Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Lorrie Coffey

Five Elements of a Great Onboarding Experience
You found the perfect candidate, made them an offer they couldn’t resist, and now they’re ready to start work. While you’ve wowed them up to now, your onboarding and orientation experience is critical to keeping them and to your reputation as an employer of choice.
- A study by Glint showed that employees who had a poor onboarding experience were eight times less likely to be engaged in their work, with 40% of those employees reporting disengagement just three months after hire. Those same employees reported that they would not recommend the company to others.
- According to a 2014 study by SHRM, one company surveyed reported that new employees who attended a structured orientation program were 69% more likely to remain with the organization for three years.
One of my favorite tasks in HR has always been designing and implementing onboarding and orientation programs for organizations. I love working with organizations to learn what processes they have in place, helping them determine where they need to make improvements, and then following up after implementation to see the results.

So what makes a great onboarding and orientation program?
1. Communication. As with most things, a great onboarding and orientation experience begins with communication. Even before a new hire’s first day, there is often communications that need to be sent out to them. This may include new hire forms, information on where they need to report on their first day, or even just a welcome email from the leadership team. Make sure this communication is welcoming, informative, and easy to disseminate. If you require new hires to fill out paperwork prior to their start date, provide clear and concise instructions on how to complete and return the forms. Try to think like a new hire, anticipate what questions they may have and answer them proactively.
2. Preparation. The worst experience I ever had as a new hire was walking in on my first day and being asked to put together my own orientation packet! And it only got worse when I was shown to my office only to find out I had no desk, no computer, and a room full of storage boxes (and they had a month to prepare). Being ready for your new hire to show up on their first day goes a long way. Be ready to greet them at the front desk when they arrive, have their desk, computer, and any other equipment they need ready for them, along with all of their access and login information. Make sure that you communicate their start date with leadership and anyone else who may be involved in their onboarding and orientation so that they are not caught off guard. And maybe even have a few goodies waiting for them when they arrive that first day or plan to take them out to lunch.
3. Elimination of downtime. One of the worst things I think you can do on a new hire’s first day is leave them alone. Think back over your first day experiences, were you ever left to your own devices? If you answered yes, chances are you also remember wondering why they weren’t prepared for you, why they didn’t have your first day scheduled out, and when someone was going to come to rescue you from your infinite boredom. There are so many tasks to accomplish when a new employee starts, so there really should be no reason to drop them in a room or at a desk and leave them. Designing a standard orientation schedule for their first day, and even their first week will help ensure that there isn’t an excessive amount of downtime for new hires. Consider what paperwork they need to complete, what policies and procedures you should review with them, what training should be completed and who will present it, and who they need to be introduced to. Consider establishing a mentor or buddy program where a tenured employee is paired up with new hires to help them get acclimated to the organization, then have that mentor or buddy help walk the new hire through orientation.
4. Follow through. Onboarding and orientation are often used interchangeably, however, they are two very different things. While your organization’s orientation may take a day or even a few weeks, onboarding an employee may take up to a year. So what’s the difference? Orientation involves tasks like the completion of paperwork, reviewing company policies and procedures, introductions to team members, and introductory training to understand their role. Onboarding goes well beyond that and includes more in-depth training and management involvement. It is the process of helping the new employee get their feet wet and learn how to become a contributing member of the team. While orientation may be a very formal process, onboarding is often much more informal. Don’t drop the ball after the initial orientation. Make sure that the new hire is being provided with the tools, training, and resources they need to understand and be successful in their role.
5. Follow up. Designing and implementing an orientation and onboarding program can be a huge undertaking. But all of that effort could be wasted if the program is not effective, so a critical step in the process is to evaluate the results. A great way to do this is to have new hires complete a post-orientation survey and provide feedback on what worked well, what didn’t, and what they felt was missing. I also recommend having a touch base conversation with the new hire after they’ve been with the company for 60-90 days and had a chance to get settled. Use the feedback from the survey and touch base meeting to continue to improve your organization’s onboarding and orientation programs. And as noted in the statistics listed above, another measurable indicator of an effective onboarding program is an increase in employee retention.
Based on the five elements of a great onboarding experience, how would you rate your organization’s program?
November 29, 2018
Improving Your Time to Hire
According to the 2017 Talent Acquisition Benchmarking Report published by SHRM, the average time to hire in 2016 was 36 days. With the job market exceeding the talent pool right now, candidates are harder to find, and when companies do find them, they have to move fast or risk losing them to the competition.

