How Effective is your Company’s On-Boarding Process?

In today’s ultra competitive talent environment, recruiting and selecting new employees can be challenging at best. So when a candidate says “yes” to a new employer, managers and companies are ecstatic. But the recruiting techniques shouldn’t stop when an individual joins you. Why? Because research shows that new employees decide within the first six months whether they are going to stay at the new company or not.

While a new hire may not actually leave the company within the first six months, the Human Capital Institute estimates that up to 70 percent of new employees admit to themselves they made a mistake and therefore do not fully engage with their new employer. Just think what a devastating impact this has on a company’s bottom-line!

Perfecting the on-boarding process should be a top priority for companies and managers. An effective on-boarding process not only leverages the time and effort required to find a good originator but it makes new employees more productive faster which benefits everyone — managers and employees alike.

If installing an effective on-boarding process is so important, then why is it done so poorly in the mortgage industry? Most firms feel that a two- to three-day training class on how to use the computer system and get a loan funded is all that matters. Unfortunately, the mechanics of a transaction, while important, do not create a bond between the new hire and the company.

There are six questions that every company should ask regarding the on-boarding process:

1. Do you help the new employee see the big picture?
2. Do you show how employees matter?
3. Do you collect and share success stories for your company?
4. Is your on-boarding process interactive, digestible and taught in small learning chunks?
5. Do you have an established peer-to-peer mentoring system for new employees?
6. Do you have a formalized knowledge transfer structure?

When was the last time you reviewed and changed your on-boarding practices? Is it time to have an outside party review it?