Onboarding is not simply the first day but a process taking through the first few months to one first year of a new hire. It addresses the goal of making them stay happy, engaging in the organization, and delivering satisfying values.

The effective onboarding process is used as a talent management tool to retain good employees for long-term business success. The conventional research indicates that the number of 90 days during when new employees could prove themselves in a new job, or the first year with the new job is the most vulnerable time with all employees.
Actual facts show that up to 30 percent of new hires who are employed in current jobs for less than six months will conduct new job searching, or almost 33 percent of employees have lost their expectations and passions in pursuing that jobs in the first two years. Hence, companies have to suffer the loss of about 10 – 15 percent of annual attrition due to the leaving of nearly 60 percent of talents in 4 years. There is no better argument than those figures in implying the need for qualified onboarding. The single step of the process should be designed in the boldness of facilitating new hires’ abilities to contribute to organizational performance.

Elementally, the onboarding process covers critical goals as:

• To encourage new hires to listen, learn and understand more about the organization, functions, and related relationships which are essential for their performance of all tasks.
• To create connections with respective colleagues to capture the culture of the organization, the department, the team; along with normal practices and disciplines in operations; and unique initiatives
• To empower new hires while positively influencing their working behaviors to shape or craft their new career paths.

To date, workforce loyalty may be listed as one of the critical bottlenecks for companies in sustaining their internal strengths; but the retention policies have still placed trivial attention on the onboarding practice. Not yet effectually designed, the onboarding process goes way beyond simple orientation training or induction programs with the main content in introducing companies’ achievements and broad descriptions of job accountabilities. For those above in concern, it is high time to revitalize the role of employees to be the winner in the war for talents.

Reference
Bauer, T. N. (n.d.). Onboarding new employees: maximizing success. Right Management, SHRM Foundation. Available at https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/special-reports-and-expert-views/Documents/Onboarding-New-Employees.pdf
Carucci, R. (2018). To retain new hires, spend more time onboarding them. Harvard Business Review, Dec 03, 2018. Available at https://hbr.org/2018/12/to-retain-new-hires-spend-more-time-onboarding-them
Joseph, D. and Sridevi, M. S. (2015). Effective onboarding as a talent management tool for employee retention. International Journal in Management and Social Science, 3(7), 176-186