How can organizations streamline their hiring process while still ensuring that they are recruiting top talent?
1. Assess your current process. A great way to do this is through a SWOT analysis. What is your organization doing well and what are you struggling with? What opportunities are you missing out on and what external threats are impacting your ability to expedite your hiring process? Once you’ve assessed your current process, you’ll be able to determine where changes or improvements are needed.
2. Document your process. A tool that we use for our clients is a process documentation flowchart. It outlines what resources are needed to successfully complete the process, who is involved in each step, and what the possible outcomes are at each step.
3. Provide training to those involved. Your process document is useless if you don’t provide training to those involved, so schedule time to train your leadership on what the process is, what their responsibilities within that process are, and provide them the tools they need to successfully execute their part. Also set expectations with the leadership. If you submit a candidate to a hiring manager, let them know you’d like feedback within 1-2 business days. Then follow up if you don’t get that feedback within the time frame set. If you do this consistently, it will become a habit for those managers.
4. Make sure your hiring process is easy. Just as candidates don’t want the application process to be cumbersome, once they get past that first hurdle, they want to see that ease of process continued during the interview phase. If your interview process includes skills tests or requires samples of work, make those tasks easy. I have a client that requires developer candidates to take a coding test. In order to complete the test, candidates are sent a link to a third-party web host service where they can log in to the test and take it at their convenience versus having to do so in person at the office. If your interview process requires interviews with multiple hiring managers, consider scheduling them back-to-back on the same day or doing panel interviews.
5. Show candidates that you value them. According to a 2017 study by CareerBuilder, 78% of candidates say that their overall experience during the hiring process is an indication of how the company values its people. A great way to show candidates that you value them is to make sure they understand your hiring process, communicate with them throughout that process, and don’t drag it out any longer than necessary.
If you take these steps and you’re still struggling to fill positions, you may need to re-evaluate your job posting or the recruiting sources you’re utilizing.

What can your organization do to decrease time to hire in this tight candidate market?
November 8, 2018
Why Small Businesses Need HR
TriNet, a California based HR Services provider, conducted a survey of small businesses in 2014. They found that:
- 81% of small business owners manage the HR function themselves
- 30% admitted that they were nervous about managing HR for their organization
- 30% reported that they improperly paid employees
- 23% acknowledged that they lost employees to their competitors due to benefits
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are over 137,000 new employer companies starting up each month. As those companies grow, their burdens as an employer increase. Many of the managers who responded to the TriNet survey stated that they spent approximately three to ten hours per month on processing payroll taxes. That doesn’t even account for all of the other HR responsibilities they manage. The more time they spend managing HR, the less time they have available to focus on growing their organization.

What can small businesses gain by turning their HR functions over to a trained HR professional?
1. Compliance. An HR professional will evaluate the organization’s HR policies and procedures to ensure that they are compliant, meet best practice standards, and truly work in the best interest of the organization and the employees. By ensuring that the organization is compliant, a small business can help to minimize employment liabilities.
2. Recruitment. HR can assist the organization with recruitment efforts, streamlining procedures to be more efficient, cost-effective, and to help ensure that the organization is hiring the best candidates for the position and the company culture. They can also assist with how those candidates are integrated into the organization, from onboarding to training, to performance management.
3. Training. While orienting employees to the organization is one aspect of training that HR often has a huge hand in, training goes well beyond that initial introductory period. HR is often an integral part of designing training programs within an organization. They not only help design training but work to evaluate the effectiveness of the training, as well as determine additional areas of need. They also work closely with management teams to provide invaluable leadership training.
4. Strategic Planning. The role of HR has evolved immensely over the past few decades. It has moved from an administrative role to a strategic role. In most organizations, both small and large, HR now has a seat at the table. Many organizations look to their HR departments to help strategize and plan for the organization’s future. HR plays an important role in the stability and growth of the organization. Organizations look to HR to fill four vital roles: the administrative expert, the employee champion, the strategic partner, and the change manager.
How can a small business justify the cost and what will be their return on that investment?

By building a strategic partnership with HR, organizations can help to determine how to most effectively use the financial resources allotted towards HR functions including:
- Wage structure and benefits offered
- Utilizing cost-effective HR systems
- Increasing employee morale and retention
- Safety/Risk Management mitigation
While adding HR to your small business will mean finding the financial resources to do so, the cost of not adding HR to your organization could be much more substantial.

Do the benefits of adding HR to your small business outweigh the risks?
November 1, 2018
Targeting Passive Candidates
Recruiters everywhere are struggling to fill open positions these days. According to an August 2018 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the rate of job openings is 4.6%, while the rate of unemployment is 3.6%. Basically, there are more open jobs right now than there are people to fill them.

