There is no secret behind the scene of having an engaged workforce other than doing the right things from their first onboarding days.

After all efforts of recruitment and selection to achieve the onboarding of best-suited ones, organizations move to the next challenge of endorsing the fit of people-organization and people-job. A strategic onboarding program has two-fold benefits – positively encouraging employees at an individual level and that influencing the overall organization. Why is the onboarding program important? Many motives to state; and, directly, it is the premise for individual decisions of staying or leaving, at least in the first six months of joining. Fortunately, HR could do a large basket of events to impact their decisions through the wise use of strategic onboarding. A well-structured onboarding program has the power of creating engagement, enhancing productivity, and sustaining retention period.

Generally, an onboarding process should be designed with four phases during the first year of joining. From the HR perspective and based on their scope of responsibility, their collaboration is emphasized in the first; while from the second, the congruence role of line managers is undeniable. Depending on positions, job levels, and other organizational settings, the first phases of the onboarding process should be taken place in the first few months for new hires to stay happy while empowering them to shape the course of new career paths.

Across those phases, employee experience toward the organization will bolster. That leads to specific behaviors underlying by employees’ attitudes from real investigations of spending efforts with the job – the organization. A year goes by, and new hires have been able to reap recognition of organizational efforts on them while performing in a unique way by individual differences and emotions.

The consideration of how many phases with attached activities in each phase would be various as organizational settings. Yet, the important implication is the necessity of splitting into rational phases due to the complicatedness of employee experience across. There are different kinds of interactions, touch-points, and decisive focal in the business. That, phase splitting facilitates the gradual formulation of suitable affection and cognition at an individual level, while enhances immediate and pinpointed improvements at the organizational one.

Reference:
Abbas, W. F., Ismail, S. H., Haron, H., and Hariri, W. N. A. W. (2018). Enterprise integration of employee onboarding process using Zachman framework. International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 7(4.31), 46-51
LaShawn, T. (2007). Onboarding: maximizing productivity and retention. PM Boulevard.