5 Reasons Why Your Onboarding Strategy Isn't Working

Perfect onboarding - this can quickly lead to major mistakes. If the onboarding process is not implemented correctly, this has massive consequences.

Your employees should settle into the company quickly and feel that they are in good hands. If this is not achieved during the induction process, it is not just performance that will be affected. In the worst case, it can even lead to dismissal.

In this article, our experienced Workbase team shows you five serious mistakes that are often made during the onboarding process. If you avoid these shortcomings and approach them with the right solutions, you will be able to ensure systematic and efficient onboarding.

What is onboarding?

In simple terms, onboarding is the process of familiarizing new employees with the company. Employees should integrate quickly, feel comfortable and perform well in a timely manner. But onboarding is much more than that.

Onboarding process from the first day of work

The first important moment in the onboarding process is the first day at work. With a good onboarding strategy, your new specialist will learn the required tasks very quickly. They will then be able to complete their workload more quickly.

Benefits of the right onboarding process

An optimal onboarding strategy helps you to become a popular employer among your employees. Word of employee satisfaction and identification with the company also spreads quickly beyond the company boundaries.

The benefits of good onboarding at a glance:

• Faster productivity for your new team members
• A significantly faster acclimatization period for your new specialists
• Optimal social integration into the team of your employees
• Greater motivation for your new starters in the new tasks and processes
• Identification with your company and common goals

Onboarding process: 5 reasons why your strategy isn’t working

Without the right approach to onboarding, you lose time, money and ultimately employee motivation. Find out more below about the 5 most common reasons why many onboarding processes don’t work.

Reason 1: Excessive demands on the first day of work

The first day at work is often also the first day in a new environment. Employees have to get used to the new environment, new colleagues and new processes. If they are also directly confronted with difficult tasks, this can be overwhelming and make the acclimatization process much more difficult.

In addition, employees’ self-confidence is often not yet fully built up on their first day at work. They are unsure of what is expected of them and how they will fit into their new role.

Only in the rarest of cases is full performance achieved on the first day at work - or even in the first few weeks after starting.

If employees are immediately overwhelmed on their first day at work, this can affect their motivation. As a result, they find it difficult to concentrate on their work.

As a responsible manager, it is therefore advisable to give new employees time to settle in. This increases the feeling of security and appreciation towards the employee.

It is advisable to use digital onboarding tools such as an employee platform from the very first day of work. This allows employees to be systematically trained with consistent quality.

Such digital processes allow your new employees to get to know the company structures, for example. Who should they contact with what concerns? Who are their direct superiors and what is the best way to reach them?

Even simple questions can be answered with the help of short videos during the digital onboarding process. Examples include: How do I operate the coffee machine? What do I need to look out for when customers come to visit?

Used correctly, an employee platform can be worth its weight in gold. Entrepreneurs save a lot of time and money by mapping a large part of the onboarding process via the platform. With role-based training videos, training courses, checklists, wikis, exams and more, you can systematically reduce training time!

Reason 2: Manual instead of systematized onboarding

The second big mistake why your onboarding strategy doesn’t work is because your new specialists are being trained by other employees.

Of course, it is not wrong for managers or other employees to accompany the new employee temporarily, especially during the induction period. However, this onboarding strategy has many disadvantages.

Work is left undone when team members are involved

It is highly likely that the senior manager will be tied up for the induction period. Measured against the high loss of working time, this can result in high opportunity costs.

Before you read the following questions, consider whether the answers to them could be used more pragmatically in the form of training videos in combination with tests, instead of answering them manually for each employee!

What are opportunity costs? Opportunity costs are not real costs, but lost profit. In the case of managers, they cannot generate any money for the company as long as they are tied up in the onboarding process.

Information is not communicated correctly or is omitted

Another problem in the onboarding process for new employees is that often only fractions of information are communicated. Managers can also lose sight of processes.

Mistakes mainly happen when managers have not carried out the job in question themselves for years. In extreme cases (e.g. new working conditions), managers have no experience at all with the tasks of the new position.

However, questions are often avoided in the first few days due to uncertainty. Instead, they blindly attempt tasks that are ultimately incorrect.

Misunderstandings arise, which can lead to stress and annoyance for everyone involved. This can even lead to the new employee resigning if they feel too uncomfortable.‍How can this be avoided? Following on from point 1, a digital solution is the answer to this question. A systematically implemented employee platform is the perfect complement to manual onboarding.

