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The employees working in an organization are always instrumental in adding to its overall productivity and prosperity. They drive the business processes forward by performing an array of activities daily. Over time, they become familiar with the organization they work in and start understanding its pulse. Once your employees reach this stage, it becomes crucial to retain them and prevent them from switching jobs. 

This zone of comfort and mutual understanding can be reached through effective employee onboarding. If you onboard your employees well, they would not find any difficulty adjusting to the new work environment and starting their new journey with utmost motivation. New employees are often full of a fresh perspective and high enthusiasm. Streamlines onboarding helps an organization optimize this energy and channel the same to improve its productivity. 

Also, when you onboard your employees well, you tend to retain them for a more extended period. Once they are well-versed with their role and what their organization expects of them, they perform their duties well and know what they are doing. This makes them engage with the company for a longer time, instead of switching jobs and moving to an organization offering better opportunities. 

The first few weeks of an employee in your company are crucial and determine their engagement with your organization. Effective onboarding makes your employees feel like a part of a professional family, helping you retain them for a long time. 

However, despite all these benefits of onboarding employees, organizations often fail to onboard their employees effectively. According to Gallup, 88% of employees across the globe do not feel that they have been onboarded effectively by their organizations. Companies often channel all their attention towards training and development, ignoring the onboarding processes. 

Never make the mistake of assuming that employee onboarding does not bring visible results. Gone are the days when employees could be retained only via higher remuneration and promotions. Their needs have changed over time, and extensive employee onboarding is necessary to increase the employee retention rate within your organization. 

Here are some of the most effective ways in which you can enhance employee retention via effective employee onboarding: 

1. Providing Seamless Employee Support
   
   New employees are very likely to have questions and queries about their work, the platforms their work on, managers they need to report to, and much more. If you fail to provide them with personalized support during their initial days, you will likely lose their confidence reasonably early.
   
   The traditional approach to employee support is no longer relevant to onboard employees well. Companies can provide seamless and integrated support to the new employees via modern service desks. These service desks make use of AI and machine learning to provide personalized support to your employees. These platforms understand the context of the questions asked, scan your knowledge base, and develop solutions tailored specifically for the concerned employee.
   
   The modern service desk allows your employees to auto-resolve their issues with the help of an automated ticketing system. Instead of creating support tickets manually, the platform would automatically create tickets over a simple chat. This is how an AI-based service desk helps your new employees to get their issues resolved via conversational AI. It uses chatbots that assist your employees as they look for solutions and interact with them to provide seamless assistance.
   
   When a new employee joins your organization, they have little knowledge about where to go and whom to approach to get their questions answered. Implementing a modern service desk makes the job of your HR manager easier as a single digitized platform would offer holistic support to all your newly onboarded employees.
   
   
2. Sending Personalized Emails On Joining The Company
   
   Efficient employee onboarding involves giving your employees a warm welcome as they join your organization. If you are willing to develop a healthy and lasting relationship with your employees, it is essential to make them feel valued while onboarding them.
   
   Modern service desks allow you to send automated and personalized emails to your employees when joining your organization. To every new employee, you can send a personalized letter, details about their roles and responsibilities, the login credentials for the platforms used, contact details of their peers and managers, company policies, and every other detail necessary to introduce them to your organization.
   
   This makes your employees realize that their entry into your organization is valued and highly appreciated, making them want to give their 100% to the company.
   
   
3. Start engaging employees before their first day at work.
   
   Effective employee onboarding often starts before the day your employees join your organization officially. Stay in touch with your employees during the period between them being selected and their date of joining. This allows your employees to get the hang of their new work environment and make them well-versed with their new employers. Also, always assume that your employees have several other job opportunities to choose from apart from your organization. If you are in touch with them before their first day at work, the chances of them going anywhere else reduce to a great extent.
   
   Once they are selected for their jobs, ask them if they have any queries regarding their work or if they want to know anything about your organization. Always be available for your new employees in case they have any doubts. This will make them look forward to their new job and journey with your organization.
   
   
4. Pair Them With Suitable Seniors
   
   It is practically impossible for a handful of individuals to successfully onboard every new employee joining the organization. It is always advisable to pair one or more new employees with a suitable senior to provide them with thorough assistance during their first few weeks.
   
   New employees are likely to feel lost and confused as they hit the ground running. When you pair them with skilled, capable, and experienced seniors, they can feed off their experience and obtain all possible assistance to perform their tasks better. Also, this provides the new employees with a sense of security and assurance that they will be guided every step of the way.
   
   
5. Training Your Employees Well
   
   No matter how competent your employees are, there is always scope for some training to optimize their skills. If an employee keeps undertaking the same processes with their skill-set, they are likely to get bored and exhausted over time. Training them during the onboarding processes allows them to expand their skill-set and hone the skills they possess.
   
   Employee training is an ongoing process that should begin as soon as an employee is onboarded. Effective training provides your employees with confidence and motivation to give their best and leverage their productivity. Once they are rewarded for their hard work and dedication, your employees would be willing to be associated with your company for a longer time.
   
   
6. Extending The Duration Of The Onboarding Processes
   
   One of the most common employee onboarding mistakes committed by organizations is limiting the onboarding processes to a few days. It is important not to get confused between orientation and onboarding.
   
   While orientation is a considerably shorter process and limited to introducing new employees to the organization, employee onboarding is a more wholesome process. It is always advisable to extend the duration of your employee onboarding process at least to a few weeks or a few months. This allows managers to take good note of the progress made and assess the efficiency of the onboarding processes.
   
   
7. Having A Well-defined Plan
   
   Onboarding should be taken as seriously as any other significant project implemented within an organization. Effective employee onboarding can only take place if you have a well-defined onboarding plan in place. Define all the objectives you are willing to attain and the results you are willing to obtain. Set specific milestones to be achieved and create a project timeline to implement all your onboarding processes.
   
   Read More: How to enhance your remote onboarding process with Rezolve.ai
   
   
8. Focus More On Remote Employees
   
   Since 2020, the practice of working from home has skyrocketed, with a plethora of employees across the world working from home. This poses a challenge to HR managers when it comes to onboarding remote employees.
   
   If you are willing to increase the employee retention rate within your organization, focus more on onboarding remote employees. Make the most of online collaborative platforms and provide streamlined support to your employees, irrespective of the location they are working from.
   
   
9. Regular Monitoring Of Performance
   
   You need to know if your employees are responding well to your onboarding processes to improve the same. It is crucial to monitor the progress made by your new employees regularly to provide them with state-of-the-art support during their initial weeks.
   
   
10. Making Your Employees Feel Included
    
    Finally, an organization needs to treat its new employees as an extension of their "work family" to establish a long and healthy relationship. When your employees feel included, they naturally feel like giving their best and adding to your organization's overall productivity.
    
    

The Final Word

A poor onboarding process has an evident impact on the company, the quality of the workforce, employee retention rate, turnover rates, and the business ROI. Therefore, it is critical to update your onboarding programs regularly. 

The above mentioned are some of the most critical ways to enhance employee retention rates within your organization through efficient employee onboarding.