Trends in Onboarding and Retention in 2013

(Editor’s Note: Today’s post is brought to you by Allied Van Lines®, a leader in the moving and storage industry with more than 75 years of experience. For a second year, they are championing a research project, Allied HRIQ, aimed to provide business professionals with data on current workforce trends. We also have an exciting LinkedIn group~ Allied HR IQ~ where HR professionals can network and share ideas about happenings in the HR space.  I encourage you to join today!  I have partnered with Allied Van Lines® in the past and am excited about this year’s survey results.)

Trying to find and then take the time to make sense of and look for valuable and relevant takeaways from the multitude of research and surveys about the workplace, talent management, and management trends can be quite challenging for most of us with busy, full schedules. And the folks at Allied get this, which is why they have asked HR bloggers like myself, Trish McFarlane, and Sharlyn Lauby to jump in and not only take a look at the recently completed data from the Allied HR IQ survey, but also to highlight what we felt like were some of the most interesting and important findings.

As Sharlyn shared earlier this summer, the Allied HR IQ survey put out some great information on telecommuting.  Give her article a read because, as we all know, this issue is still on the minds of many professionals. And later in the year, Trish examined the recruiting and relocation survey focus areas in her piece here.

I’ve been asked to look at the onboarding and retention components of the survey results.  I have to tell you, the full survey results are well worth your time to read, but in case you’re pressed for time, here are my key takeaways on these important topics:

Onboarding:

Some key findings from the data about new employee onboarding:

While onboarding is usually ‘owned’ by HR, (83% either led by corporate HR and/or Unit HR), there is usually not a specific budget allocated for the process, with 87% of respondents indicating that onboarding costs were simply baked in to overall HR spend.

In onboarding, success is not totally tied to the size of an organization’s budget - companies that evaluated their onboarding process as ‘Highly Successful’ spent, on average, over 50% less than companies rating themselves only ‘Somewhat Successful.’  However both groups spent significantly more on onboarding than the ‘Not Successful’ group.

Highly successful onboarding programs distinguished themselves in several ways - by clearly communicating employee expectations, incorporating formal and informal coaching and mentoring programs, and encompassing senior and line managerial participation in the onboarding process.

Finally, and perhaps the most interesting data point related to onboarding,  respondents indicated it takes about 8 months for new hires to be fully productive in the organization, a time horizon that did not vary much no matter how small or large the organization.

What can you take away from these findings?

Clearly, the best onboarding programs are ones that maintain a high degree of personalization, i.e., where the individual employee needs and situation are being considered and valued. Elements like specific goals and expectations, a high degree of managerial and leadership involvement, and the realization that onboarding should start sooner (even before the first day on the job) and last longer are just some of the hallmarks of successful programs. As we will see in the data about employee retention, a successful employee onboarding experience will pay dividends far into the future, and will clearly provide a fantastic return on investment.

Turning our attention to the Retention portion of the study... 

Retention

Similarly, several interesting findings were revealed from the survey respondents’ assessment of their retention strategies and their success (or shortcomings).

The Allied HRIQ survey participants indicated that only 76% of their new hires remained with the organization for one full year. Given the 8-month time to productivity finding from above, losing a full quarter of new hires before one year is kind of a distressing statistic.

To build upon the first point, only 62% of new hires who were retained for a full year were viewed as ‘Meeting or surpassing expectations,’ meaning 38% were performing at a sub-optimal level.

Why are so many new hires leaving before one year? Not surprisingly, the number one factor reported by the survey respondents was the employee’s ‘Relationship with their manager.’ This finding supports that often-repeated maxim that ‘People join companies, but they leave managers.’ Career advancement opportunities ranked next on the list of leaving reasons, reminding us that even new employees are concerned about their future career prospects with the organization.

Lastly, many companies, even quite large ones, are not doing a good enough job of asking and assessing executives’ willingness to relocate, even while reporting that this willingness and ability to actually relocate is an important factor for their advancement opportunities.

There are several interesting implications of the retention data from the Allied HRIQ survey, but if I could focus in on one element, it would have to be the level and attention of the employee’s direct manager and how that affects outcomes. As we saw in the onboarding data, a high level of managerial involvement led to better onboarding programs. And this type of attention and personalized development and management seems to also have a profound influence on retention. The data suggest that the most important factor in an employee’s first months with the organization is the relationship they have with their manager. So smart HR leaders will strive to ensure they work closely with these critically important managers to provide them the tools, resources, and capability they need to effectively guide new employees in their first months with the organization.

