How Long Does Onboarding Take? 10 Powerful Best Practices

As many as 70% of employees decide whether the job is right for them within their first month, and 29% know within a week. That means you need to get off on the right foot, right away.

The key to keeping those hard-earned new hires? A formal HR onboarding process. No, really!

Effective onboarding helps make new hires feel welcome, invested in your organization, and more likely to stay in the long term.

But despite the benefits of a focused onboarding process, many businesses fail to deliver a good experience. In fact, one in five workers say their new company didn’t do anything to help new employees find support and community; 23% admitted to being so disappointed by a new job, they cried within their first week.

Developing effective onboarding timelines and retention strategies takes time and effort, but retaining new hires and high-performing employees is worth it. Read on to learn how long onboarding should take and ten tips for making it count.

What is Employee Onboarding, and How Long Does It Take?

Onboarding is the process of welcoming new employees into your organization. Employee onboarding should cover training on software an employee will use on the job, company policies, company culture, payroll information, employee benefits, and more. Onboarding technology can help you create a standard, streamlined onboarding experience.

When businesses use effective onboarding strategies to provide great onboarding experiences, it can make a huge difference in employees’ experiences. While your onboarding process will be unique to your business, onboarding programs that extend beyond the first 30 days and up to the first year of a new hire's time with your business increase engagement and employee retention.

Expert Tip: Offer On-Demand Support with Employee Self-Service Tools

Even the best onboarding plan and timeline for your employees can't anticipate every question. That's why more businesses are embracing HR self-service onboarding tools and software that allow new hires to find the answers they need any time, any day.

Employee self-service tools provide a modern alternative to printed handbooks and time-consuming meetings. Instead, you can collect e-signatures, distribute new hire welcome packets, and build personalized onboarding plans, all within an app that new hires can navigate independently.

10 Onboarding Process Steps

1. Streamline Steps with Onboarding Technology

Onboarding technology solutions can help your business streamline the onboarding process. Automated software tutorials and onboarding prompts are great ways to use onboarding technology.

These digital options can help new hires move through the HR onboarding process faster and get acquainted with more areas of the business and specific software in less time.

Technology advancements such as AI can ease the administrative burden of onboarding procedures such as paperwork, granting permissions, opening accounts, and more. But don’t mistake software as a replacement for in-person or human-led onboarding. By automating repetitive tasks, you'll free up time better spent on team building or one-on-one, role-specific training.

2. Share Company Policies

Your onboarding program should always include information about specific company policies. Self-service platforms create an opportunity for new hires to access your employee handbook, PTO information, dress code, and other essential documents—in a resource center that’s easy to access during the onboarding timeline and throughout their time at your company.

3. Offer On-Demand Onboarding Videos

During all stages of onboarding, videos can help streamline the process and provide a more engaging employee experience. Onboarding videos also promote social and formal learning. Plus, they're a cost-effective way for companies to onboard employees. A one-to-many approach works for multiple topics you will discuss during onboarding, including health insurance, PTO, dress code, employee benefits, and more.

During the First Six Months

4. Create Cohorts of New Hires

Effective onboarding strategies connect several new hires, ensuring they can share the onboarding experience from the beginning.

Collaborative learning provides an immersive experience that encourages new employees to bond with their colleagues, share experiences, and better understand their role in the company. Employees glean the majority of their work-related knowledge from colleagues, and collaborative learning allows them to learn from others with more experience and improve their skills as a result.

You can create collaborative learning opportunities by onboarding batches of new employees and including current employees from various departments during the onboarding phases.

5. Help New Hires Build Relationships

Improving the employee onboarding experience means prioritizing an onboarding buddy and onboarding mentor for each new hire. Implementing relational onboarding throughout all your onboarding process steps helps nurture and welcome new employees to perform their best.

Your onboarding program should also support new employees, clearly define responsibilities, and set expectations for their new position. Supporting new employees in building solid relationships with their coworkers and managers can help them more quickly adapt to your organization’s culture and speed up their learning process.

When a new hire is assigned a mentor during their onboarding process, you can ensure that they will get additional information and training you can’t account for in a standardized HR onboarding process. Mentors can help network with other employees in the business and learn about the company culture by shadowing their mentors during working hours.

Onboarding buddies are more casual connections. An onboarding buddy can help create opportunities for new hires to ask questions they might not feel comfortable asking their manager or any other questions that fall outside the scope of orientation or training.

6. Complete the Core HR Onboarding Process

Employee retention increases when your strategy extends the onboarding process throughout the first year of the new hire’s time at your business. Still, your onboarding process should frontload the core essentials, bringing new hires up to speed within the first six months.

Creating a more robust onboarding program for a longer duration helps employees become more productive. They will feel comfortable in their work environment, learn where to go when they have questions, adapt to the company culture, and build better employee relationships.

Even though pushing new hires through paperwork and training quickly sounds like they can start work sooner, it isn’t the right path to employee productivity and contribution. Strike the right balance between an onboarding program that integrates new hires so they can quickly start contributing while providing opportunities for continued training.

After the First Six Months

7. Repurpose Onboarding Checklists for Reboarding

Onboarding employees isn’t just for new hires. Transitioning internal employees into a new role within the company is just as important as onboarding a brand-new employee.
Depending on your company, the culture of one department may be significantly different than that of another. Transferred employees don’t want to feel like a newbie in an organization they’ve worked at for years.

Instead, look for ways to adapt your new hire onboarding process steps into a reboarding process that gives internal hires the training, feedback, and socialization they need to be successful.

8. Conduct Regular Surveys to Measure Employee Engagement

Companies that see onboarding new employees as a transactional process and fail to connect employees to the business won’t engage their hearts and minds. When employees feel fully engaged with their organization, they enjoy their jobs, are committed to their company, and put more effort into their work. Enthusiastic employees are more productive and create a positive work environment.

9. Offer Advanced Learning Opportunities

Additional time in the onboarding process gives space for improvement and also allows for higher-level learning. Because employees have more time to absorb basic information, there are more opportunities to help them build more advanced skills throughout their first year. Continue offering training even after they seem proficient with the bare minimum.

Providing continuing education throughout the first year of employment allows employees to advance their skills and better benefit your organization. Focused training on soft and technical skills unlocks more advancement opportunities and provides employees with a career path and a vision for the future.

10. Monitor Employee Retention

Effectively onboarding new employees can be transformational for employee retention strategies. The length of your onboarding program can significantly impact how long your employees stay with your company.

When new employees experience a positive onboarding program, 51% say they would go ‘above and beyond’ at work.. This is critical when you consider how much disengaged employees cost businesses—the equivalent of 18% of their salary. Consider engaging new hires throughout their first year to ensure increased engagement and retention.

Take the First Step to Better First Days

Hiring a new employee can be expensive and time-consuming—and what happens during onboarding can make or break long-term retention. But do it right and you can boost staff retention and increase productivity. With our Definitive Guide to Onboarding, you'll learn actionable tips for creating better first days.

Our award-winning software empowers HR professionals and hiring managers to customize onboarding templates that provide a best-in-case onboarding experience—no advanced tech skills required. You'll spend less onboarding time on orientation and more on meaningful training. Learn how onboarding technology can help create a standard, streamlined onboarding experience.