Elevating Your New Employee Onboarding Program
Knowing where new employees will go and how they will perform on their journey within a company requires constant interaction, consistent feedback, and some course correction along the way. Just like an airline pilot needs to check instruments and adjust speed, altitude, and direction to ensure the on-time and safe arrival at the destination, piloting the onboarding of new employees may require adjustments based on feedback. Let’s also not forget the importance of having a clear direction—whether it’s a flight’s final destination or a course’s performance objectives, you can’t take off if you don’t know where you’d like to end up.
Mapping The Flight: Onboarding Case Study
Challenge
High turnover in any employment structure comes with a high cost. Studies estimate that when an employee leaves a job, it costs their company one to three times that employee’s salary to replace them.
One of our clients, a leading convenience store chain in the Eastern United States, confronted this reality during some recent changes to its business model. These changes made it necessary to have more leadership in each store at any given time, and the rapid transition was starting to cause recently promoted supervisors and managers to leave while still in the management onboarding process. They needed to bridge the skill gap for those moving into leadership positions to keep them confident, engaged, and employed. They also needed an innovative and compelling program that could be completed in a short timeline.
Solution
The company partnered with AllenComm to create training for new supervisors and managers who lacked previous management experience and didn’t have strong leadership skills. The customized training mixed narrative videos with motion graphics and simulations, creating an accessible competency path that not only built procedural and technical skills, but helped the learners believe that they could be leaders. Small, easily digestible training modules kept learners from feeling overwhelmed, and fun simulation exercises focused on real-life activities employees would find on the job. Celebrating milestone achievements along the way gave the learners confidence and increased motivation to continue with the training process.
Results
AllenComm’s training solution engages the learner quickly and early on, providing them with the skills they need to become confident managers or supervisors. As more employees have completed the onboarding process, the direct result was higher employee retention and satisfaction, which saved this expanding convenience store chain the high cost associated with employee turnover.
The AllenComm Approach: 3 Best Practices For Successful Onboarding Outcomes
At AllenComm, we have found that strategically guiding new employees through 3 key types of learning ensure a smooth flight for those responsible for the onboarding process and the new employee.
1. Individual Learning: Capturing And Leveraging What Motivates New Hires
- Situate: Personal Planner – With this tool, learners plot out their aspirations and create a personalized plan of action using a matris alighted with company values.
- Discover: Workflow Timelines – How does this work get done? This interactive timeline provides a deeper dive on who does what, when, and where.
- Connect: Skills Building – Targeted, role-specific and personalized training based on Skills Inventory and the Personal Planner.
- Champion: On-Demand BOK – This performance-support tool serves up reinforcement and provides just-in-time answers from a dynamic, peer-rated body of knowledge.
2. Social Learning: Mapping Out And Orienting Employees To The Organization
- Situate: Expert Stories – Learners use a portal app to record experts as they share what they value in the culture. This facilitates quick transcription and prompts analysis.
- Discover: Cohort Stand-Ups – Each day of the first week, learners meet with other learners to share insights and troubleshoot roadblocks.
- Connect: Community Contribution – During the first month, the learner will make their first contribution to an active community of practice.
- Champion: Mentor Match-Ups – Before the end of the first year, learners mentor other new hires to practice sharing culture stories and to reinforce their experiences.
3. Contextual Learning: Breaking Things Down To Enhance, Not Overwhelm
- Situate: Augmented Reality Tour – Outside of the conventional guided tour, this portal app alerts learners to key locations, site-based policies, meeting rooms, company trivia, and more.
- Discover: Augmented Reality Tour – Using the same app for the AR Tour, learners map out the key people, locations, and functions of their immediate work surroundings (with photos, notes, and sketches).
- Connect: Skills Inventory – Using this diagnostic, learners identify situational skills they will need in the short-term and in the long-term.
- Champion: Opportunity Analysis – By the end of the first year, the learner will identify and pitch an opportunity for advancing the company’s values on their own team.
When you consider the costs of replacing an employee at 100-300% of their salary, you’ll want to treat them like first-class passengers from the moment they accept the offer. With proactive onboarding solution in place, your new hires and your company will soar. (Keith Rollag S. P., 2005)
If you want to learn more about how to create successful onboarding programs for your new hires, download the eBook Final Boarding Call For Onboarding.
Related articles:
1. A Fresh Look At New Employee Onboarding Programs