7 Alarming Onboarding Mistakes You're Making (And How to Avoid Them)

Finding the right approach to onboarding new recruits is crucial if you want to deliver positive, rewarding employee experiences that encourage people to do their best work and stay loyal to your company for many years.

Research has shown that an onboarding strategy based on human connection and engagement can increase new-hire retention by 82% and raise productivity by 70%.

However, before thinking about how you can refine and optimize this process, you need to be sure you're getting the basics right. This means avoiding the most common onboarding mistakes.

1. Not making onboarding a priority

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that, once you've completed the recruitment cycle and hired someone you're happy with, everything else will fall into place once they've joined and you can focus on helping them settle in.

Even if you have a relatively relaxed company culture, it's important to have a carefully defined onboarding strategy and to follow workflows that help everyone stay on the same page.

Failing to make this a priority and being too informal in your approach increases the risk of new hires feeling lost and uncertain about their place in the business.

2. Failing to prepare

A lot of the work involved in onboarding should happen before the new recruit starts their first day. Allowing sufficient time to prepare and making all necessary resources and tools easily available for when the employee arrives will help the entire process run smoothly and make everyone feel more relaxed.

One important early step is to provide the new starter with relevant paperwork and guidance well in advance of their start date. This ensures they have plenty of time to get to grips with it, rather than being expected to read and digest large volumes of information on their first day.

The HR department also needs to work alongside IT and other departments to make sure key provisions such as email accounts, software packages and passwords are set up and ready for the employee to use straight away.

3. Lack of clarity

Starting a new job can be an overwhelming and potentially anxious time for employees. It's crucial that the company does everything it can to help new starters settle in by making the onboarding process as clear and transparent as possible.

More often than not, this will come down to communication. There are various practices you can implement to improve this aspect of your business and ensure recent recruits have all the information and support they need to make the most of their onboarding.

If you use software such as Slack to enable communication, for example, consider setting up a dedicated channel for new employees to ask questions and connect with their colleagues.

4. Trying to do too much too quickly

It can be tempting to rush through the onboarding phase, so employees can get up to speed as quickly as possible and start making a real contribution to the business.

However, this can have a range of negative consequences, such as a risk of key steps in the process being missed and a feeling among new recruits that they're being thrown in at the deep end.

It's crucial to allow enough time to onboard new employees properly, and also to encourage workers to speak up if they feel like they're being bombarded with information and not getting enough time to absorb it.

5. Not allowing time for feedback

Regular and constructive feedback is highly valuable at all stages of the employer/employee relationship, and onboarding is no different.

Managers should be sure to maintain ongoing conversations with new hires and to give detailed, actionable assessments of how they're performing at key points along their journey.

It's also important to ensure feedback flows in both directions, with employees encouraged to share their views on the company's onboarding procedures and how they could be improved.

Learn more: How Successful is Your Onboarding Process? Run a Survey to Find Out

6. Failing to establish goals and expectations

Setting clear objectives and expectations from the start helps to ensure new members of your workforce know exactly where they stand and what they're working towards.

The details of your goal-setting will vary depending on factors such as the nature of the employee's role and department. Someone starting out in sales, for example, will have clear targets and metrics that can be used to evaluate their performance.

For other positions that don't have such easily quantifiable outcomes, managers and other stakeholders will need to work closely with staff to identify relevant aims and timeframes.

7. Being too broad in your approach

To make the best use of both the company's and individuals' time during the onboarding process, ensure the information you provide is tailored to the employee and the job they’ll be doing.

Someone taking up an entry-level position in the marketing department, for example, doesn't need to know the names of everyone working in IT and their individual responsibilities.

This deeper understanding of the business will come with time, but at the very beginning of an employee's journey with you, it's more important to concentrate on providing information and assets that connect directly to their job.

This will help new starters feel more comfortable in their role and get them on their way to making a valuable contribution to the business.