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65 Employee Onboarding Statistics You Need to Know in 2021

Zavvy
8 min readOct 7, 2021

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The process of introducing new employees to your organization’s culture and environment and equipping them with the tools they need to succeed is the hallmark of a good employee onboarding program.
Since employee onboarding has a huge impact on employee retention, engagement, and productivity, it’s important to get it right.

We’ve handpicked statistics that take into account the future of work and will help you improve your onboarding process.

Content

  • 🌱 Basic statistics on employee onboarding
  • 💪 Statistics on how to do employee onboarding right
  • 🚀 The effects of employee onboarding
  • ➡️ The Takeaway: How important is onboarding?

Do organizations have a good onboarding process?

  • Most organizations fail to employ robust onboarding processes which is evident based on employee feedback.
  • Only 12% of employees agree that their organization has a good onboarding process. (Gallup)
  • This indicated 88% of employees don’t think their organization has a good program. (Gallup)
  • 60% of businesses don’t set any goals or milestones for new hires. (Urban Bound)
  • 35% of companies spend $0 on onboarding new hires. (Enboarder)

What are the top employee onboarding issues?

For most organizations, not having a good employee onboarding process that is updated and aligned with employee needs is a top concern.

  • The top onboarding challenges are inconsistent application, competing priorities, ability to measure ROI, buy-in and manager accountability, and insufficient internal resources. (HCI)
  • 76% of HR professionals reported that their organizations underutilize employee onboarding practices. (Businesswire, 2018)
  • 10% of businesses have not bothered to upgrade their employee onboarding process in the past couple of years. (Urban Bound, 2018)
  • 36% of HR executives said that the lack of technology prevents them from automating and organizing onboarding programs. (Businesswire, 2018)
  • 1 in 3 HR professionals reported that the quality of their onboarding was not up to the standard. (ClickBoarding, 2020)

What is the impact of a negative onboarding experience?

  • A negative onboarding experience can make new hires 2x as likely to look out for other jobs in the future. (Digitate)
  • 1 in 5 new hires is not likely to recommend their employer. (Digitate)
  • 20% of new hires are not likely to recommend their place of work to a friend or relative. (Digitate, 2018)
  • 40% of new hires report that they receive very late responses to job related queries. This can lead to disengaged employees (Digitate, 2018)
  • 10% of employees resign because of an inadequate onboarding experience. (CareerBuilder, 2019)

How long should onboarding last?

Does the length of employee onboarding matter? Absolutely.

The recommended length is 90 days for new hires but do most organizations follow through?

  • Most companies only have a week long onboarding. (HCI)
  • New employees can take anywhere from 8 months to a year to be as efficient as existing employees (ClickBoarding, 2020)
  • 37% of dynamic businesses run month long onboarding programs. (ClickBoarding, 2020)
  • Employees that participate in extended onboarding programs that last up to a year attain full proficiency 34x faster than those that don’t. (Urban Bound)

What does the onboarding process focus on?

  • For 58% of companies, the onboarding process is focused on processes and paperwork. (HCI)
  • The average new hires have to complete 54 activities during onboarding. (Sapling HR)
  • 33% of quality onboarding programs build social networking into their onboarding process (Glassdoor, 2015)
  • Global leaders are 53% more likely to undertake pre-boarding for new hires. (Enboarder, 2019)
  • The key components in onboarding are people, performance and paperwork. (Kronos)

Should you automate your onboarding process?

Onboarding is an intensive process if you do it right. Can automation help standardize the experience and save time?

  • When companies automated onboarding tasks, they experienced 16% better employee retention rates. UrbanBound, 2018)
  • Automating tasks led to an 18% improvement in new hire performance.. (UrbanBound, 2018)
  • 38% of businesses conduct their onboarding online on an onboarding platform. (HCI, 2016)
  • The average company spends $20 per paper on filing, $120 looking for lost documents, and $220 recreating lost documents. Automation gets rid of paper and it’s better for the environment. (eFileCabinet)
  • Automating onboarding tasks can improve retention rates. (HR Technologist)

Confused about where to get started with automating your process? Grab our FREE onboarding checklist.

Do companies measure the effectiveness of onboarding programs?

Most businesses have a long way to go when it comes to measuring the efficacy of their onboarding processes but given how it affects retention, engagement, and productivity, the company’s revenue is also impacted by terrible onboarding processes.

  • 55% of businesses don’t measure the effectiveness of their onboarding processes. (Businesswire, 2018)
  • 47% of organizations measure one-year turnover rates for new hires to measure the success or failure of their onboarding process. (HCI, 2016)

Should you implement a buddy or mentor program?

