One study, published in the Academy of Management Journal, found that the first 90 days of employment are critical for retaining new hires. Those first days are pivotal to ensuring that new hires build rapport with the company, management teams, and fellow coworkers. Another study revealed that new employees who went through a structured onboarding program were 69% more likely to be with an organization after 3 years.
So, to retain new hires, research suggests you provide them with a structured onboarding program that allows them to build rapport. Here are three elements you should incorporate into your onboarding program if you want it to be successful.
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Have a Plan with Checklists
If you want to have a structured onboarding program, you’ll need to create checklists that coincide with your onboarding plan. Here are some checklists you should have on hand for your onboarding program.
- Required legal documents each new hire will need to fill out (many organizations are having new employees fill out much of this paperwork online before the start date)
- Equipment and material that should be distributed to each new hire
- Instructions for email, passwords, key files and procedures
- Role-specific documents and equipment, per department
- Calendar with daily tasks, events, and training new hires will encounter throughout their onboarding
Always hand out agendas to new hires, too, so they know what’s planned for each day of their onboarding.
Allow New Hires to Interact with Others
If you want your new hires to build rapport with others, you must plan time for them to interact. Plan a day for managers to take new hires out to lunch or give them a tour of their work facility. Allow new hires to ask their future coworkers questions in a relaxed setting. And have new hires interact with each other on projects they complete as they’re learning more about your organization during their onboarding.
Be sure that this is structured time and planned on a calendar, otherwise many new hires will hesitate to reach out to others who are already familiar with the organization on their own, and opportunities to establish rapport will be lost.
Offer Interactive Opportunities and Hands-On Learning
If you want your new hires to stay engaged and build rapport, don’t just stand in front of a classroom and lecture them. Let them interact with the content you’re providing them, and provide them with hands-on opportunities. And when assigning them training exercises, make sure the exercises are relevant to the real roles they’ll be assuming after their onboarding is complete.
For example, if you’re onboarding a group of customer service reps, you could create mock scripts they act out in small groups, where one employee is the customer and the other employee practices how to respond to the customer’s concern. These opportunities are structured and help build rapport.
Ultimately, if you want your new hires to stick around, create a solid plan for their onboarding program using checklists, allow them to build rapport with others, and let them complete hands-on training.