 2023, @03:34PM
The problem is the survey methodology.
My experience has been in-person is run by a highly extroverted generally ageism-enforced-young happy HR lady and the survey result is a mixture of how much men like friendly young women combined with whatever the onboarding was supposed to produce. In comparison remote onboarding is like "Well, damn if I know, here's some ultra low quality videos that are out of date and a bunch of out of date emails with 2020 dates and be sure to email some completed forms to someone who only works 2 hours a day and best of luck to you".
So they survey is really "do I prefer hanging out with college sorority chicks or doing all the work myself" but it'll be spun as yet another reason we have to get rid of remote work and sit in offices all day looking busy.