So what happens when a new employee quits within their first 90 days? 

It’s not only the time, energy, and money invested into the employee that companies should be concerned with. Additional costs for rehiring as well as a possible weakened morale within the team also need to be considered. While the company’s new loss may be a sign of problems during the recruitment process, they may also point to a less-than-stellar onboarding process. Leadership must ask themselves, “What is happening during the onboarding phase at our company that is making new hires search for the nearest exit?”

During the onboarding phase, the work relationship between employer and employee is in its first stages and a reliable and robust system needs to be in place to ensure an employee’s successful transition into their new role and work environment. To determine whether your company’s onboarding process is effective, you need a way to objectively analyze it. 

Take a second, and think about what onboarding actually is – a set of different tasks, conversations and activities to be carried out during the beginning of an employee’s journey at your company. 

Quantifying your onboarding experience

Good onboarding experiences create a sense of belonging for new staff, while also enabling them to become productive quickly. To assess whether an onboarding experience is meeting its goals, it’s necessary to take it apart. By looking at the individual components and who is responsible or necessary for their completion, you can gain insights into what’s working and what’s not. Only once you have identified the points of friction, can you set out to make improvements.

Let's take, for example, something abstract like communicating the values of the company and see how we can generate quantitative data. Whether you have decided to convey the values of your company through a group activity such as volunteering or going on a hike, or you’ve opted to craft video content that highlights your company’s values through workplace policies and past group offsites, it’s important that your new hire participates.

 In the first example, you can ask the following questions to collect quantitative data:

• Has an activity been planned?
• When does the activity take place during the onboarding phase?
• Did the activity actually take place? If not, who is responsible for planning the activity?
• How many activities have they successfully planned and carried out?
• How often does this type of activity successfully take place (annual analysis)?
• Was the activity completed on the required or suggested timeline? Or did it happen at a later time?
• How many people participated?
• How many were new hires?
• Is there a correlation between the time the activity takes place during onboarding and participation levels?

With video content, you can collect data about employee engagement by asking:\

• How many employees clicked on the video?
• How many employees responded to a suggestion prompt at the end of the video?
• How have the above numbers changed from one cohort of new hires to the next?
• Are the above numbers the same across different roles, departments, locations and levels?

By creating quantitative question sets, you can make each task, conversation, or action measurable. As patterns emerge, you’ll be able to pinpoint the weaknesses in your onboarding process and make necessary changes. This, in turn, can have a significant impact on the productivity and success of new hires at your company.

Connecting the dots between operational metrics and new employee outcomes 

Much of the employee turnover that happens during the first 90 days results from unclear job responsibilities or a mismatch with company culture. An onboarding experience that is not equipping and empowering new hires to function in their new roles can lead to high-potential employees who underperform, or worse, employees who decide to abandon their role completely and look for new opportunities elsewhere.

With the data clearly mapped out in front of you, you can analyze the relationship between the completion of individual onboarding tasks and new employee productivity and retention. Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Are there certain tasks that new employees who quit shortly after being hired aren’t completing?
2. Is there a relationship between level of mentor/manager engagement (number of messages sent and timeliness of messages) and retention rates of new hires?
3. Is there a relationship between the completion of certain activities (for example, receiving work devices and software training) and the performance rates of new hires?

As you answer these questions, you can start to build a strategy for improving your onboarding process. Don’t forget, this is the moment where you lay the foundation for your employee’s future at your company. At the intersection of quantitative data and anecdotal qualitative feedback is your opportunity to create an experience that is informative, engaging, and memorable. In a job market that favors jobseekers, employers must go the extra mile to make sure that new employees stay on board.

Take your onboarding process to the next level with Dado’s operational metrics dashboard. Learn more in our release announcement.