The Pitfalls Hindering Your Onboarding Training Effectiveness
Barring any kind of sci-fi incident, you only get one chance to make a first impression. As an employer, effective onboarding training is your chance to start off on the right foot from day one. But, with 31% of employees leaving new jobs in the first six months, it’s clear companies are frequently missing the mark.
Employee onboarding training mistakes lead to employees that are unable to do the job they were hired for, and worse, they lead to major issues with retention. Fortunately, you can prevent these mistakes and design stellar onboarding training programs by avoiding these common pitfalls.
1. One-Size-Fits-All Onboarding Training
Taking a one-size-fits-all approach to onboarding training will ultimately fail most employees. Your employees have different learning preferences, work styles, and job titles. Your training needs to be designed with customization in mind to ensure you create an employee experience that meets those preferences, work styles, and job titles.
The first thing you should do to avoid one-size-fits-all training is to customize the onboarding experience to match the new hire’s previous work history. Someone joining your company with ten years of experience will likely require far less foundational training than someone fresh out of college and vice versa.
It’s also important your onboarding is tailored to your employee’s new role. Sure, you have to cover general information everyone needs to know. But you also need to properly equip each new hire with the knowledge required to do their unique job.
- Preboarding: This is all the communication and paperwork that happens before the employee’s first day at work, including company policies and our employee handbook.
- Induction: Employee training really begins during each new hire’s first week. In this time, we focus on covering the basics of our company.
- Role-specific onboarding: The role-specific onboarding phase is tailored to fit the job the employee is hired for.
Whatever route you go with your own customized training, it’s a good idea to reserve group training for more general information, like benefits and culture.
2. Information Overload
Train people on the things they need to succeed, not everything you think they might need to know. Too much information will get in the way of successful onboarding and may leave new hires feeling overwhelmed.
Leverage your experienced team members throughout the training development process to ensure your onboarding program covers the most relevant information for each role.
3. No Follow-Up From The Onboarding Manager
Follow up with new hires as they progress through the onboarding process. Regular touchpoints allow you to determine if the process is going well, or if anyone is feeling left behind or frustrated about a particular aspect.
During your follow-up calls with new hires, determine if supplemental training or materials are needed.
4. Culture Is Ignored
Culture plays a big role in securing top talent and keeping it. Failing to showcase company culture during onboarding training is a mistake.
Dedicate a section of your onboarding training to discuss company culture. Discuss your company’s mission statement, culture pillars, policies, and fringe benefits.
5. Not Collecting Feedback After Onboarding
Your employee onboarding process can only improve if you know what’s broken. Gathering feedback from new hires is an essential way to gauge employee engagement and find out where you can improve onboarding training.
Survey employees once they complete the onboarding phase to see if your training hits the mark.
Collaborate And Create The Best Onboarding Training
Collaboration across your entire team allows you to make the most relevant and proper onboarding training possible. Embrace collaborative learning and include everyone you can in the discussion.
Experts claim 20% of turnover happens in the first 45 days, but that doesn’t have to be the case for you. Give your new employee onboarding program an edge with our free playbook.
References:
1. These 10+ Onboarding Statistics Reveal What New Employees Really Want in 2023
2. Employee Retention Report
3. Reducing New Employee Turnover Among Emerging Adults
