Until candidates make a positive contribution to a business organization, money is spent to train them. If the newcomer doesn’t meet expectations, those investments become a lot of money down the drain. The onboarding success may vary by a specialist as well as by business. And, the way both contribute to it?
How to measure the onboarding success in terms of company revenue? Which onboarding metrics can show that your onboarding program is comfortable for your new team members? Can pre-employment screening services be helpful when you are optimizing the onboarding process? Answers to these and more questions are waiting for you below ⬇️
How to Measure Onboarding Success: Speed, Loyalty, and Productivity
Step 1. Understand Onboarding Metrics
Onboarding metrics can be categorized into several key areas.
- Time-to-productivity is the first onboarding success metrics to track. It tells how long an organization takes to achieve a targeted performance from new employees. Hypothesis two states that the time to productivity of the employee is inversely proportional to the employee on-boarding process: Time to productivity = minimal time to productiveness demonstrates on boarding process within which the employee is trained and oriented appropriately within the firm.
- Tracking turnover rates, particularly within the first year of employment, helps companies identify potential issues in their onboarding processes. High turnover can signal that new hires are not adequately supported or integrated into the company culture.
- New-hire surveys measure satisfaction with onboarding, helping identify strengths and weaknesses in the program.
- Comparing new hires’ performance against KPIs (key performance indicators) offers insights into how effectively onboarding prepares them for their roles.
- Monitoring training completion rates (how many new hires complete their training programs) can indicate engagement levels and highlight areas for improvement.
Step 2. Track Key Metrics
To track time-to-productivity, it is needed to establish clear performance benchmarks for each role and track how long it takes new hires to meet these benchmarks. For example, If a sales rep should close their first deal in three months, tracking how fast new hires reach this goal can provide insights into the effectiveness of onboarding training and support.
Effective onboarding strategies can accelerate new hires’ time to full productivity by 25% through structured support and timely reminders.
Turnover rates among new hires provide valuable information about retention and employee satisfaction. Effective onboarding helps to retain new hires and prevent turnover and travelling at 82%. Further, 69 percent of specialists want to work for 3 years with the firm if they are satisfied with initial orientation. Nevertheless, up to one fifth of turnover occurs in the first 45 days. For instance, analyzing turnover figures can reveal problem areas among early attrition cases where companies weak links when it comes to onboarding are likely to show up. That is, if that starting employees are highly likely to turnover within the first three months, it may mean there is confusion on job descriptions or poor organizational fit.
When conducting regular surveys among new hires, ask questions that cover various aspects such as clarity of job roles, support from managers and colleagues, and overall satisfaction with the onboarding process. The fact that employees are allowed to remain anonymous should help to get frank reports from hired specialists of companies and allow corresponding corrections to be made. For instance, there is always an opportunity to change rate of performace or pattern of training if most of the team members complains of feeling stressed during training.
Performance reviews should be aligned with specific KPIs relevant to each role. For example, if in your call center you have a target to solve customer’s issues within a specific period, you can measure this during your training to determine whether your onboarding program equipped the customer service representative for the job adequately. Analysing of performance may also provide information about tendencies within the distinct groups of new hires and draw attention to their development.
A company should strive for high training completion rates, as they correlate with better retention and performance outcomes. If a significant number of new hires fail to complete required training modules, it may indicate issues with content relevance or delivery methods.
The Lifehack for Better Onboarding: Hire Pre-Vetted Candidates
The quicker you filter out candidates who may not align with your business values or job requirements, the more you reduce turnover rates and improve overall employee satisfaction. Therefore, you, most likely, will be more satisfied with the onboarding metrics if you turn to pre-employment screening services. The process of staff recruitment and hiring is streamlined where service providers only offer the best candidates for the onboarding process that has skills and personality to fit your tech team perfectly. However, pre-employment screening produces useful information in the onboarding processes that are useful when designing onboarding solutions. An important benefit is the possibility of developing individual training courses based on the candidates’ experiences and abilities. It accelerates the work’s pace, and fresh starters do not feel uncomfortable in the new team anymore.
How to Improve Onboarding Through Metrics
Good HR teams not only know how to measure onboarding success, but also identify trends over time and change the onboarding process.
For example:
- If the majority of new hires leave within their first 90 days, it may signal that your onboarding process is ineffective and needs reassessment.
- If time-to-productivity is longer than expected across multiple cohorts, it may be time to reassess training materials or mentorship programs.
- If performance measures do not show improvement over time or fail to meet established KPIs, it could indicate that the onboarding process requires a fundamental overhaul.
- If turnover rates remain high despite efforts to improve engagement during onboarding, further investigation into workplace culture may be warranted.
It’s also reasonable to review the onboarding success metrics periodically. Some of them can be unrealistic. Here are some common cases.
- Setting unrealistic benchmarks for time to productivity can pressure both employees and managers. Overly ambitious expectations may ignore the complexities of roles and the necessary learning curve, resulting in frustration and burnout.
- Tracking turnover within the first 90 days can be insightful; however, focusing solely on this metric may overlook deeper issues. High turnover might indicate problems with the onboarding process, but it could also stem from external factors unrelated to onboarding, such as market conditions or company culture.
- A high training completion rate does not necessarily equate to effective learning. Team members might finish training without truly understanding the material, leading to performance issues later on.
- Relying solely on satisfaction surveys can be misleading if not framed correctly. New hires may feel pressured to provide positive feedback early on, resulting in inflated scores that do not reflect their true feelings about the onboarding experience.
- Metrics like employee net promoter scores can be useful, but might not capture the full picture of a new hire’s integration into the company. If engagement is measured too soon in the onboarding process, it may not accurately reflect long-term satisfaction or commitment.
As you can see, it’s just like with improving customer experience. It’s hard to improve customer experience without addressing customer feedback, and you cannot create a great onboarding experience without taking into account what your hires need.