  • 87% of companies report that buddy or mentor programs can speed up new hire proficiency. (HCI, 2016)
  • 56% of new hires want to have a mentor or a buddy to help them out. (ClickBoarding, 2020)
  • 72% of employees report that 1:1 time with their direct manager is crucial to good onboarding. (Enboarder, 2018)
  • 76% of new hires report that socialization is critical to onboarding. (ClickBoarding, 2020)

Unpacking Microsoft’s buddy program results

Microsoft has run a buddy program for the last few years and here are the results:

  • The frequency of meetings is correlated to new hire’s perception of their own speed to proficiency.
  • 56% of new hires that met their buddy once in the first 3 months reported that it helped them become productive quicker.
  • The percentage rises based on the frequency of meetings. For those new hires that met their buddy 2–3 times, the percentage increased to 73%, 86% for those that met 4–8 times, and 97% for those that met over 8 times in the first 90 days.

It is evident that having a buddy program is essential to helping new hires step into their roles.

Impact of COVID-19 on onboarding

  • 37.4% of recruiters report that one of the biggest challenges for recruiters was onboarding and training new remote hires in 2020. (Workable)
  • 21.6% of managers report that onboarding new employees post-pandemic is one of their top 3 concerns. (Workable)

How does onboarding affect employee retention?

  • Strong onboarding processes can improve new hire retention by 82% (Glassdoor)
  • 93% of businesses understand that onboarding can help new hires decide whether they want to stay or leave. (CareerBuilder & SilkRoad, 2019)
  • Good onboarding programs can improve retention by 25% (ClickBoarding, 2020)
  • 92% of employees believe that empathy is crucial to retention. This must be considered when designing onboarding processes. (Business Solver, 2020)
  • Implementing an onboarding process can increase the retention rate by 25% (Clear company)
  • 78% of employees report that they would remain with a company longer if they have a clear career path within the current organization. (Mercer, 2018)
  • 81% of organizations believe internal onboarding for existing employees is just as important. (HCI)

Seeing how 87% of HR leaders (Kronos) consider retention to be a critical priority through 2022, improving onboarding processes is essential.

How does onboarding impact employee engagement?

  • 53% of HR executives indicated that good onboarding boosts employee engagement rates. (SilkRoad)
  • 62% of businesses that have effective onboarding programs witness a 54% increase in employee engagement and have a higher time-to-productivity ratio. (Northpass)
  • 54% of businesses indicated that having an onboarding program boosts employee engagement. (SHRM)
  • Organizations with effective onboarding have 33% more employees feeling engaged compared to those with ineffective onboarding. (BambooHR, 2018)
  • Employees that experience good onboarding are 18x more likely to feel committed to their companies. (BambooHR, 2018)

Should you have a formal, standardized employee onboarding?

  • Well-designed onboarding plans can improve new hire performance by 11% (ClickBoarding, 2020)
  • 77% of employees that underwent formal onboarding reached their first performance goals. (Urban Bound, 2018)
  • Of the employees that weren’t able to meet their goals, 50% had not undergone a formal program. (Urban Bound, 2018)
  • 69% of employees that participate in structured programs are more likely to stay with a company for 3 years. (ClickBoarding, 2020)
  • Organizations with structured onboarding reported a 60% YoY improvement in revenue. (Northpass)
  • Companies without formal onboarding training are likely to lose over 60% of their workforce in 4 years. (TMF Group)
  • With formal onboarding, manager satisfaction increases by 20%. (Urban Bound, 2018)
  • Organizations with standard onboarding programs increase new hire productivity by 70% (Talent LMS)

The financial aspects of onboarding

  • The global onboarding market size is expected to reach $793 million by 2022. (Apps Run The World, 2019)
  • It costs $4,000 and takes 24 days to hire a new employee on average. (Glassdoor, 2019)
  • Employee turnover cost US employers a massive $617 billion in 2018 (Work Institute, 2019)
  • Low productivity from new hires can cause companies to lose 1–2.5% in revenue. (Urban Bound, 2018)
  • Voluntary turnover costed organizations to lose $630 billion in 2020. (Work Institute, 2020)
  • Replacing an employee costs about 16–20% of that employee’s salary on average. (Finance Online)

The Takeaway: How important is onboarding?

Effective onboarding boosts productivity, engagement, retention, and revenue. The opposite is true in the case of ineffective onboarding.

Given the Great Resignation and the changing nature of work, it is vital to not only have an onboarding program but to have a well-designed, structured onboarding process that relies on technology and is automated.

Want to retain top talent and improve your revenue? Find out how you can give your new colleagues a structured, rich, and motivating onboarding experience without getting lost in busywork — with our employee onboarding experience tool.

Link to original article: https://www.zavvy.io/blog/employee-onboarding-statistics

Sources:

HR
Hrtech
Onboarding
Remote Working
Employee Engagement

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Zavvy

Written by Zavvy

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