31% of New Hires Quit Within 6 Months – Staff Retention Strategies That Work

Keeping your top talent is critical to the success of your business. When employees leave, it can be costly and time-consuming to find and train a replacement. In this blog post, we will discuss staff retention strategies that you can use to retain your best employees.

Poor onboarding is proven to be directly linked to employee retention.

• Has poor onboarding ever happened to you?
• Would you like to fix poor onboarding?
• Do you want to deliver an outstanding onboarding journey for all and fix employee retention?

Many companies make the mistake of spending months building a pipeline for recruiting the very best people, but then spend little time actually onboarding them to make sure they are successful.

#1    –   Poor onboarding – This means being prepared

• Did you send out a welcome letter to them and employee handbook.
• Did someone call them to check that they know where they are going and what to do when they arrive on that nervous first day.
• Good IT – Do they have laptop, email and access to systems etc.
• Have they been given a buddy on day one – Not a manager, but someone to lean on to show them around.
• Maybe a swag bag with hoodies and other merch.
• Do they have an orientation and training to help them feel confident in what is expected and the tasks they need to do.

Who isn’t nervous, scared on their first day at work?

#2    –  Not having clearly defined goals, tasks and objectives.

Help them deliver small wins on the first day and every day thereafter.

#3    –  Frequently check in.

How was the 1st week and so on. Be open to honest feedback. New eyes looking over broken or damaged processes can be a blessing in disguise.

The unintended consequence of not doing this… is the feeling of not being valued….. So the 31% make their excuses, find another job and leave, most often before they get effective in the new role.

Leaving you and your teams with even bigger problems and resourcing gaps!

Don’t feel bad… Most organizations are struggling to onboard excellently.

• A significant financial burden to the company – Because the job is not getting done due to time – effectiveness and the fact they are new to your systems and processes (if you have them).
• Colleagues have to pick up the mess… which is like a cancer and adds to employee burden and their own retention issues.
• Cost and time of replacing the candidate
• Errors and mistakes caused by someone who is not motivated and probably only in post for the money.

Lots of organizations turn a blind eye and do not seek the truth when people leave. Fewer still accept the truth and do anything to fix it. Few measure the burden and financial impact which when calculated enable teams to request small budgets to turn the tide and make an exponential difference to onboarding outcomes and employee retention in general.

Have you ever calculated the impact? This impact can be huge even for low-level employees and like a stone thrown into a pond the ripples can extend far and wide from customers, operations, fellow team members and then onto your brand reputation. As one new hire leaves, someone else has to pick up the slack as the process starts again.

We help our clients understand this and keep track of important onboarding and retention data automatically. Additionally, when the time comes most our clients have an off-boarding process tied into the system so they can learn and adapt.

Calculating the impact of poor onboarding and retention – then track the employee retention trends:

• Average time to effectiveness -Should be calculated as time and cost.
• Effectiveness contribution – Week 1 maybe zero. Week 2 might be 10% if handling calls etc. In sales, it is generally a given that a sales rep will not make a contribution for 2-3 months. But that activity will happen on month 1 etc.. In large complex sales this can be 1 year – so tracking this performance and value by people in post is critical.
• Average time in post across the whole organization and at department level.
• Staff attrition over time – this year vs last.
• Measuring the skill proficiency of the people you have and placing a value against this and the impact of them leaving.
• Reason for leaving and exit interviews/surveys.

By using the Create LMS onboarding tools and processes you will remove 90% of the burden for all stakeholders… Especially HR teams.

This is low hanging fruit and it should be grabbed with both hands. Most of our clients move from average to poor onboarding problems to completely fixing them within a month and fine tuning thereafter. Most completely transform the experience and process.

According to customer service onboarding statistics,

• Organizations that use structured onboarding saw a 60% increase in revenue year over year. That’s to say that a startup making a million dollars in revenue yearly is most likely to increase their revenue by a whooping $600,000, an exponential amount of growth can be obtained by just setting in place a few procedures. However big you are, these savings can be shared and small budgets secured to focus specifically on onboarding.
• They also saw a 63 percent increase in customer satisfaction year over year. An excellent onboarding experience produces employees who are not only productive in their assigned tasks but also committed to the organization’s growth. Satisfied customers not only mean more revenue but also increased brand awareness. Happy customers speak to others and word of mouth referrals are very valuable.
• According to customer onboarding statistics. Employees with a sound onboarding experience will show more dedication towards their company’s growth. If you know your onboarding experience is bad, probably the best thing to do is appoint your current intake with the task of helping fix the process and putting an end to it today.

Mark the author of this would love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Email him at [email protected].

To see outstanding onboarding and how easily you can semi-automate this – Book a demo