E-learning and LMS blog articles

What are you prioritising when designing your L&D strategy? Lifelong learning and AI upskilling are having their moment, but amid competing L&D priorities, onboarding is all too often getting overlooked, and it’s costing businesses a lot more than they realise.

There’s a common misconception about onboarding and induction training. Too many business leaders view it as a tick-box exercise covering basic compliance and formalities, such as day-one orientation and first week guidance. But onboarding sets the scene for an essential long-term development strategy that will ultimately boost retention, productivity, and job satisfaction.

Unbelievably, 34% of employees have not witnessed any formal onboarding programme at their organisation. So why is it such an undervalued aspect of the employee lifecycle in so many organisations? Perhaps they’re unfamiliar with the many benefits of effective onboarding and the high cost of getting it wrong. Let’s explore this further and stay tuned for our top tips on how to turn things around.

The benefits of effective onboarding

Let’s start with the benefits you can look forward to when implementing a structured and meaningful onboarding programme.

Onboarding is your opportunity to shape a good first impression

The first few weeks of the onboarding process will set the tone for your new starters and their ongoing employment. This is your opportunity to build trust, showcase company culture, create a sense of belonging, and demonstrate that your company values its employees by creating a supportive working environment.

Why is this important to outline during the onboarding process? People who did not have a positive onboarding experience are twice as likely to look for a new job shortly after starting. If the company and job role don’t match up to the expectations outlined during the hiring process, don’t expect your new starters to stick around.

Lay the foundation for performance from day one

One of the biggest benefits of effective onboarding that will directly impact performance is setting the scene and laying the foundations for what will be expected of a new starter in their role.

To truly experience the benefits of effective onboarding, go beyond the standard practice of outlining daily tasks and basic performance objectives. This is your opportunity to work directly with new starters to build collaborative goals that ensure personal targets align with wider organisational objectives.

By laying the foundation for performance and development from day one and setting goals with a new starter (rather than for them), employees are far more likely to stay motivated and focused on achieving the objectives they helped shape first-hand.

Accelerate the learning curve and boost your ROI

An effective onboarding programme allows new starters to get from point A to point B at lightning speed, without compromising on depth of understanding and quality of training.

By speeding up the time it takes to reach competence, new starters can be ready to hit the ground running in just a few weeks, boosting the ROI of new hires as a result. To experience this benefit, your onboarding process needs to be focused, concise and tailored to the needs of your new starter. If you’re looking for ideas on how to achieve this, we’ll share our top tips further on.

Consistency in training

No matter the job role, experience, learning preferences, or location, a structured onboarding framework using a centralised e-learning platform is a sure-fire way to create a consistent training experience for all new starters.

Compliance confidence

Building critical compliance content into your onboarding programme is your opportunity to create compliance confidence right from the get-go. Incorporating key topic areas such as responsible AI use and GDPR procedures into the first few weeks of a new starter’s employment, you can instil confidence and understanding of responsibilities and processes that ensure the company stays compliant.

Building compliance training into core onboarding processes from day one reduces the chance of compliance-related mistakes. What’s more, with a base level understanding of core compliance knowledge, employers are better positioned to quickly close knowledge gaps in the future when policies evolve and update.

The hidden costs of getting it wrong (and how to avoid this)

Now that we’ve explored some of the benefits of effective onboarding, let’s examine an overlooked component of onboarding: the cost of getting it wrong. While we alluded to some of the pitfalls of an ineffective onboarding strategy above, these are some of the hidden costs that you may not have considered.

Cognitive overload

One of the most common mistakes people make when designing an onboarding programme is bombarding employees with too much information in a short amount of time, in the hopes of getting employees up to speed as soon as possible. In actual fact, throwing everything at employees in their first few days can dramatically slow down onboarding progress as they experience cognitive overload and burnout.

81% of new hires report feeling overwhelmed with information during the onboarding process. The consequence of this is costly for the business, resulting in delayed productivity, poor knowledge retention and the potential need for re-training, along with a risk of early turnover.

To avoid this, your training programme needs to be well-paced and carefully designed using an e-learning platform that allows new starters to set their own pace by learning autonomously. Break up content into manageable modules, including making use of bite-sized microlessons, enabling new starters to learn, reflect and revisit when necessary.

Delayed productivity

Only 29% of employees say they feel fully prepared for their new role and ready to excel after onboarding. This can generate a period of underperformance and delayed productivity among new starters, meaning poor onboarding has a direct and measurable impact on job performance and ROI.

Here are some top tips on creating an onboarding strategy that provides new hires with the competency and confidence they need to hit the ground running:

• Tailor learning with personalised training tools in your LMS and address skills and knowledge gaps that are unique to each employee
• Make it easy for new starters to access vital training content by optimising the UX of your e-learning platform
• Take advantage of LMS assessments to test knowledge acquisition before new starters begin to perform tasks

Burnout for management staff

Ineffective onboarding doesn’t just affect your new starters, it can significantly impact your management staff. When your onboarding strategy is inconsistent and poorly designed, management staff are often left to fill in the gaps.

Using an e-learning platform such as our Totara or Moodle solutions to create a structured, thorough and meaningful onboarding programme ensures managers don’t need to intervene when onboarding is lacking in focus or quality. This mitigates the risk of burnout and allows them to focus on other ways to support new hires outside of the knowledge acquisition process.

Your next steps

To harness the benefits of effective onboarding and avoid those costly mistakes, it's time to review your current strategy. Is it scalable, consistent, meaningful and trackable? If not, it’s time to make a change. You need a powerful e-learning solution that offers core onboarding tools such as:

• Reports for trackable progress and assessments
• Content tools to easily update training materials
• Accessible and mobile-friendly options to ensure no one misses out on vital onboarding
• Personalised learning tools to ensure onboarding is relevant and meaningful

Most importantly, you need an LMS partner that has experience working with companies like yours to level up their onboarding. We’re that partner.

Businesses just like yours are using our Moodle and Totara solutions to optimise their onboarding strategy and provide the best experience for new starters from day one and beyond. Businesses like Nobia, who, with help from our Totara e-learning solution, have successfully implemented a structured induction programme that reduced time to competency, created additional sales revenue and improved employee retention rates.

Read their full story here, or if you’re ready to maximise the potential of your onboarding, get in touch with one of our experts today.