1) Ensure candidate feel welcome and important
A solid communication plan can strengthen a relationship between you and your candidate. Not only will it result in more starts and longer tenures but will also generate more referrals.
Try these strategies:
- Have everyone who will support the candidate both during the onboarding process and while employed connect on LinkedIn. Establishing a professional connection demonstrates your commitment to their success and creates a deeper relationship between your company and the individual. Additionally, if you’re seeking referrals, a connection can easily turn into an introduction to other qualified candidates.
- Devise a series of emails and/or phone calls during and after onboarding to keep the candidate engaged and ensure everything is running smoothly. Often there are many steps required to onboard someone that the individual may not perform. Silence is the fastest way to cast doubt into the mind of the candidate that there is still a job waiting for them at the end of the process.
2) Track process from placement to first day (and beyond)
Interwoven around the new hire paperwork is a series of steps required to complete the onboarding. From running a background check to setting up payroll, a well-defined process will improve onboarding efficiency and provide a better experience to the candidate.
Perform an analysis:
- Who needs to participate in the process or requires information collected along the way?
- What are you doing manually today that could be automated based on certain events or information?
- Look at all facets of your process and decide why its necessary and the purpose it serves. Sometimes steps are created to work around ineffective tools that could be eliminated with better technology.
3) Measure results and performance
As a critical component of your workforce management, having metrics available to monitor the health of your onboarding process allows for faster defect detection and remediation.
Consider these key metrics:
- What are key points in your process and how long does each time to complete? Are there any bottlenecks and what is the cause?
- How many recruited candidates actually start and what is their tenure? If they didn’t start or quit before the first pay check, what was the reason and exactly where in the process did they fall off?
- Are there differences by job category, labor type, division, department, or location? A process that works well in one instance may fail in others.