Final thoughts

Onboarding and retention will continue to be two necessary and important functions for the HR leader, and while most organizations feel like they are doing at least an adequate job in these areas, as the Allied HRIQ survey reveals, there is always room for improvement.

I encourage you to check out the full Allied HRIQ survey results here, where you will find lots more information and insight that can help to make your onboarding and retention efforts even more effective.

Onboarding for the rest of us

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is brought to you by Allied Van Lines, proud sponsor of the “2012 Workforce Mobility Survey”, designed to capture the voice of HR on topics related to workforce mobility. Allied has more than 75 years of experience in corporate, household and international relocation.)

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It's kind of fun at times, particularly if you are like most of us and are grinding it out in one of the thousands of mainstream, solid, and mostly anonymous organizations that quite honestly are most organizations, to read about the wild people practices and processes from Silicon Valley, or startup land, or any company that is young enough or successful enough to just do things differently. You know what I mean, famous places like Google or Zappos, or even less famous but still interesting places like the video game development company Valve, whose recent, irreverent employee handbook was leaked to the internet. If you missed the story about Valve it is worth a quick look, it is a written testament of sorts to that wild, loose, carefree, and unstructured work environment that most of us only dream of inhabiting.Onboarding at Valve

But we know that most of us can't act like Zappos or Valve, even if we wanted to. We have more history, more culture, more of a need or requirement, (for better or worse), to have more structure, rules, and process around our people management practices. We, and most of our employees and new hires, would fail if we simply set them loose in the organization and told them to figure it out for themselves.

But instead of looking at that reality as a negative, I think there are opportunities to leverage more formal and expected processes as a strength. Take new employee onboarding for example, an area typically well-defined and with a structured process, but also one that may not be producing the desired results in driving faster time to productivity, cementing the relationship between employer and employee, and ensuring a continuing supply of fresh talent in the organization. If you are like most employers, you say you already 'do' onboarding, i.e., collect the requisite forms, conduct an intake or orientation, offer some opportunity for the new hires to acclimate to culture, process, and work styles. 

But like any long-term, long-time, been-doing-it-so-long that you think you know how to handle it, there are probably some opportunities for you to improve your game. Thanks to the Workforce Mobility Survey (details here) sponsored by Allied, we've got some actual data about the state of onboarding, and some insights into what the companies that are best in class are doing, (and notably not doing), in the more important than we like to think area of onboarding.

The chart on the right gives the rundown of what survey respondents are employing in onboarding, andSouce - Allied Workforce Mobility Survey since you are probably like most, and already handling the essentials, it is probably a better idea to take a look deeper into the chart, (and certainly at the complete survey results here), to look for areas where you can raise your game. Maybe it is more social events where new hires get to mix with veterans and company leaders or perhaps setting more concrete goals for the program, or it might be getting more senior level management stake in the game.

Either way I think the lesson to take away is that you can still add value and make an important impact in the success of the organization while still being your boring, traditional self. Sort of. The key is doing what makes sense for your organization, resonates with the people you are bringing in to the team, and connects them with their peers, managers, and the mission of the organization overall.

And sure, making it a little bit fun probably won't hurt.

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If you would like to learn more about Allied Van Lines, please check out their website or blog. And if you would like to get more information from the Workforce Mobility Survey, you can click here. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Book of Secrets

In my son's Christmas stocking Santa left a few interesting items - some card games, some Legos, some candy.  But the most intriguing item was a small black book - a Book of Secrets.

The Book of Secrets reveals a collection of, well, secrets.  The location of Winston Churchill's secret World War II bunker, how to concoct various secret potions, and how to survive a shark attack (actually that one really shouldn't be a 'secret', if you do have the knowledge on how to survive a shark attack I think you are pretty much obliged to share it).

It is a cool little book, perhaps a little outside the natural curiosity of the average 9 year old, the articles on how to flirt and how to attract women are (thankfully) not yet resonating with my son.  But after I took a look through the book I couldn't help but think how all of our organizations and workplaces could probably create our own version of the Book of Secrets.  A book that really explained the inside information, and delved into some of the inner, and unseen people, places, and practices that often make understanding and acclimation difficult for new employees.

When new employees join the organization, we typically give them a different kind of book, an employee handbook.  A book, while important, mostly and typically only tells the new employee what they can't or shouldn't do, and serves more as a resource for HR and Legal departments rather than a vital and important reference for employees.  When an employee screws up, the trusty handbook can be thrown at them, and all is good in 'keep our butts out of court land.'

