Common pain-points when onboarding and how to avoid them
While every employer wants new hires to hit the ground running, too few companies do a good enough job in the ‘onboarding stakes’ to achieve this outcome.
There’s no shortage of data the world over to prove convincingly that employers struggle when it comes to successfully onboarding new hires, and Australia is no exception.
Given that recent Australian research suggests the typical onboarding process costs a business $150,000, it’s clear that poor onboarding can and does negatively impact any business.
With previous research in the US concluding that up to 20% of staff turnover occurs within the first 45 days of employment, a standardised onboarding process is clearly essential.
The same research also concluded that organisations with a standardised onboarding process experience 62% greater new hire productivity, along with 50% greater new hire retention.
According to Qualtrics research based on a survey of more than 2,000 workers in Australia, while 70% of HR leaders are focused on attracting and hiring talent, only 62% prioritise the onboarding of new employees to ensure they’re properly integrated into the company.
Resonating strongly with the mountain of reports into onboarding globally, Qualtrics research concludes that poor onboarding processes lead to new hires feeling less engaged and less likely to stay with their employer
Based on his global survey of 1,100 CEOs and hiring managers, Brad Giles, owner of professional trainer Evolution Partners, claims there are three structural drivers of ineffective onboarding.
No clear ownership: Giles says onboarding tends to lack clear ownership within SMBs because it occurs relatively infrequently in these businesses. He says once the job has been filled there’s a tendency for SMBs to quickly leave the new employee behind.
No clear outcomes: Onboarding doesn’t have a clear outcome like ’vacancy filled’ does for hiring.
Onboarding on the fly by time-poor managers: While busy managers charged with onboarding want to ‘get back to their normal job’ as soon as possible, Giles reminds them that their normal job will be more difficult if new hires don’t understand what’s expected of them.
Unless you’re the new hire, it’s very difficult to know whether onboarding was effective or not… and onboarding doesn’t contribute to a clear objective in the way other processes do.
Brad Giles, Evolution Partners
Beam is doing its bit to optimise onboarding for both employers and their staff
There’s clearly a lot more to successful onboarding than showing new hires where they sit, guiding them to the toilets and showing them the ropes of the job. Adding to onboarding complexities, a lot of new hires are now in hybrid roles, while remote workers also present employers with unique onboarding challenges.
Unsurprisingly, employers big and small are looking to automation to solve their onboarding hurdles and make meeting their employer obligations such as superannuation easier in the process.
Getting the right details from new team members, like their super fund choice and tax file number (TFN) declaration, is an important part of the overall onboarding experience, and this is where Beam’s Super Fund Onboarding (SFO) solution comes in.
Secure, trackable and compliant
SFO lets you as an employer create a simple, secure and trackable digital onboarding experience for your team, so you can better manage paying super and easily meet your employer super obligations.
SFO also allows employees to smoothly take control and choose their super fund when they’re onboarded. And by knowing which super fund a team member would like their super contributions paid into, employers can spend less time on admin or checking for stapled funds with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).
By letting you get the correct details of your team, their TFN declaration and super choice in one secure place, SFO removes the need to send and have endless paperwork. More importantly, by using SFO you’re able to keep accurate records of your employee’s super decisions and TFN declarations readily at hand, so you can stay compliant.
Important information
Beam is issued by Precision Administration Services Pty Ltd (Precision) (ABN 47 098 977 667, AFSL No. 246 604). Precision is wholly owned by Australian Retirement Trust Pty Ltd (ABN 88 010 720 840, AFSL No. 228 975) as trustee for Australian Retirement Trust (ABN 60 905 115 063).
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