Fix the Great Resignation with Great Onboarding

Key Takeaways

• The Great Resignation reflects poor employee retention strategies
• Employers and managers should be focusing on the Great Onboarding
• Invest in employee development to transform silver medalists into gold medalists
• Improve long term retention and performance with improved onboarding experiences

The Great Resignation has been the headline for several months now, and that’s probably several months too long. Yes, workers are quitting in droves, but the rate of unemployment has fallen to pre-pandemic levels and the rate of new hires is consistently high.

Plus, a large majority of worker quits are actually seniors (we don't call that a resignation but a retirement). The amount of available workers per job opening has fallen, suggesting that those who want to work are having no trouble finding a job. In other words, this market is all about the candidate.

What Should We Be Talking About Instead?

The reality is that companies are now facing the Great Onboarding. Competition for workers across millions of openings turned recruiting, hiring, and integrating workers from regular business concerns to an existential crisis. (For software engineers, it's an annual $22 billion problem.) Research has repeatedly shown that onboarding is a key element of retention.

All companies deal with skill demands on new roles and burn out from remote work brought on by both the pandemic and general industry trends. Even as leadership acknowledges onboarding as important, nearly a third of employees see a significant shortfall. This gap compounds the issue as sourcing becomes more difficult without qualified referrals.

How to Fix Your Onboarding Process

Onboarding is more than all the administrative tasks that take place after the hire like setting up payroll, accounts, and hardware. All these boxes to check before the employee integrates with the team and starts delivering are merely steps. That last step - start delivering - is viewed as the end of the onboarding process, just as getting that employee into the office is the beginning.

Sometimes managers and leaders acknowledge that onboarding can take several days, but not often do we step back and view this as a holistic process. Even when we start onboarding with pre-employment communication, we often miss the integration that takes place during the recruitment phase and after the first few weeks.

Once at the company, employees that are unsupported and dissatisfied ultimately leave, leading to extended drops in productivity. Churn can cost the organization up to 30% of a role's salary. This means that employee experience drives the recruiting demand and thus the onboarding dilemma. Addressing onboarding, then, becomes a continuous internal audit for existing employees with improvements driving retention and maximizing recruiting value.

Continuous Onboarding and Employee Development

I did a podcast with BuiltIn recently on turning silver medal talent into gold. Great talent is everywhere; employers just need to offer learning opportunities and career coaching to maximize output.

The gap between Olympic silver and gold medalists in track and field is fractions of a fraction of a second. This gap isn’t always about talent, but better facilities, better coaching, better preparation. We can close that gap at the workplace by offering resources, or as Stephen Baer put it for Forbes: learning and development is a profit center.

Think about what this means for your recruiting efforts.

A continuous onboarding experience deepens and widens your talent pool. You can hire the best fit not just for the narrow job but for the company's roadmap and growth. Focusing on employee development drives retention. Decreasing churn improves your recruitment pipeline and onboarding for new roles with applicants that are pre-selected for a better fit.

Of course, making improvements to employee experience takes time, but it starts with the onboarding process. This is low-hanging fruit that should make a manager's job easier and employee's sense of fulfillment much richer. Extending the onboarding process beyond new hires to include promotions, transfers, or returns alleviates the retention crisis by offering an experience that is personalized, structured, continuous, and practical.

The Dream Job and the Dream Employee

According to Gallup, 91% of job-changers leave their company to do so. In other words, employee churn generates two openings instead of one - the role they might have moved to and the role they are leaving. Workers want meaning out of their job, not just a paycheck. In fact, that Gallup study found that what employees really want are:

1. the ability to do what they do best
2. greater work-life balance and personal well-being
3. greater stability and job security
4. a significant increase in income
5. the opportunity to work for a company with a great brand or reputation

An employer can and should give employees the tools they need to do what they do best. An effective onboarding experience is critical to set a worker free to be more productive and more successful.

An employer is responsible for reviewing their benefits to address work-life balance and income concerns. Improvements to benefits and pay become part of your employer brand and recruiting process. If great onboarding improves retention (it does) and investment in learning improves revenues (it does), continued growth and stability is assured.

When we're making job offers, we're not just offering pay to candidates. We're offering opportunities to learn and grow, work that we find interesting. If we're intentional about our cultural hires, they'll find it interesting, too. Intentional creation of a company culture once again improves the onboarding experience by reducing friction between contributors and managers.

The Great Resignation should be seen by leaders as a great opportunity. With all the job openings, we have a chance to expand our talent pool and grow with the Great Onboarding. Don't our workers deserve a continuously great experience?