An employee handbook may tell you the names of the company officers and where to find the organization chart, a company Book of Secrets would tell you who really is important, what departments get things done, and who the true experts are, whatever their title or their position on the 'official' chart.

The employee handbook lists, at times ad nauseum, a long string of company policies and procedures.  A Book of Secrets however, would tell the new employee which policies are truly important, and which ones are customarily ignored.

The company intranet, and the 'About Us' sections of the corporate website state, usually in the driest manner possible, the organization's documented vision, mission, and purpose.  The Book of Secrets would illuminate what values are actually important, as evidenced by what leaders are really saying behind closed doors, and the kinds of behaviors that are exhibited and rewarded (or punished).

The thing is, when employees have been around for a while, and moved past the initial, tentative, and occasionally confusing and contradictory reality they experience navigating the tension between what is 'official' and what is 'secret', they normally adjust, understand, and eventually start contributing themselves to the Book of Secrets. But, as always, no one documents any of this - this knowledge is, after all, secret. Let the next new hire start all over from the beginning.  

"Welcome to the company Maryjane, so great to have you on board. Here is the employee handbook and an organization chart, let me know when you've figured out what you really need to know."

My first day on the job (involves numerous beers)

October 2010 - Editor's Note - Today I am re-rerunning a post originally published in May 2009. If you make it to the end (good luck), I explain why.

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It's the weekend, (Note: I guess it was the weekend when this first ran), and I don't have the focus to craft a detailed, thoughtful post on HR Technology, so I thought I would tell the story of my first day on my first 'professional' job that I got after graduating college.

I was a recent Business/Finance graduate and after graduating landed a job at AT&T as one of what seemed like at least 5,000 folks trying to keep track of the giant corporations finances.

I'd rather not say the exact year, let's just say we were all still trying to get used to it being 'the 90s'.

So on the first day, I turned up to the offices of the division that I was to be supporting in beautiful downtown Newark, NJ.  The offices were fairly modern for the time, all the necessary amenities were present, and it was altogether a normal and sort of boring corporate office environment.

After a few hours of being introduced around the office, learning where the bathrooms and cafeteria were, it was about noon, and I was thinking about grabbing some lunch. Right about that time, two of the mid-level managers came by my desk to invite me to go to lunch with them. Ron and Frank were two 50 or so year old guys, with probably 25 years apiece in the company.  As I was brand new on the job, I did not hesitate to accept the offer and gladly went along.

We exited the building and hit the streets of Newark for the short two or three block walk to the place these two guys liked to regularly have lunch. The place was called Murphy's Tavern.

It was about as dive as dive bars could be.  Sort of tired looking, small, dimly lit, and with a nice, fragrant scent of about five million Marlboros and Lucky Strikes that had been smoked in there over the years.

But I was just out of college, and had spent more time that I should admit in similar looking bars while in school, so at first, the place did not phase me at all. I was feeling pretty good to get invited out to lunch by the leaders in the department on my first day.

As I said, this was a dive bar, not a restaurant, so the three of us took seats at the bar and were greeted by the bartender, a 60ish year old man named Jim. Jim greeted Ron and Frank (not much of a greeting really, the kind of hello that indicates it had not been a long time since they had last been in the bar), was introduced to me, and then immediately placed a bottle of Budweiser in front of all three of us.

That's ok I thought, it was summer, it was pretty hot that day, a cold Bud seemed like a good idea.  Besides, the two managers who brought me to lunch were having one as well, so I better to go along, try to fit in and all that.

After about five minutes of small talk and a few sips of the Bud, Jim the bartender puts a second Bud in front of each of us.  I had finished maybe half of my first beer, and number two was already there, queued up and waiting. Man, I thought, these guys aren't fooling around.  But I was ok with it, I was fresh out of school, and I did not have any problem tossing back a few beers, so I wasn't stressed. Ron and Frank seemed to make nothing of the fact that no actual 'ordering' had been done, the beers just simply appeared with not a word exchanged between us and Jim the bartender.

So 10 or so minutes pass, I am now working on beer number two, when Jim puts a third beer down in front of all three of us.  To this point no one has seen or asked for a menu (I was actually wondering if the place even served food), and I thought to myself, 'Dang, these guys don't even eat, they just go to lunch and get bombed'. Finally, a minute later Jim comes back over with a pad to take our lunch orders.  I don't remember what I ordered, but I imagine it was the same thing as Ron or Frank had, as I had never been in the place before and apparently there were no menus. While we were waiting for our food, I excused myself to use the restroom, and on the way to the back of the bar where the restrooms were, I finally got a chance to look around a bit more.