Organizations are having to rethink their recruiting strategies in order to attract qualified candidates. Part of this revised strategy includes targeting passive candidates, or people who aren’t actively looking for a new job. So how do you attract candidates when they aren’t even job hunting?
- Offer employee referral bonuses. Current employees are often your best resource for great talent. They’re going to refer people that they feel are qualified, team players, and hard workers. Afterall, they may have to work with them. If your organization already has an employee referral program, make sure you advertise it to your employees. Send out a reminder to all staff that the program is in place, send out regular updates on what positions are open, and recognize the employee when you make a hire as a result of their referral.
- Use Linkedin to promote your company and to connect with potential candidates. Make sure your company page on Linkedin is up-to-date and speaks to your company culture. Then start looking for people to connect with that you feel could be an asset to your organization. Reach out to them and let them know that you were impressed with their profile and have some potential openings that you think they may be a good fit for. You may not get a response, but then again you might. And even if they aren’t interested, they may know someone who would be.
- Attend networking events. Networking is a great way to both get your organization’s name out there as well as to connect with people who may be in the same industry and looking for a new opportunity. Events may include tradeshows, conferences, and local meetups. A few great resources to find events in your area include Eventbrite and com.
- Sponsor local events. In addition to attending networking events, a great way to get your name out there and garner interest from potential candidates is to sponsor local events. This gives passive candidates an opportunity to see who your organization is and what you do. And it may just peak their interest in your organization. Bring recruiting materials with you that you can hand out and take the opportunity to strike up a conversation with attendees who stop by your sponsor table.
According to Linkedin.com, 70% of the global workforce is made up of passive talent. What is your organization doing to get their attention?
October 25, 2018
Proactively Impacting Retention Through Stay Interviews
How often as leaders do you wish you could convince an employee to stay after they’ve turned in their resignation? What if you could change their mind before they reached the point of no return?

Organizations often sit down with employees after they’ve tendered their resignation to find out why they decided to leave. But how often do leaders sit down with employees to find out what can be done to ensure that they stay with the organization?

Exit interviews usually consist of questions surrounding the reason for leaving including dissatisfaction with leadership, the organization, and benefits offered. But by the time leadership sits down with an employee to conduct an exit interview, the employee has already checked out. While in many cases the employee will be forthcoming with information on why they’ve chosen to leave, often times the employee no longer cares about providing their honest feedback. The damage has already been done and they’re ready to move on. While information gathered in the exit interview can be helpful in making necessary changes in the organization for current and future employees, it won’t help with the loss of the employee being interviewed.

In an interview with Forbes Magazine, Richard Finnegan, author of The Stay Interview, said “Hard data proves the top reason employees quit is they don’t trust their managers. Stay Interviews are the absolute best trust-building activity…and therefore the best retention tool.”

So how do stay interviews differ from exit interviews, other than the obvious fact of when they are conducted?
- Stay interviews focus on the positive. What do employees like about their job? What makes them want to come to work each day? What do they like about their leadership? Where do they see themselves going within the organization? What areas of the organization do they feel they can make a bigger impact in?
- They allow leadership to focus on the individual. Exit interviews focus on the company overall, from the leadership team, to benefits offered, to company culture. Stay interviews allow managers to focus on the individual employee. What drives them to be successful in their role? What are their career aspirations within the organization? How can leadership help them to reach (or exceed) their goals by helping them continue to grow their knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs)? What KSAs do they have that are not being fully utilized by the organization?
- It helps to build trust with leadership. As Richard Finnegan said, most employees choose to leave because of a lack of trust with their leadership. Often this lack of trust stems from a lack of communication between employees and their managers. While many managers have conversations with their employees, those conversations are often limited to passing in the hall, quick catch ups on tasks assigned, and performance counseling. Performance reviews are usually conducted annually and too often focus on past shortfalls in performance and what the manager wants to see in future performance. Many performance review structures don’t allow for employee input in goal setting, which greatly affects employee buy in. By conducting stay interviews, the employee is given the opportunity to discuss what drives them, what their career goals are, what they feel their strengths and weaknesses are, and what areas they’d like to improve on.
- They can help predict future turnover. Stay interviews can help leadership pinpoint those employees who are happy in the organization and those who are not. By determining which employees are at a higher risk for leaving the organization, leadership creates an opportunity to improve the individual morale of those employees. It may also help leadership to determine if it’s too late to make an impact on an employee’s view of the organization. At which point, leadership may begin to look at succession planning for that position in preparation of a potential resignation.
What impact would stay interviews have for your organization?
October 18, 2018