• For example, the centralized and role-based provision of documents such as manuals, guidelines and procedural instructions means that new employees always have everything they need at their fingertips.
• Direct access to important tools and applications that make the new employee’s work easier increases security.
• Last but not least, training materials and videos also help new employees to settle into their role more quickly. Digital training videos play a primary role.
• Digital checklists and queries make it easier for employees to easily review what they have learned. They and their employer receive feedback on whether everything has been understood correctly. Employees and the employer can also better assess skills. Training time is systematically reduced.
• Wikis are part of good digital onboarding. If employees are unsure about something during their work, they can find an answer in the wiki within a very short time.

Of course, a personal exchange must also take place. However, it is advisable to implement digital onboarding for all recurring tasks and processes.

As an employee platform, Workbase is precisely geared towards these goals and offers all the important functions required for digital onboarding.

Reason 3: Company values and expectations are not communicated correctly

The negative consequence of a manual induction is often that company values and goals are not communicated correctly. Your new specialist should know exactly what they can expect from your company. Here are some important questions to ask:

Before you read the following questions, consider whether the answers to them could be used more pragmatically in the form of training videos in combination with exams instead of answering them manually for each employee!

‍

What does the company do?

• Show your employees what their tasks are.
• Show your employees what your products are.
• Show your employees what their part is.

What does the company stand for?

• Communicate the company’s core values to your employees.
• What support can they expect from you?
• What values does your company convey to the outside world?

Where does the company stand?

• Talk openly about the current situation on the market.
• How many colleagues will your employees soon have?
• What makes your company’s products special?

What does the future look like?

• Talk openly about your company’s future goals.
• Employee information about technical developments.
• Get the opinions of your employees often.

‍Your new employee should be able to answer questions like these later on. Your employee should understand from the outset exactly what performance or KPIs are expected of them after the onboarding process.

What does KPI stand for? KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. It is a key performance indicator. It is used to objectively measure the work results of individual employees.

Reason 4: No healthy feedback culture

Employees are often reluctant to give their superiors or colleagues honest, personal feedback. However, a healthy feedback culture is important because it helps to identify and solve problems at an early stage. This increases cohesion within the company.

Employee surveys can play a central role in this context. However, this option is often not taken into consideration, for example to positively influence the mood among employees.

However, deficits can easily be identified with an anonymous survey.

What are the advantages of a survey?

1. Feedback: Surveys offer employees the opportunity to express their opinions about working conditions, collaboration and company values. This feedback gives management important information about which aspects of the work culture are working well and which are not.
2. Transparency: You signal that you listen to employees’ opinions and take them seriously. This increases transparency in the company and promotes employee trust in management.
3. Comparability: Surveys can also be used to compare the culture in your company over time and measure whether the measures taken to improve the culture are actually having an effect.

Read also: Employee survey: 6 tips for the perfect survey

Analyze and evaluate surveys professionally

As an employee platform, Workbase offers not only the tool for creating surveys, but also a detailed analysis function.

With Workbase, you can get in touch with your employees quickly and easily, encourage them to complete the survey and receive usable results shortly afterwards.

With a properly coordinated and regular employee survey, you are always on the right side. If you do not take this into account in your onboarding strategy, this can also be a reason for failure.

Reason 5: Onboarding is kept too short

During the onboarding process, your new specialist will soon identify with your company. This is important for the following reasons:

1. Motivation: when employees identify with your company, they are more motivated to do their job better and actively support the company.
2. Loyalty: Employees who identify with your company tend to be more loyal and stay with the company longer.
3. Productivity: Employees who identify with your company are more productive because they are more committed to the company’s success.

In addition to cultivating a positive work culture, it is therefore a strategic task to ensure that employees identify with the company in the long term. This includes, for example, having clear goals and values that employees can share, as well as rewarding employees for their performance and offering them development opportunities.

Onboarding is therefore not just about managing the first few weeks, but also about consistently anchoring all important learning processes over several months - ideally digitally and systematically.

Conclusion

With the right approach to your onboarding process, you can reliably induct new employees. In particular, show new specialists that you are the right place for them to work.

By eliminating these five basic mistakes, the onboarding process can be more successful. Workbase offers you a wider range of services than conventional software solutions.

Messages, surveys and all kinds of analyses will help you. This will help you perfect your onboarding strategy and provide your employees with the best possible support.

Digital onboarding is the technology of the future that you will use to train your specialists.

Let our experts advise you now on how best to proceed with the onboarding process. With Workbase at your side, your onboarding strategy will work.