The walls of the bar were covered in large poster-size photographs, all black and white, of various celebrities and athletes.  James Dean, Joe DiMaggio, Robert DeNiro, Clark Gable, (Clark Gable?, that's pretty random), were some that I remember. Again, nothing too strange, just an old, dingy dive bar where these two old-timers seemed to eat lunch in all the time.

The lunch finally came, along with beer number four, and three of us finished up, paid the bill (the guys, or Jim or some combination paid for my tab), and we headed back to the office. After four beers and a greasy lunch, I was pretty much ready for a nap, and I don't really recall anything else about the afternoon.  At about 4:00, Ron and Frank came by my desk to let me know they were stopping for a 'quick one' before heading home, and that a few of the higher-ups in the finance department were planning on meeting them, and I should probably come along and get introduced to these 'important' colleagues.

So we headed back over to Murphy's, which was at this point pretty empty. Jim the bartender was still there, we had more Bud (I was fairly confident at this point Bud was the only beer served there), and made some small talk.  I was feeling really glad to be commuting via public transportation at this point as well, as were Ron and Frank.

About an hour passed, and the 'important' colleagues turned up, more middle-aged dudes who liked to drink Bud, and we proceeded to hang out for maybe another hour.  I am now about seven or eight beers in on the day, but even in that condition I was able to notice that the bar was getting more crowded, and the clientele was exclusively male.  And the folks who were coming in to the place were not the middle-aged office worker types that I was with.  No, the new crowd was much younger, more racially diverse, and not dressed in white shirts and ties like we were.  Soon, disco music started to play and some of the patrons started dancing in a small area near the back of the bar. About this point I had to make my way to the restrooms in the back and as I walked past the posters of Rock Hudson, Frank Sinatra, etc, and through and around the small crowd of guys dancing with each other, it finally hit me: Murphy's Tavern is a gay bar! I did not have a problem with that aspect really, but it is the kind of thing you typically mention to someone when taking them the first time, don't you think? I had maybe one more beer, and left, somehow making it to the train station for the train back home, still sort of amazed about the day and night.

So my very first day as a 'finance professional' was spent filling out a few forms in the morning, getting loaded at lunch with two of the managers, then returning to the bar with these same managers and some of the executives in our group, and finally realizing we were in (what I later learned) was a famous 'office worker' bar by day, and 'Newark's primary gay bar' by night.

I am not an expert on employee onboarding, but I do know this, it is probably not a good idea to take your new employee out for a four-drink lunch in a dive bar, then bring them back to the same dive bar/gay bar after work to 'network' with the execs, all the while not letting them know the 'unique' aspects of the place.

(Original) Note: If you have read this ridiculously long post, thanks for indulging me.  The story is 100% true. I changed the names of the specific individuals mentioned in the post, although I am pretty sure there is a zero chance any of them will ever see this.

October 2010 - Editor's Note -  One of the unnamed principals in the story, I am grieved to say, passed away last week and I was just informed about the sad news today.  While the little tale above is presented as a bit of a laugh, I fondly remember Mr. Roy Baker as an early mentor, guide, and great spirit.  He was one of the slowly disappearing 'company men', loyal to his wife, family, and company for decades.  Farewell, my old friend.

The Most Important Job on the Boat

This week I am attending, as a guest of The Conference Board, their excellent Leadership Development Experience at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 

The experience is just that - an experiential learning program that educates on the important historical aspects of the Battle of Gettysburg and the important leadership situations and decisions that were made and applies them to some of today's modern business leadership challenges.

Last night at the welcome sessions and dinner one of the attendees, shared some of his prior background with the table.  He had served for a number of years as a submarine officer in the US Navy. He was not allowed to share many other details about the specific of the service, but did share this anecdote, about the training and development of skills of submarine crew members.

He asked us - What is the most important job on a submarine?  While we offered some meek guesses, he gave us the real answer - steering the boat while it is underwater. You can't 'see' anything, you have to know how to read instruments, interpret data, make fast and vital decisions, etc.  

So yes, he continued, steering the boat is the most important job on the submarine, and it is the first thing that we teach every new crew member, and everyone on the sub needs to know how to do it the right way.

Love it.  The most important job, taught to every member of the team, and taught as the very first development experience for new team members.

Think about your new employee onboarding - do you make sure that the most critical skills and capabilities are taught right up front like that?  And that every team member is capable in these critical skillls?

Love the story and what it suggests to those of us that have to bring new team members on board.