"You've worked so hard to find the right candidate for a client, but within the first week of them starting they've left – What a nightmare!"
The above is an all too familiar story for recruitment firms and can recruitment onboarding help? Why does this happen when you've found the perfect candidate for your client? In a lot of circumstances, what was promised in the interview stage doesn't match the reality of the actual job. Companies neglect the induction and onboarding process meaning staff retention especially when it comes to new hires massively suffers. New hire churn is a huge problem for businesses. According to Forbes.com:
"While up to 20% of employee turnover happens in the first 45 days, 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experience a great onboarding process. As such, the recruitment onboarding process has emerged as the new battleground for employee retention".
Recruitment is about as competitive an industry as there is, stand out from the crowd and offer more to your clients and candidates with a brilliant induction and onboarding process. We've heard from numerous recruitment companies when speaking about sales "There are sales and then on the next level on the difficulty meter, there are recruitment sales!" When it's that difficult to get everything to align, why would you not make it easier?
Induction and recruitment onboarding pitfalls and restrictions.
There are so many traps that companies needlessly fall into when it comes to inductions and recruitment onboarding. One of the main problems is inconsistencies within the induction process or a singular point of failure. At many organisations, the job of onboarding comes down to one person. What happens if that person is not there? Doesn't have the time to carry it out? Is not suitable to carry out inductions for a particular role? Then the whole thing unfortunately fails, the new hire is not engaged and invariably ends up leaving or at the very best takes a substantially longer period to get "up to speed". Alongside the above, things are often missed when it comes to necessary documentation that you are required to issue new hires (Employment Contracts, Company Handbooks, Policies etc) and documents that you need from new hires (Proof of right to work, bank details etc). Now imagine it's not just one new hire you're inducting, but a few and without a proper system to manage this, it becomes complex, time-consuming and exhausting. With the boom in hybrid and home working, inductions are even more important than they used to be. With an increasing number of companies offering this flexibility to new hires, how are they ensuring an engaging induction and onboarding process when not physically meeting? The fact is most aren't. With these new hires not able to indirectly pick up the required skills and nuances of a workplace by directly engaging with similar co-workers, they invariably fail or get frustrated quickly by a lack of perceived support or a show of care by their employer. This results in higher new hire churn than is necessary!
What should you do as a recruitment company to minimise this problem?
Well, with the above in mind, it is an aligned interest of your business and your client to work together to reduce new employee churn to as close to zero as you can. If this is the case you've reached the "golden triumvirate" The candidate is happy, they love their new job, the client is happy, they have a brilliant, engaged new employee and you're happy because you've succeeded and been paid! The best way of achieving this is to ensure your client's onboarding process is engaging and comprehensive. There is nothing worse than starting a job and being chucked straight in at the deep end and expected to perform without the requisite information and training. A warm welcome is ALWAYS better than a cold shoulder.
So what are my next steps for recruitment onboarding?
Work with your client to get their onboarding and induction process planned and organised. Review what you would want your candidate to know and set up your program to reflect this. You may find it useful to design a recruitment onboarding and induction checklist. A checklist can help you track your progress with onboarding. Also investigate what tools, technology and innovations you can use to help you with the task.
Easy Induction - Build your client's inductions and help them retain new hires
Get in touch today to find out how building online inductions can offer you a unique selling point and give your clients and candidates more value.
Easy Induction is our online induction management package which allows you to create, manage and assign induction courses and videos to individuals with ease. Work with your client to upload your welcome before the applicant arrives on their first day. Give them a grounding of the business and give you the best possible chance of avoiding them taking a different job between acceptance date and start date.
Alongside Doc Box a feature of Easy Induction, important onboarding documents (Employment contracts, policies, handbooks etc) can be assigned to new hires through the system and accepted by them. New hires can also upload their documents to your client (proof of right to work, bank details, references etc).
At the end of the day, if your candidate is engaged and loves their new job then everyone wins.
- Client – HAPPY they have a wonderful new member of staff who is engaged and on board!
- Candidate – HAPPY they have a wonderful new job where they feel welcomed, valued and enthused.
- You – HAPPY you have successfully placed a candidate. Your happy client gladly pays you and uses you again and again and your candidate tells others how brilliant your recruitment agency is!